Plaything (Black Mirror)

"Plaything"
Black Mirror episode
Promotional poster
Episode no.	Series 7 Episode 4
Directed by	David Slade
Written by	Charlie Brooker
Original air date	April 10, 2025 (2025-04-10)
Running time	46 minutes
Guest appearances
Peter Capaldi as Older Cameron Walker Lewis Gribben as Younger Cameron Walker James Nelson-Joyce as DCI Kano Michele Austin as Jen Minter Asim Chaudhry as Mohan Thakur Will Poulter as Colin Ritman

"Plaything" is the fourth episode in the seventh series of the British science fiction anthology television series Black Mirror. Written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade, it premiered on Netflix on 10 April 2025, with the rest of series seven.

The story surrounds a former video game journalist who tells the story of how he came to commit a murder in the 1990s. The episode takes place in the same universe as the Black Mirror film Bandersnatch, featuring Will Poulter and Asim Chaudhry reprising their Bandersnatch roles, though it is not a direct sequel.

Plot

After Cameron Walker is caught shoplifting in 2034, police arrest him as he is also wanted for murder of a person they have been unable to identify. Taken in for questioning, Cameron explains his past leading to the current events.

As a young adult, Cameron was a reviewer for PC Zone. His writings capture the attention of eccentric programmer Colin Ritman from Tuckersoft, and he is invited to review Colin's latest game. Colin shows Cameron a life simulation game called Thronglets; atypical of other games at the time, Colin explains that Thronglets is a game without any conflict or goals, but simply to help raise the digital creatures, which Colin claims are fully sentient lifeforms, able to experience human-like emotions. Cameron steals a copy of the game and starts playing, and becomes enthralled by watching and caring for the creatures.

Lump, a drug dealer that frequently crashes at Cameron's flat, comes by one day and suggests they take LSD. After Lump falls asleep, Cameron, still under the effect of LSD, finds that he is able to understand the language of the Thronglets, creating a stronger attachment to them. He purchases additional equipment for his computer so that he can speak to the Thronglets while under the influence of LSD, and his conversations with them apparently improve their own communication abilities.

While Lump is asleep on the couch, Cameron's boss demands he come to the office to finish the review of Thronglets. Cameron experiences severe hallucinations while travelling to work and writes complete gibberish for his review. However, they shortly learn that Colin had a mental breakdown, wiped all the code from Tuckersoft's computers, and mentioned that Thronglets are a basilisk (which might be a reference to Roko's basilisk), so the release of Thronglets has been cancelled; Cameron immediately leaves to return home. Meanwhile, Lump wakes up, and discovers Cameron's computer running Thronglets. Lump tortures and "kills” many of them by the time Cameron arrives. In a rage, Cameron attacks Lump, eventually strangling him. He dismembers the body and hides the corpse in a suitcase left in a remote location. The police later discover this, but they are unable to identify the dead man's remains or determine a suspect for the murder.

In the years that follow, Cameron takes responsibility for providing more capabilities for the Thronglets, scavenging hardware from newer technology to expand their capabilities and modifying the game's code. By the time he is caught by the police, he has created a large computing station for the Thronglets in his flat. He also shows the officers that he has operated on himself, creating a digital port to his brain allowing the Thronglets to live within him as well.

The detectives agree to give him pen and paper, believing that he will, in exchange, identify the body in the suitcase. Instead, Cameron writes a strange graphic similar to a circular QR code that he shows to the security camera, which is connected to the central government's servers; Cameron explains that the graphic is code to allow the Thronglets to take over the central server, exponentially increasing their processing power and bringing about a singularity event. As a signal starts to play on the emergency broadcast system, affecting everyone who can hear it, Cameron explains that the Thronglets are using the signal to reprogram every human's brain to be free of conflict and negative emotions. After the signal concludes, a smiling Cameron goes to help the fallen DCI Kano back to his feet.

Production

Brooker was inspired by his real life devotion to a Tamagotchi he had in his earlier years. He was also influenced by his time working for PC Zone in the 1990s, claiming it's “as autobiographical as this gets", and decided to make the fictional game reminiscent of one he reviewed, 1996's Creatures. Brooker detailed that Thronglets would be a mix of SimCity and The Sims, with the episode's plot exploring how people treat the characters of The Sims, and given the game's visuals, provide “the juxtaposition of making it look as cute as possible and having quite disturbing and dark things.”

The in-episode game, Thronglets, was made into a real world mobile game by Night School Studio, a studio within Netflix Games. Sean Krankel, head of Night School, said that they wanted to do a project with Black Mirror, creating a game beyond the bounds of what would be shown in a typical episode. Night School started development of the game in late 2023, around the time that "Plaything" was still in pre-production, allowing the design of the game to influence some of the direction and art design of the episode itself. Conversely, Night School made sure to include elements in the game reflecting the final script, such that players would feel that their game "literally got lifted out of the episode". The real-world Thronglets was released simultaneously with the release of the season 7 episodes on 10 April 2025.

Reception

The episode received mixed reviews. Louisa Mellor of Den of Geek rated the episode 4 out of 5 stars.

External links

• "Plaything" at IMDb