Black Mirror‘s long awaited seventh season finally premiered on Netflix last week, with a flurry of new standalone episodes designed to make viewers question everything. Though many of these have become the go-to topics for water cooler conversations, none have been quite so heavily discussed as season seven episode four, “Plaything.” The episode, which has been receiving exceptionally glowing reviews, centers on a socially awkward video game journalist as he becomes infatuated with a digital world free of conflict. While elements of the story are fairly straightforward, eagle-eyed fans have made note of the fact that “Plaything” has multiple connections to other Black Mirror outings, including the 2018 interactive special Bandersnatch. To fully understand the story and its apocalyptic conclusion, we’ll run through the narrative of the episode, the connections to other works and see what other secrets we can uncover.
What Happens in ‘Plaything’?
“Plaything” kicks off in the year 2034, when an older man named Cameron Walker is arrested for shoplifting various computer parts from an electronics store. After police take him in, they come to realize that Walker is responsible for an unsolved murder from the 1980s. The man claims that he can provide police with the still-unknown identity of the victim, offering a frame narrative for the remainder of the episode. From there, we flash back to the early 1980s, when Cameron was working as a young video game journalist. His work in a magazine called PC Zone is fairly under looked by the general public, though it catches the attention of a prolific game programmer by the name of Colin Ritman. Ritman invites Cameron to check out an early beta of his upcoming opus, Thronglets, which is unlike any other game on the market.
In Thronglets, there is no conflict, no violence and no hard-set goals to accomplish. Instead, players are introduced to a tiny digital creature, and tasked with keeping it alive, entertained and content. It’s essentially a Tamagotchi, but significantly more advanced. Though Cameron is skeptical of the game’s appeal at first, he quickly falls in love with the little creature, and begins upgrading his PC with heavier specs in order to provide a better environment for his Thronglet. As he does this, the creature begins to multiply, creating an entire community of happy and healthy little creatures.
A Few Lumps in the Plan
Since Cameron is such an awkward and introverted person, he doesn’t have a very thriving social life. Aside from his boss at PC Zone and his growing army of Thronglets, his only friend is a local drug dealer named Lump who often crashes on his couch. Even still, his relationship with Lump is more transactional than it is friendly. While Lump stays on Cameron’s couch, the two begin getting heavy into psychedelics. When Cameron is under the influence, he seems to understand the Thronglets clearer than before, and begins communicating with them through a series of bizarre symbols. As he continues falling down this rabbit hole, Cameron buys a ton of PC upgrades, allowing the Thronglet community to reach massive numbers. He becomes so invested in this project that he nearly blows his deadline for the review, and rushes into the office on the last day to submit it.
Unfortunately, Cameron continues to hallucinate when he reaches his office, and his review is scrawled entirely in the gibberish Thronglet language. To make matters worse, his boss informs him that Colin Ritman recently suffered a mental breakdown, and deleted the entire source code of the game, effectively cancelling the wide release of Thronglets to the public. After racing home to return to his digital village, Cameron learns that Lump discovered the game while he was away, and that Lump has been maliciously torturing and killing the Thronglets all day. Horrified, Cameron lashes out at his friend, and bashes him over the head with a glass bowl. A scuffle ensues, with Cameron brutally killing Lump before dismembering his corpse.
Cameron Is Consumed by the Playthings
After stashing Lump’s body in a suitcase and dumping it in a remote location, Cameron returns to his Thronglet world. He is extremely distraught at the state of his community, and vows to help the digital creatures return to peace. To accomplish this task, Cameron empties his savings into computer parts, eventually constructing a massive wall of circuits and fans that looks like something straight out of The Matrix. Years later, Cameron has run out of money entirely, and has resorted to dumpster diving and petty theft in order to get more PC upgrades. This brings us back to the year 2034, with an elderly Cameron recounting this tale to police interrogators as they demand answers about Lump’s murder. While Cameron’s story is helpful in closing the cold case, it turns out that he didn’t even know Lump’s government name, so the cops are no closer to identifying the body.
The police demand more answers about the murder, but all Cameron can think about is the Thronglets. He reveals that he even placed a digital port in his brain, allowing the critters to communicate with him directly. Just as the police are ready to throw in the towel on the whole discussion, Cameron asks for a pen and paper, and draws another bizarre symbol, which he flashes to the security camera in the corner of the room. He then reveals that he’s created something of a QR code, which allows the Thronglets to input their source code on the government servers, transmitting their data through the security cam. In an instant, this exponentially raises the processing power of the Thronglet world, and allows the creatures to latch onto all forms of modern technology.
How Does the Episode End?
With unfettered access to government servers, the Thronglets activate an emergency broadcast system. This tone sweeps across the nation, impacting everyone who can hear it, and temporarily causes a mass paralysis. When the police demand to know what happened, Cameron explains that the Thronglets have developed a signal to remove conflict from the human brain, allowing mankind to live as peacefully and carefree as the digital pets. Cameron smiles, having completed his mission, though it’s heavily implied that this lack of conflict cripples humanity as we know it, and leaves everyone alive in a state of vegetation.
In the end, the Thronglets manage to bring about the downfall of humanity, despite exhibiting an entirely peaceful nature and pleasant, upbeat demeanor. We don’t get much information about Colin’s mental breakdown in the episode, so it’s certainly possible that the developer saw this coming, and destroyed his creation to prevent this exact outcome. Depending on how you read the final moments of the episode, you could conclude that the Thronglets were secretly a force of evil, taking advantage of Cameron’s trusting nature and malleable mind to do their bidding in physical space. You could also conclude that this aversion to conflict is a positive progression for the planet, by halting things like warfare and genocide. Still, it seems that humanity has become a vestigial organ to Earth, leaving the digital Thronglets to take our position as the commanding species.
How Does ‘Plaything’ Connect to ‘Bandersnatch’?
If you played the interactive Black Mirror Bandersnatch experience on Netflix back in 2018, you may recall a few key details that make “Plaything” something of a sequel/prequel outing. The most obvious connection is the inclusion of Will Poulter’s Colin Ritman. Though Colin appears in just one brief scene for “Plaything,” he holds an integral role in the overall story. This character also appears in Bandersnatch, and meets a similar end to Cameron. In Bandersnatch, Colin takes LSD and goes on a rant about the unreliable structure of time and the possibility of a multiverse. After engaging in this discussion with his employee Stefan, Colin concludes that he lacks free will, and the viewer is given an option to push him out the window, or make Stefan leap from the window in his place.
While there’s no way to know for certain how Colin’s alleged mental breakdown pairs with the Bandersnatch narrative, it seems clear that he’s got a much clearer view of the world in the early scenes of “Plaything.” Is it possible that his Thronglets game fueled his mental decay, and led to him leaping out the window to his demise in Bandersnatch? Perhaps the Black Mirror franchise is not finished showcasing the life and history of this character. It’s possible that other gaps in Colin’s life could be explored in future episodes of the series. There are many other easter eggs left throughout the episode that connect “Plaything” to Bandersnatch as well. Actor Asim Chaudhry also reprises his Bandersnatch role in the episode, and the glass bowl that Cameron uses to bludgeon Lump is the very same bowl used by Stefan to kill another character in the interactive experience.
What Are Reddit Users Saying About the Episode?
As you can imagine, the discussion forums surrounding “Plaything” have been going crazy, with fans offering all kinds of potential insight into the themes and concepts present in the narrative. The official discussion thread on r/blackmirror contains over 3,500 comments, ranging from stellar reviews of the episode to lamentations about not having access to a real life Thronglets game. To that end, it may surprise you to know that Netflix has actually made the game a reality – hopefully without the world-ending ramifications. Those looking to check out the real life Thronglets game can do so by scanning Cameron’s QR code shown during the police interrogation.
Scanning the QR code will open the Netflix app on your device, where you can care of a few Thronglets of your own. If you’re more of a Lump player than a Cameron, you can also harm the Thronglets, but we wouldn’t advise it, since you may be harming the future of humanity in the process. Turning the events of “Plaything” into an ARG of sorts shows just how much faith Netflix has in this flagship series, and highlights the popularity of the episode.
