The Branching Horrors of <em>Black Mirror</em>’s ‘Bandersnatch’

This piece contains spoilers for the Black Mirror special “Bandersnatch.”

For most of its existence, Netflix’s streaming television service has largely existed to pump out more and more content. Its never-ending feed is packed with new shows, revived classics, licensed hits from other countries, and big acquisitions such as , a cult hit from the U.K.’s Channel 4 that tells warped tales for an internet age. Given the onslaught of “more,” it stands to reason that eventually one television episode would offer the viewer thousands of choices all by itself.’s “Bandersnatch,” a feature-length special that behaves like a choose-your-own-adventure book, proposing various branching story options that lead the audience down different paths, many of them grim.