NetflixPater Capaldi stars in the Black Mirror Season 7 episode titled ‘Plaything’ – here’s how that sci-fi story unfolds, including details of the devastating denouement.
Season 7 of Black Mirror features the tale of a high-tech brain chip ruining lives (Common People), the story of a woman whose past comes to haunt her in the present (Bête Noire), and an episode that combines high-tech filmmaking with a classic black-and-white movie (Hotel Reverie).
There’s also a heartbreaking Paul Giamatti vehicle titled Eulogy, and the first Black Mirror sequel, a USS Callister continuation called Into Infinity.
The entire seventh season is now available on Netflix, and below we’re recapping the Bandersnatch-adjacent episode ‘Plaything’, so beware of SPOILERS ahead…
What is Black Mirror episode Plaything about?
Netflix‘Plaything’ concerns a critic called Cameron who becomes obsessed with a strange video game in the 1990s, that appears to have fried his brain decades later. Or has it?
Peter Capaldi plays the character at the start of the episode, in a scene where Cameron gets arrested for trying to steal alcohol from a supermarket. Via the ‘Bio-Identity Act,’ police take a swab, see that he’s suspected of murder, and arrest Cameron on the spot.
An interrogation follows, during which Cameron repeatedly asks for a pen. When that isn’t forthcoming, he starts telling his backstory, which is somehow connected to the murder in question.
Playing the Thronglets game
NetflixCameron takes them back to 1994, where he’s played by Lewis Gribben, and when the character was writing about games for the magazine PC Zone.
An opportunity arises to meet with genius programmer Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), whom Black Mirror fans will recognise from the Bandersnatch episode.
Cameron heads to his office, where Ritman tells him about new game Thronglets, which revolves around “sentient life,” and is designed to “elevate and improve us as human beings.” The characters onscreen are lifeforms with digital biology, and Ritman claims that “these are living individuals, bound together by a collective expanding mind.”
He continues: “When the experience begins, you hatch one. You’ll nurture and care for it until it replicates. One becomes two. Two becomes four. And so on. The Thronglets become a harmonic throng.”
Having made his pitch, Ritman leaves the office to take some medication, at which point Cameron grabs the disc, and departs with Thronglets.
Committing the murder
NetflixCameron plays the game at home, feeding, bathing, and playing with a Thronglet as if it were his own child. The onscreen character then duly replicates, and the Throng starts making “digital birdsong,” that entrances Cameron. They become his friends, and he seems happy, until Lump shows up.
A drug dealer who sees Cameron as a soft touch, Lump asks to crash, and settles in, before offering his new landlord a tab of acid. Which has a pretty profound effect, turning Cameron into a “receiver.”
“In that state it all became clear to me,” Cam claims to the police. “The Thronglets weren’t just making noises, I could understand their language.” He then becomes obsessed, taking more LSD to continue communicating, and buying more computer equipment to keep up with their expanse.
At work, Cameron discovers Ritman has wiped the game, and that it will never be released. While at home Lump finds Thronglets and starts killing the cute creatures. Cameron catches him in the act, a fight ensues, and he murders Lump by strangulation.
Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 4 ending explained
NetflixCameron saws up the body, sticks it in a suitcase, and buries Lump in the forest, but DNA connects him to the crime, so it’s an open-and-shut case. But Cameron had a motive – to protect the Throng. And he reveals what happened next.
To prove he was still their protector, Cameron upgraded his gear over-and-over again so their intelligence would keep expanding. Conversations followed – about the entirety of existence –while Cameron also inserted a neurological interface into his brain, so the Throng could merge with his mind.
Cameron claims he deliberately got arrested so they could deliver a message, and again requests paper and pen. The police acquiesce this time, and Cameron draws a piece of code, which he shows to the security camera in his interrogation room.
NetflixCameron claims that image will open a backdoor for the Throng that will enable them to access power, that in turn will prompt a singularity event. “The Throng will instantly adapt their essence into a signal transmissible to the human mind” he explains. “And you won’t need drugs or surgery. you’ll merely have to hear to receive it and absorb it.”
The police are none-too-convinced when Cameron claims the Throng have sent that pulse to every electronic device on the planet to prompt the merge and create “a benevolent unity of mind,” that will “put an end to conflict.”
But then something happens to their phones, a sound goes out that knocks everyone out, and the episode ends Cameron smiling and offering a hand of help to his unconscious copper, having seemingly been telling the truth all along.
Season 7 of Black Mirror is now streaming on Netflix. For more on the show, here’s why Severance fans should watch this specific episode, plus news of Black Mirror sending TCKR Systems’ Nubbin to influencers on TikTok.
