The ‘Black Mirror’ Season 5 Trailer Is Full Of Murder, Smartphones And Miley Cyrus

Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, a dystopian look at technophile societies that, guess what, are a lot like ours, has had a strange evolution.

Debuting on BBC with a sterling, distinctly low-budget first season, it’s now transformed into one of Netflix’s most surefire hits, a strange, increasingly metatextual behemoth that has the money and the hype to drop a massive (and largely disappointing) “Choose Your Own Adventure” episode.

But along the way, some have started to suspect the show might have gotten a little too bloated for its own good. Expanding from its original three-episode seasons to a massive six-episode run, Black Mirror became distinctly more hit and miss around its third season, with some episodes lagging in a way totally unlike Brooker’s usually laser sharp writing.

Well, looks like the forthcoming fifth season is going to herald a return to form — at the very least, it has returned to the original three episode season structure. That means less Black Mirror, of course, but it hopefully means much better quality Black Mirror.

Check out the trailer and then we’ll reconvene below.

Probably the first thing to mention is that yes, that’s Miley Cyrus. We’ve known about the pop star’s involvement for a while now — she was spotted in South Africa shooting her episode late last year. Looks like she’ll be playing an, uh, internationally beloved popstar, so Brooker definitely didn’t cast against type with that one.

In terms of the three distinct episodes, the trailer is very light on plot, but there are some things to glean: one of the episodes features an ego-massaging robot who absolutely won’t turn out to be a malignant influence, I’m sure; another features shots of Cyrus as both a glammed up pop deity and a distinctly more melancholy looking lost soul; and the third appears to follow Andrew Scott, AKA Moriarty from Sherlock, getting mad about smartphones.

So far, so Black Mirror!

All three episodes drop on June 5.