In June the sixth season of Black Mirror said goodbye. At that time, Netflix had to keep a low profile. Hollywood was in the midst of a writers’ strike and actors were about to start their own picket lines. But, now that everything has returned to normal, the platform has positioned itself on the future of the series: it will have a seventh season.
The renewal comes after a last batch of episodes that received the approval of critics. One of the most notable stories, in fact, was the first installment of the season: Joan is awful, which criticized how studios like Netflix could take advantage of artificial intelligence to violate the rights of actors. The creator Charlie Brooker signed the script and had Annie Murphy, Salma Hayek and the Catalan Bea Segura in the cast.
Another notable episode was Loch Henry, where the character played by Myha’la Herrold contributed to giving a twist to the true crime genre with an amateur investigation in a Scottish town with a legendary black chronicle case. And, finishing off the trio of the most talked about, Demon 79 included demons in a political reflection on contemporary ultranationalism.
The series that had given such legendary episodes as USS Callister or San Junipero, which won the Emmy for best television movie, regained strength and inspiration by going off the most expected paths.
Joan is Awful was a sharp, meta-television comedy that demonstrated Brooker’s (recovered) ability to speculate about the immediate future; Loch Henry didn’t even need to delve into science fiction to tell a story that would intrigue the viewer; and in Demon 79 a supernatural approach to Brooker’s universe was accepted, until then only associated with science fiction and dystopia.
What is unknown is when the episodes of the seventh season could arrive. Between the fifth, the most ignored to date, and the sixth, four years passed.
