'Black Mirror' Season 5 Release Date: New Episodes Will "Be Out Soon"

Black Mirror Bandersnatch has been out for a few weeks, and even though this interactive movie has some replayability value, most fans are probably ready for something new by now. Earlier reports suggested that creating the choose-your-own-adventure experience might have delayed the rest of Season 5, but a new update from Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker suggests the Season 5 release date could be coming much sooner than we thought.

“It’s all imminent-ish,” Brooker told RadioTimes.com in a recent interview. “It’ll be out soon.”

Fans thought that they’d be celebrating the new year with Black Mirror Season 5 episodes on Netflix after a leak from one of the streaming service’s official Twitter accounts in late November. The deleted tweet from the verified account @NXonNetflix listed December 28, 2018 as the release date for Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. At the time, no one knew this was really a standalone story.

However, there was some precedence for this with the Black Mirror holiday special episode “White Christmas,” which released on December 16, 2014 before Netflix acquired the series. The next full season after that didn’t arrive until October 21, 2016. Fortunately, fans know they don’t have to wait nearly two years for more episode this time, with Season 5 set to release sometime in 2019.

Brooker has already acknowledged Bandersnatch is to blame for the Season 5 delay, with production on the story equalling the amount of work it typically takes to create four episodes of the show.

“We knew going into it that it would be difficult and challenging and more complicated than a normal film that we would do,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “As the story expanded, I like to say that the story got longer and it got wider.”

The good news, which may account for that “imminent-ish” release of Season 5 episodes, is that Brooker filmed one of those episodes prior to creating Bandersnatch, he told RadioTimes.com. That’s likely because the interactive film was nearly part of the season until Netflix decided to release it separately.

“I think it would have destabilized the series a little bit, to have this big huge interactive film among other films,” executive producer Annabel Jones added.

While Brooker may have offered an update on the Black Mirror Season 5 release date, he didn’t share any details about the upcoming plot. He did call the episodes “more straightforward” compared to making Bandersnatch, but added, “they all come with their own challenges.”

Brooker also said that that it’s difficult for them to make episodes tackling specific political topics. So don’t expect a Trump story in Season 5, though you can always just go back and watch “The Waldo Moment.”

“Because of the turnaround time that we have, we don’t want to be completely outmoded,” he said. “We don’t tend to do things where we go, ‘Oh what’s happening today?’ and then write about that.” For example, that’s why there hasn’t been a Brexit-related episode.

For now, we may still be in the dark about what to expect from the new episodes, but it sounds like we should have a Season 5 release date soon.

Black Mirror Seasons 1-4 and Bandersnatch are now streaming on Netflix. Season 5 will be available in 2019.

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