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Bandersnatch (Black Mirror) Megapost

jayhartwinsterling

Now loading… A *very* sizeable post with a lot to get through - here I am going to talk about the five “main” endings, the Easter eggs, why constructing a traditional flowchart for this game is technically a bit of a vain effort, how it’s probably best to link everything up in a guide - and the implications this story has regarding *us*.

Chapter 1: The Endings

So, we basically have five “main” endings. I say “main” because… well, we’ll get back to it on ending number five.

Ending One Description: The first of which is what I call the “How It Was Meant To Go” - and getting this one is quite simple. All you need to do is accept the proposal Stefan’s given by the Boss to make Bandersnatch with a in-house team. Satpal shows up and then Colin tells Stefan as he’s leaving “Sorry mate, wrong path.” We then jump forward five months to find that Bandersnatch was rushed in production, cut down and done badly because of it being a team effort and it gets a 0/5 review.

We loop back around to that decision again but this time, Colin thinks he’s met Stefan before and Stefan knows the memory error with Colin’s game when it happens. And we come back to the decision. (Refusal again will give a similar scene btw where Stefan accepts and Colin tells him it was the wrong choice again - but Satpal doesn’t enter and we just… end.

Ending One Analysis: So this first ending is rather simple. But the key to it for me lies rather simply in the fact that it can be done… without doing anything at all. If you left your remote/controller/mouse/finger wherever it is and don’t make any choices, this is where you end up. In essence, the universe just runs as it should and we don’t play god over Stefan’s life at all. I know it might be a little difficult to get what I’m on about here but consider that Stefan makes a remark to Dr. Haynes not too long after you take the refuse path, that he wanted to accept the offer and he doesn’t know what made him refuse. We did. This is more clearly pressed upon if you get to the point in your path where Stefan realises something is dictating his life and asks for a sign. We directly throw him a sign - if you’re super direct, that sign happens to be the most direct interaction we could possibly make with him. Telling him that he’s on Netflix in the 21st century for our entertainment and we’re controlling his life.

So, as I say, Ending One is where we don’t have an impact and thus things play out in the universe as they should. Bandersnatch is finished, it gets a 0/5 and Stefan resolves to try again. Ironically, if you just sit back and don’t take the option of making a choice (because, remember, us even making a choice is in itself a choice), though all the game does terribly - this is arguably the best outcome for Stefan. And all because we listened to the exact advice the trailer gave us with its music choice: “Relax. Don’t do it.”

Ending Two: If you go straight to Dr. Haynes (rather than going after Colin) and take your pills when you get home, you get what I call the “” ending. Stefan takes the pills, we jump forward five months to find that Bandersnatch got completed by Stefan but due to his pills, it comes across flat after the midway point and only gets a 2.5/5 rating.

Ending Two Analysis: Not a lot to say here - but it’s worth noting that the review dude on the TV mentions that if the creator had second chances, they should go back and do this game all over again but differently. Keep that in mind for later. It’s worth noting that if you take Stefan off the path that the universe was “meant” to take and then leave it to its own devices (and Stefan to his own choices) again, not making choices for him - then you’ll end up at this one. Almost as if the universe was trying to course correct itself…

Ending Three: “Stefan Jumps.” explanatory how we get here… We jump forward four months, and find that due to Stefan’s accidental death, the game seems to have been speedily finished by someone else.

Ending Three Analysis: We get no rating this time but TV review guy does say the game is bad. He also mentions that it seems abrupt, jarring, bleak, creepy… Almost a perfect way to describe the ending - since it then just ends.

Ending Four: “The P.A.C.S. Ending”. In this one, we unlock Stefan’s dad’s safe with the password “PAC” (obtained by crossing over paths from following Colin to visiting Dr. Haynes… we’ll come by to the implications of such things later.) and find to our surprise that Stefan’s entire life is part of a conspiratorial program, not only well documented but also manufactured with the trauma of his mother’s death being totally falsified. Dad wakes up, refuses to speak and in his rage, Stefan hits him with somethi— Oh wait, it’s a dream. Just a dream… But then it goes off the rails, quickly plunging us into the choice where we give Stefan a sign that he’s being controlled. Instead of Netflix, we now have the choice of P.A.C.S. - taking that option leads Stefan to kill his dad with the ashtray in a rage about the apparent conspiracy. Stefan then picks up the phone to phone Dr. Haynes - and we have to enter her number. Entering it correctly means that Stefan outright says to Hayne’s receptionist that he’s killed his dad. As he’s burying his dad, we hear distinct sirens and then cut to a review of Bandersnatch. The game is given a 2/5 rating and we discover that Stefan has been charged with killing his dad and locked up in jail.

Ending Four Analysis: It’s safe to say that P.A.C.S. didn’t actually exist outside of Stefan’s head and it’s his life paralleling Jerome F Davies’ obsession with conspiracy theories and delusions. But… what nobody seems to be really talking about is - we did that. Again. Leaving aside all the choices up to and including the safe, we make the P.A.C.S. sign appear and fuel Stefan’s dream-induced paranoia. In this ending, we in a way become Stefan’s delusion. (Oh, and don’t be surprised if you didn’t get this ending with your choices, or only part of it - again we’re coming to all that…)

Ending Five: “Time Rewritten” - now I’ll be honest, I did all these endings in one straight through run. Which made for a REALLY messy time in both my head and the game. Particularly with Colin… But anyway, for this one, I had to make Stefan pick up the family photo after having followed Colin and heard him say that mirrors let you travel through time. Stefan then seems to head through a mirror in the bathroom back in time to when he was a kid. And discovers that his dad took the teddy away from Stefan and locked it away in his room. He wakes up, I take him through the Netflix sign again. [During this, I led into what I’ll be addressing in a minute as Ending Four-B.] And take Stefan back to the locked room, this time entering the password “TOY”. Stefan unlocks the safe and finds his teddy within… And then it takes an odd turn. Stefan turns to find a younger dad - and then suddenly he is a child again. The younger dad relents and lets young Stefan put the teddy back under his bed. After doing so, suddenly older Stefan is looking at young Stefan sleeping. We cut back to young Stefan on the day Mum leaves… This time, he finds the teddy but his Mum is still running late. She’s gonna have to catch the next train - the one that leads to her demise - and we have to make the decision for young Stefan on whether to go or not. Of course, yes is my choice here - for though it’s a tragedy, it’s the last of these paths to take - we get young Stefan and Mum on the train, cut to black, and then see that older Stefan has died in Dr. Haynes’ office. We then get shown a TV screen and the credits come rolling in, whether we like it or not. And there’s what seems almost a tune playing but we’ll get back to that because if you’re a ZX Spectrum fan like myself, you know where that’s headed.

Ending Five Analysis: Alright, now there’s debate to be had here. Did Stefan really walk through a mirror and change time, undoing his own existence in the present, rendering himself dead on the spot? Did he slip away into a divergent reality and leave his original one behind? Or did he, in reliving the trauma with Dr. Haynes, live too far into it and died? Well, my opinion is that the last of those three is true. (Although, this conclusion is a little shot in the foot for me personally because I never discussed the death of Stefan’s mum with Dr. Haynes ever. Unless you try to make the conclusion that the entirety of my personal run through this game even from Stefan getting up at the very start of it was all in his reliving). Time to come clean about something I’ve been hinting through this post. Delusions. Almost all of the endings involve delusions. But, you’ll have to wait until the end of this chapter before I bring all of that together.

Ending Four-B: “Cut!” - having taken Stefan down the Netflix path and into a fight with Dr. Haynes, I told him to jump through the window. He runs to the window but it doesn’t open - and then we hear something shout CUT! The view pulls out to reveal that Stefan is in a studio, and that - in a very meta move - all of this is just a production being made (for TV, for film… for Netflix?) and that trying to jump out of the window isn’t in the script. Stefan is then addressed as Mike and it seems to be the case that he has fallen a little too much into character. The studio assistant, worried with his insistence that he is Stefan, rushes off to find a medic. And that’s the end of that.

Ending Four-B Analysis: Firstly, I put this with Ending Four because it’s down a similar path, and once again we become Stefan… sorry, Mike’s delusion. And this led me to an interesting thought about this universe where we’ve taken control of a delusional actor - is the alternative for taking the Netflix sign, which is having the fight with Dr. Haynes (as “scripted”) and being dragged off just a part of this universe’s production? In that instance, is the delusional then our own that this world is a reality when - surprise, surprise, it’s a Netflix production (and presumably, in that universe, also a Black Mirror episode)? Secondly, as an aside, the only option presented to me after this ending for a rewind was “Get Rabbit From Dad”…

Well, there you go, five “main” endings (and a bit) and an awful lot for me to explain…

Except… Ending Six. What I Believe Is The True “Main” Ending.

So we lead Stefan back to the sign, give him the Diverging Paths sign (or call it Whitebear, if thus inclined.), make him kill Dad, and make him chop up the body. Then, the Boss and Colin discuss the fact that Stefan is late with his work - Colin convinces him to leave Stefan be for another day. And what happens here on, well, happens. It’s worth noting the reluctance and pain Stefan has carrying out the order we gave him to chop up his Dad. But then, it’s contrasted by the lack of emotion he shows in Dr. Haynes’ office. Perhaps he’s taken that JFD documentary to heart about believing that if all paths occur, and there is no free will - then why care? Why feel guilt on behalf of what seems to be destiny? And honestly, I can’t blame Stefan… Because he doesn’t have free will here, we’re throwing decisions at him and he’s along for the ride. We made him kill his dad. We made him chop him up.

And herein lies our delusion. That in making these choices for him, we have a choice. Because we really don’t - we’re in a Bandersnatch of our own (if you’re a CYOA fan then you might’ve sensed this coming…) and honestly, we should’ve known from the start. We’re the ones that selected the option Black Mirror: Bandersnatch on Netflix and hit play, after all. Just as Stefan has pulled back from making an infinity of paths and left enough complexity to make it seem so. I mean, I’ll be blunt here even though I’ve yet to discuss it in depth in Chapter Two - technically, there is no way that any one human being is getting through every possible path/universe. To us, it may as well be infinite. And yet, it’s all just an illusion of free will.

Endings Two and Three all push us, the player, bluntly into going back into this warren of choices - to try again. Pushing us further on. Ending Four is more subtle, toying with us by giving us a tragic ending for Stefan so we feel inclined to go again and do better for him (and in my case, straight up offers up a path to Ending Five, and what seems a more hopeful ending until you get into it.) Ending One is even there if you decide to take the choice to not make any choices, to not interfere at all. Leaving the universe on course - but of course, this is our game and trap so it tells us not so subtly to try again as well.

And Ending Five leads us to ending with… A delusion. There’s the crux of the matter.

Ending One is our delusion that we can game the system by not getting involved.

Ending Two is Stefan’s (and our) delusion that if we play by the nicest choices and rules of life, it’s all going to turn out happily.

Ending Three is Stefan’s delusion (spurred on by the acid? by Colin’s way of thinking? by both?) that if infinite worlds are out there and free will is an illusion then what does it matter if he jumps?

Ending Four is where Stefan becomes delusional as a result of us and ends up locked up. We are the delusion. Four-B is where Stefan himself, as a person, is the delusion.

Ending Five is either the delusion of a man who relived his trauma too deeply or the delusion of us in thinking that when the paths were all clear and we had what seemed like a final end, that it would be happy. (Or none of the above, if you really want to go analysing this one differently.)

And Ending Six is our delusion. “And now, they’ve only got the illusion of free will but really, I decide the ending.”

In a few short seconds, we realise that we have been the Stefan of Charlie Brooker and co. - being led towards this ending that is out of our hands now. Despite all the paths and other endings you take, you’re likely to end up back here.

And as Stefan says about how he thinks Bandersnatch led to a happy ending, and we see him in his room, with his computer - and walls covered in paths; trying to make sense of the maze he’s playing… well, I think you can piece together the parallels between him and us.

And then we’re landed with the fact that he’s kept his dad’s head. And the 5/5 review we’ve been looking for all game finally comes, but then it turns out even that comes at a price. We’ve driven Stefan insane, certainly - and we’ve tainted the happiness of a moment we were striving for. And there’s a final delusion for us - the delusion that whatever choices were out there for us to make, we could get an ending where everyone lives, Stefan is happy, the game gets 5/5 and all is well. But we can’t. No matter what Stefan does, he can’t divert from the path we choose and no matter what we do, we can’t divert from the path Charlie Brooker chose.

Colin’s daughter takes up the mantle of her father, inspired by having found Stefan’s work, just as Stefan was inspired by having found Jerome F Davies’. (She even has Jerome’s book as well!) And one more time, we fall into the meta hole as it’s revealed that she’s creating her game for TVs and smart devices under Netflix. Her game is the Bandersnatch we’re playing.

As a parting shot, Charlie Brooker brings himself into the web the one we can without completely shattering what remains of the fourth wall. Pearl represents him, trapped in the same madness, trying to put this game together. We are given our final choice - and either way, it’s a moot choice. Both destroy Bandersnatch. Both cause the screen to cut out - did we just erase Bandersnatch? Does it matter, given that our choice or even abstaining meant nothing in the end?

And I suppose you have to feel sympathy for Charlie Brooker, because the pain Stefan felt and the pain we felt - he’s no stranger to it.

And we’re left with one question now that the game is gone: What about real life?