Black Mirror Season 7 Coming to Netflix With Confirmed USS Callister Spinoff Episode

Netflix officially renewed the anthology series Black Mirror last year, but today saw the confirmation that the upcoming batch of episodes will include a continuation of the fan-favorite episode "USS Callister." No official information on how the new season will continue the trajectory of that installment was released, but given that the series explores all-new worlds with each episode means fans will be excited to get an official continuation of a previous story, especially one so highly regarded. While the new season wasn't given an official release date, it is expected to hit the streamer sometime in 2025.

In a teaser shared at the Next on Netflix event, per The Hollywood Reporter, it was revealed, "USS Callister will return... Robert Daly is dead, but for the crew of the USS Callister, their problems are just beginning."

In the episode, Daly (Jesse Plemons) is a game programmer who resents his colleagues after having helped develop a massively popular MMORPG, taking out his frustrations in an adventure akin to Star Trek. The twist of the episode is that Daly has taken DNA from his colleagues to craft the personas of his crew within the game, in which they start to gain sentience, though this doesn't stop Daly from abusing them in a variety of creepy ways.

"USS Callister" also stars Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson, Michaela Coel, and Billy Magnussen.

The first two seasons of the series aired on Channel 4 in the UK, with Netflix then acquiring the rights to the series beginning with Season 3. While those first two seasons starred a number of popular actors, including Hayley Atwell, Domhnall Gleeson, Daniel Kaluuya, and Jodie Whittaker, its pivot to Netflix opened the door for even more major stars to take part in the program. Since arriving on Netflix, the series has enlisted the talents of Jon Hamm, Bryce Dallas Howard, Wyatt Russell, Benedict Wong, Andrea Riseborough, Letitia Wright, Anthony Mackie, and Miley Cyrus.

Delivering a follow-up episode is seemingly one way that series creator Charlie Brooker wants to break expectations, having previously expressed the ways he aimed to surprise audiences with last year's Season 6.

"With this series, I wanted to throw out some of the core assumptions of what a Black Mirror episode is," Brooker shared in a press release about Season 6. "When we started doing the show, there weren't many dystopian sci-fi shows around. These days, you can't hurl a smartphone across a room without hitting three dystopian sci-fi shows. With Season 6, there has been a conscious effort to rip up the rule book, keep it unpredictable for viewers, and maybe expand its remit. In some ways, this season starts very traditional Black Mirror and gets weirder as the series goes along. There are episodes this season that I am intrigued to see how the audience reacts to, because we have done things that we have never done before."

Stay tuned for updates on Season 7 of Black Mirror.

Are you looking forward to returning to USS Callister? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!