‘USS Callister: Into Infinity’ Is the Perfect Finale to a Near-Perfect Black Mirror Season

This flashy outlier episode is one of the show’s strongest yet

Netflix

Sometimes as a writer, it’s hard not to wrestle with a certain feeling of “What’s the point?” as I cover seemingly trivial subjects. With so much chaos going on in the world, I can’t help but feel that the time would be better spent elsewhere. But this season of Black Mirror has been a wonderful reminder for me of why I find covering entertainment so meaningful. Fictional stories can present avenues to talk to the issues that affect us most deeply. And there are few shows that open the door to those kinds of conversations more plainly than Black Mirror.

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“USS Callister: Into Infinity” isn’t exactly the first sequel from within Black Mirror’s seven seasons, but it is the first that its writers thought warranted an entire recap. Given the anthology show’s 14-year-long avoidance of these sorts of opening montages — and its longstanding habit of defying genre conventions — there are some I’ve spoken to who didn’t even process the recap for what it was and figured it was just another clever in-universe gimmick rather than a sign the episode was a full-fledged sequel. For those who’ve hopped around the show’s catalogue a bit or watched it less religiously, it’s an easy mistake to make.

But for Black Mirror aficionados like myself, the callbacks were immediately clear. Unlike the fourth episode of the season, which serves as a loose sequel to “Bandersnatch,” this season finale is such a direct extension of the season 4 episode, simply titled “USS Callister,” that it’s difficult to fully appreciate without it. It’s a unique departure for the show that traffics almost exclusively in freestanding, dystopian vignettes.

Most episodes tell completed stories that wind toward neat and macabre conclusions. But “USS Callister: Into Infinity” is the rare story in which writers Charlie Booker, Bisha K. Ali, and William Bridges found material worth rehashing.

It feels like a tonal departure in more ways than one. Not only is it built off of a prior episode’s foundation and given the rein to explore a world with pre-established characters, but it’s one of the stories in the show that falls most squarely into the category of sci-fi. It’s also more cinematic in nature. Taking place inside of a video game, it’s colorful, fast-paced, and exciting. At an hour and a half duration, it shares more in common with films like Guardians of the Galaxy than it does Black Mirror at face value.

As with all Black Mirror episodes, though, it would be incomplete if it didn’t center the episode in some way or another around new technologies and the dystopian scenarios they can pose. This episode, as in the original, features two: a device that can use peoples’ DNA to generate computerized versions of them, and a virtual realm so vast and well-realized that it consumes much of the world’s attention.

“USS Callister: Into Infinity” takes place both inside and outside of the game, aptly called “Infinity,” and the main characters have widely varied motives. One party is fighting to protect their company’s reputation, erase the clones, and bury the evidence that real human consciousness was ever uploaded onto the servers. Another wants to ensure those digital beings are granted all the dignity of real people rather than being quietly erased like obsolete files. And within the game, a third party is simply fighting to survive — because deletion, to them, means death.

It’s a nebulous premise, but it’s still treated with much of the show’s signature philosophical depth and realism. It also concludes with an undeniably Black Mirror twist.

The cast is given the interesting task of playing not only their real-world selves, but the cloned versions that have been inserted into the game. Cristin Milioti’s Nanette Cole is resourceful, pragmatic, and one of the strongest female leads the show has depicted to date. Jimmi Simpson plays both a cowardly, opportunistic CEO as well as a more noble version of himself that’s been hardened and matured by life inside of Infinity. Jesse Plemons, too, reprises his role from the first iteration, but with an enticing twist. And he’s every bit as meek, brilliant, cruel, and volatile.

There’s a powerful dichotomy to Black Mirror’s depictions of the future. The show’s most grounded and cynical visions often feel the most valuable. Some have proven borderline prophetic already. But the more outlandish episodes, while less believable, tap more directly into the show’s raw entertainment appeal. “USS Callister: Into Infinity” falls firmly into the latter camp. Its portrayal of the future isn’t believable enough to feel prescient, as in “Common People,” nor is it intimate enough to make tomorrow’s technological achievements feel within grasp, as “Eulogy” manages to do.

But it still presents a scenario, no matter how outlandish it may seem, that I hate to dismiss as impossible. As video games have progressed from 2D planes with computerized pings into fully realized worlds with lore, side quests, physics engines, and flourishing online communities, the type of VR world that Black Mirror depicts is squarely in line with our current trajectory.

Another idea that the episode shines a light on is “simulation theory” — the notion that the reality we inhabit today is merely a computerized simulation put together by a more advanced civilization. Admittedly, it’s not a theory I’ve ever taken very seriously. But just in the last couple of weeks, Google Veo 3 has lent eerie credence to the idea. In AI-generated videos that are borderline indiscernible from real life, we can see prompt-generated subjects ridicule and contest the notion that they could simply be products of single-sentence directives. And yet, they are.

Watching the videos, it not only stokes questions about what truth means in an era when AI can convincingly simulate real people, places, and things, but it causes viewers to wrestle — even if only for a moment — with the question, “What if my entire life is the result of a prompt?” (The 2025 film Companion effectively explores similar terrain.)

Though we’re still a far cry from actually inserting people into computers and PlayStations, the gameplay itself in Infinity isn’t implausible, even today. The most notable differences are that contemporary VR headsets are more cumbersome and less immersive. But whether the dream behind the game will ever be realized may be more of a matter of “when” than “if.”

“USS Callister: Into Infinity” isn’t Black Mirror’s most realistic episode, but it’s a fantastical odyssey that remains anchored by disconcerting truths. And it’s the perfect close to a season brimming with everything from emotional intimacy to digital and existential ennui.

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