Black Mirror: 10 Character Fates Worse Than Death

The anthology series Black Mirror has one of the oddest relationships with TV audiences; they love it to pieces, but oh my, do a lot of the episodes end with dread and misery. It makes you wonder why we come back for more.

In such a short amount of time, every new story provides audiences with lovable and sympathetic leads whose lives become consumed by the technology around them. Line up the episodes side by side, and you're bound to find more than a few that end on serious downers.

What should we come to expect from the twisted mind of series creator, Charlie Brooker? Sure, there's a 'San Junipero' here and a 'Hang The DJ' there for us to feel warm and fuzzy. But there's also some really depressing, nihilistic narratives with unfortunate endings for the characters we grow to love in the space of an hour.

A kinder show would kill its characters off, but Black Mirror actively enjoys twisting the knife in its protagonists. Never-ending torture is the way to a Black Mirror fan's heart, and the series is definitely not short of that.

So here are ten end-of-episode fates throughout Black Mirror that were so bleeding bleak for an individual character, that death itself would have been a much better reward.

In the golden age of Social Media, putting your life out on the internet for all to see can be worrisome. Likes, retweets and favourites become currency to some; and when you attribute how many Twitter followers you have, or how many likes an Instagram picture gets to your social status in the world, it can lead down a very dark path of mental anguish.

In the season three premiere, Nosedive tells the story of Lacie Pound (Bryce Dallas Howard), whose obsession with her social rating score is what stands between her and a luxury condominium. We learn early on that in the reality Lacie lives, high scores lead to better access to luxuries, and in a world as fickle as this, any bad interaction or experience can drop you down a rating or two.

Throughout the episode, bad luck follows Lacie around like a rash as her social points decrease with every little mishap - or just the plain vindictiveness of other people around her. This downward spiral concludes with Lacie crashing an old friend's wedding and causing a disturbance so severe her rating score hits a zero, and she is removed from not just the party but society as a whole.

The last scene does offer a glimpse of cathartic satisfaction; as Lacie can now speak freely without consequence. But the underlining concern still stands, that should you be deemed "too low" for society, you're cast aside to be forgotten.