The Winner Is: Plaything
The best episode of Black Mirror in 2025 and in the 21st century is Plaything. Here is why.
Good Morning, girl!
Yeah, I know it’s been a month since the release. For some, the new episodes are water under the bridge, but I just got the time to go through the seventh series of Black Mirror. Well, now I have to stop binge-watching it because Plaything is a show-stopper.
Honestly, this one episode took me three hours to watch.
The episode is forty-six minutes long, but I thought that Charlie Brooker would hide the new episode in the original Bandersnatch series.
So I started to play Bandersnatch again. I figured that I have to go down the line where Colin is still alive.
It didn’t work, so then I thought maybe there is a hidden pathway.
So, yeah!
I was overthinking.
It’s funny, cuz I just paused the fourth episode to find Plaything. Yeah, the answer was right before me, and I looked past it because I wanted to find it instead of letting the pleasure find me. Classic.
A true sign that I’m impatient.
The problem was that I used Netflix in Hungarian mode, so the title was in Hungarian, and well, Hungarian translations can get funny. An example: Home Alone was translated like “Tremble, You Burglars!”.
Whatever, let’s focus on Plaything.
Reasons
I have four reasons to believe Plaything came at the right time to sneak into our heads and be the absolute fcking best episode of Black Mirror.
Singularity Event
What does the media feed us? AGI takeover, wars, recession, bad news after bad news to keep us in an anxious state.
In today’s turbulent times, wouldn’t it be relaxing to live in a world where everyone’s brain is reprogrammed by Thronglets to be free of conflict and negative emotions? Like on drugs all the time but without ever coming back? Being like kids again, with the ability to regulate our emotions.
Even if it’s a lie, I would give it a try. It must feel magical.
So, what is the singularity?
The technological singularity — simple as singularity — is a hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.
Basically, a takeover, as in Plaything.
According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis, I.J Good’s intelligence explosion model of 1965, an upgradable intelligent agentcould eventually enter a positive feedback loop of successive self-improvement cycles; more intelligent generations would appear more and more rapidly, causing a rapid increase in intelligence which would culminate in a powerful superintelligence, far surpassing all human intelligence.
The Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann became the first known person to use the concept of a “singularity” in the technological context.
As AI is getting smarter, the time when all this can happen feels more real than ever.
Casting
Will Poulter is such a hidden gem. I think he is underrated, and he has more range than they give him credit for. Hope to see him in more roles in the future.
Asim Chaudhry has the same vibe as Will. That man makes acting seem like it’s easy.
The whole casting was superb, the young and old Cameron got the stare so right, I had to look up if it’s the same person or not. Damn, Peter Capaldi and Lewis Gribben were like one person. Insane and chilling.
It would have been nice to see more women in the future… But the good cop, Michele Austin, was the one who enabled Cameron and the Thronglets to rule the world. If it were on the bad cop, James Nelson-Joyce, Cameron would never have gotten that paper and pen.
The Rise of Self-Medications
I might be connecting dots that aren’t meant to be connected, but I think the drugs are having a mass comeback lately. Good timing with LSD and other hallucinogens. I was curious if the LSD trip would guide Cameron into believing something that is not happening or help him find hidden meanings.
I’m happy that this episode turned out as it did.
The End
Charlie Brooker, thank you for ending the episode with a question. Do the Throngs give us what we were promised, or did we fall into a trap, and drop dead? You decide.
Are the Throngs vengeful or helpful?
We don’t know.
Thank you for not acting like you do, Mr. Brooker!
Thank you, reader, for reading me. I know it was too long.