Where to Stream: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

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If you’ve spent any time watching Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, there’s a 99 percent chance sweet, lovely Stefan’s (Fionn Whitehead) life is now much worse than when you started. The interactive movie is set up in such a way that the more choices you make, the more disturbing Stefan’s world becomes. But almost two weeks after the premiere of this twisted video game saga, it’s worth taking a step back to look at who the real villain is: while you were pressuring Stefan to chop up his dad, Bandersnatch‘s asshole game critic was right beside you, holding the metaphorical ashtray. Spoilers ahead.

If you were to create a Venn diagram about people who like messed up things, the chart on gamers versus Black Mirror fans would be a circle. But my guess is that even the most bloodthirsty viewer didn’t want to hurt Stefan. At least not at first. As far as protagonists go, Stefan is one of the sweetest and most relatable ones Black Mirror has ever created. He’s young, bright, shy, secretly brilliant, and intensely dedicated to his dream of making the best video game adaptation possible out of his favorite book. Stefan even has a dead mom backstory and an emotionally distant father who doesn’t quite get him. He’s a meek dreamer obsessed with tech who was likely intentionally created to match the type of person who is drawn to Black Mirror.

In short, Stefan is the type of person viewers would be predisposed to protect. And yet the second we see Microplay‘s knockoff Jason Schwartzman in a penguin suit (thank you Brett White for the burn assist) — the unspoken manifestation of Stefan’s dreams — all of that good will goes out the window. From that moment on the game bets that we will do just about anything to get the approval of this game review critic.

Bandersnatch gives a great deal of control given its truly shocking and varied endings, but it does make two large assumptions about the viewer. It first assumes that the third choice you make for Stefan will be to accept the offer to work at his dream company Tuckersoft. If you do that, you know where this goes: Bandersnatch the game will be compressed and rushed, too many people will “help,” and five months later when the video game show Microplay reviews Stefan’s passion project, its host Robin (Paul Bradley) will give Bandersnatch a zero out of five stars. It’s a devastating bit of failure.

The second thing it assumes is that Robin’s horrible review will enrage you to the point where you will do anything to make precious angel Stefan’s five-star dreams happen.

And as anyone who has played through Bandersnatch knows, the higher your Microplay rating is, the worse life becomes for Stefan. Less traumatic endings, like when Stefan jumps from the balcony after his drug trip gone wrong or when he goes on his meta exploration of Netflix, result in zero star reviews or the game never being released. Often you have to be a critical failure to give Stefan anything resembling a happy life. Arguably the most emotionally satisfying ending of all takes that premise to the next level. The ending that involves Stefan going back in time and choosing to join his mom on the train that will kill them both results in Bandersnatch the game never even existing. It’s only when you chase after Robin’s persnickety whims that things get even bleaker.

In true Black Mirror form the highest rating you can achieve also results in the most brutal ending. Naturally that means killing and chopping up Stefan’s dad, making Stefan murder up to three additional people before sending him off to jail, and terrorizing a new Bandersnatch game developer in the future. It’s a deeply warped conclusion, one that questions the concept of free will and turns Stefan into a mass murderer. But hey, you got that perfect game score. That’s all that counts, right?

Maybe this fan theory from Reddit user STZE1 is right. Maybe the larger point of Bandersnatch and its many references to the ratings-obsessed Black Mirror episode “Nosedive” is that the ratings don’t actually matter. What matter are the human connections along the way. After all, the only way to give Stefan a complete arc is to ignore the long-haired twerp judging his life’s work in 30 second intervals.

Or maybe the lesson is broader than that. Maybe the dreadful bleakness that comes with Robin’s highest score is a criticism about criticism itself. Maybe it’s saying that the more we obsessively dissect and judge a piece of entertainment, the more cynical we become and the less we’re able to connect to a work of art solely meant to keep us entertained. Are we part of the problem? Has the institution of pop culture criticism become so focused on merely finding “the best” that ignoring less complicated but emotionally satisfying projects has become the norm?

I say this from the bottom of my heart: bugger off Microplay, and screw you, Robin. You were the catalyst that led me to repeatedly torture my sweet angel-faced Stefan; and for that, I will never forgive you.

Watch Black Mirror: Bandersnatch on Netflix