Black Mirror is back – and in typical Netflix fashion, the streamer is deciding to f**k with viewers.
The dystopian TV series that takes people’s anxieties about technology and turn the dial up to 11 returned last week, and many are saying that it’s the best series in years.
Season seven, which includes the show’s first ever sequel episode, is the first since 2017 to have three episodes with a score of over 8.0 on IMDb, with seasons five and six having none.
While many are unnerved whilst watching the episodes themselves (I personally have never recovered from the season one finale), some fans have noticed a bizarre thing happening when comparing episodes online.
Advert
Different people are getting different versions of the same episode.
This led some viewers to suggest that they were being ‘gaslit’ by Netflix and, honestly, they might have a point.
The phenomenon occurred while watching episode two of the new season, titled Bête Noire, where a woman’s former schoolmate joins the company she works for and bizarre things start happening.
Without spoiling the episode too much, it deals with the woman feeling her reality is different to what everyone else is seeing, with one particular example being that she finds out the food company she works for is called Bernie’s, not Barnie’s.
Or is it that she used to think it was called Barnie’s, and now it’s Bernie’s…? It appears to be unclear depending on which version of the episode Netflix gave you.
One fan took to X, however, to point out that Netflix are playing with viewers’ minds – when they realised that them and their friend had two very slightly different versions of the episode.
They posted: “So my friend and I were watching the new Black Mirror episode 'Bête Noire' and we noticed that there was a stark difference between our episodes… even the viewers are getting gaslit at 16:40!”
The poster put pictures of their respective versions of the show at 16:40 – in which she searches ‘Barnie’s’.
In one version of the episode she gets what she’s searching for, 1,000s of results using the correct name of the company, and in another version of the episode – it instead showed ‘Bernies’.
Whilst seemingly a minor moment, it is a bizarre difference that Netflix have seemingly snuck in.
The following scene seems to even have different dialogue depending on which way round you had it.
One fan responded: “Mine started as Barnie's and everything switched to Bernie's... Are yall seeing the opposite?"
Others responded confirming that their version was the other way round – leading fans to deem the decision ‘diabolical’ from Netflix.
Another said: "oh my god both my devices have diff netflix accs and it ACTUALLY shows different words??? gaslighting pro max".
It even led the official Netflix and Black Mirror accounts on X to tweet ‘barnies’ and ‘bernies’ at each other.
In essence, this is either an elaborate joke everyone on the internet is playing on me in particular, or an elaborate misdirection that Netflix is playing on all of us.
Black Mirror is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: Black Mirror, Netflix, TV and Film, TV
Michael Slavin