Dystopian Anthology Series 'Black Mirror' Renewed for Season 7

Another season of Netflix's dystopian Black Mirror is officially in the works. 

Created by Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror is essentially a modern version of The Twilight Zone, a dark anthology series that explores the unanticipated, often negative effects of modern technology on human society. Occasionally satirical and often disturbing, its stories explore everything from the far-reaching impact of the things we post on social media to the ubiquitous nature of dating apps, streaming services, smart homes, and the many, many other products that are all busy mining our personal information for both knowledge and profit. Each episode is a standalone story, and the series can be watched in almost any order. (Though there are hints that some of the tales may exist within a larger shared universe.)

Black Mirror's' sixth season premiered back in June after a four-year hiatus and reportedly did gangbusters numbers for Netflix. According to the streamer, Season 6 reached the Top 10 in 92 countries and spent 4 weeks in Netflix’s global top 10 for English-speaking TV. It was comprised of five installments and featured stories about everything from a pair of lonely astronauts wrestling with unimaginable tragedy to a sales assistant who is informed that she must commit a series of murders in order to avert the apocalypse. The season's buzziest episode was probably "Joan is Awful," an hour that followed the story of an everyday woman whose life is adapted into a streaming TV series without her consent. Its depiction of a company like Streamberry, which used AI to essentially steal people's lives and stories in order to turn them into content felt oddly prescient during the recent SAG-AFTRA strike.

But that's not anything out of the ordinary for Black Mirror, which has featured episodes dealing with cloning, social media clout, online harassment, dating apps, virtual reality, and more. 

Per Variety, Season 7 is expected to go into production later this year with Brooker returning as showrunner and executive producer. Annabel Jones and Jessica Rhoades are also believed to be returning as executive producers. Details about specifics such as plot details, potential cast members, or the number of episodes in the upcoming season are still under wraps, and given that these things tend to vary so widely between seasons pretty much anything is possible. (Season 6 was comprised of five episodes, whereas its predecessor was made up of just three, slightly longer feature-length installments.)

Given its relatively standalone stories, the series tends to attract an A-list cast for each installment. Season 6 featured a host of big names including Salma Hayek (Eternals), Annie Murphy (Schitts Creek), Aaron Paul (Westworld) Josh Hartnett (Penny Dreadful), and Paapa Essiedu (The Lazarus Project). Previous seasons have featured fan-favorite performers like Andrew Scott (Fleabag), Hayley Atwell (Howards End), Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey), Jodie Whittaker (Doctor Who), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Surface), Domhnall Gleeson (Alice & Jack), and Jon Hamm (Good Omens). 

Black Mirror Seasons 1-6 are currently streaming on Netflix, along with the interactive, choose-your-own-adventure special called Bandersnatch.