The Black Mirror: Plaything creator revealed that the new sci-fi short’s ending meant exactly what fans had suspected it did.
Plaything is the fourth episode of the beloved Netflix series’ seventh season and stars A-listers Lewis Gribben and Will Poulter.
The short film, which takes place in the same Black Mirror universe as the hit streaming spin-off movie Bandersnatch, follows a video game programmer, Colin Ritman, and a journalist reviewing it, Cameron Walker, as they become consumed by the digital creatures created by Ritman and his team.
What Happened in Black Mirror: Plaything?
Black Mirror: Plaything is just one of many stories in the Black Mirror canon about humanity and its connection to technology. Yet, it has people talking thanks to its exciting and cryptic ending.
The entire Plaything story centers around journalist Cameron Walker as he comes into contact with a video game creator named Colin Ritman and his digital creation Thronglets.
The Thonglets game is essentially a high-end Tamagatchi, where players care for, grow, and bond with a collection of digital creatures.
However, as is the case with every Black Mirror story (like the star-studded Hotel Reverie), things take a turn for the grim very quickly. Walker takes an obsessive liking to the Thronglets, lashing out at people around him for treating them poorly or not providing them with enough love.
These eventually results in Walker exploring to give the Thronglets even more power, opening to fuse a connection port into the back of his head so that the Thronglets can live within him, as well as pursuing greater processing power so that the creatures can think/act for themselves.
Plaything ends with letting the Thronglets loose in a mass singularity event so that they may control all human consciousness and switch the role of the player and the game.
However, it cuts to black before the definitive result of this unleashing can be shown on screen, leaving the audience to wonder what exactly happened next.
Plaything Creator Confirms Fan Suspicions
The nebulous ending to Black Mirror: Plaything led many to speculate what the short’s creator was trying to get across, and, as it turns out, fans may have been exactly right in assuming what they did.
The most popular theory surrounding the Black Mirror episode’s ending was that it was meant to be intentionally ambiguous, leaving the viewer to wonder if the Thronglets were good or bad and whether Walker freeing them would help humanity or be the end of it entirely.
And according to creator Charlie Brooker, this is precisely what he was trying to get across.
Speaking in a conversation with Netflix’s Tudum blog, he wanted to be “a tad more ambiguous as to whether you thought this was a good thing or a bad thing” by the end of Plaything:
“I wanted it to be a tad more ambiguous as to whether you thought this was a good thing or a bad thing. We don’t quite give you that much information.”
Star Lewis Gribben has a different idea of what the ending means, though. He believes his Cameron Walker character essentially created a “dictatorship regime” by releasing the Thonglets, as the masses no longer have to rely on independent thought, being controlled by the digital creatures:
“It just feels like Cameron’s wiped violence from people. He’s taken their freedom and enslaved everyone to be peaceful and not have any bad tendencies. It’s like a dictatorship regime that he’s just created, that all these people are just mindless and listening to the Thronglets.”
Gribben’s comments are exactly what Brooker was trying to do with the Season 7 short, giving each viewer their own idea of what happened next and what it means for society at large.
However, this level of ambiguity was not always the plan. Brooker told Entertainment Weekly that in early drafts of the project, it ended with a scene where “people waking up and opening their eyes,” confirming “[the Throng] had merged with people,” and humanity had survived the merge:
“In the original script, it’s somewhat different than you see. You see people waking up and opening their eyes. They’re smiling. We made it clear that [the Throng] had merged with people. Cameron says that this is not great for all of us. I was channeling the thought of IOS upgrades for humans.”
Instead, the way Plaything‘s final ending plays out leaves the viewer wondering whether the human race was wiped out by the Thonglets the second they got a hold of the masses or if this merging could have served as the long-awaited upgrade humanity has been waiting for.
