Black Mirror Season 7 blasts back into the world of “USS Callister” with its first-ever sequel episode, “USS Callister: Into Infinity.”
The original “USS Callister,” which opened Black Mirror Season 4, introduced Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons), the sadistic creator of the immersive space-set game Infinity. Robert created his own personal Infinity universe themed after the TV show Space Fleet (aka Black Mirror‘s take on Star Trek). He then populated said universe with in-game clones of his coworkers, whom he tortured and mutilated at will.
Unlike most Black Mirror episodes, “USS Callister” has a pretty happy ending. Robert’s coworkers, led by programmer Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti), manage to escape into the wider game of Infinity, leaving Robert to die in his own deleted universe. (Which means he dies in the real world as well.)
Yet as “USS Callister: Into Infinity” reveals, life out in Infinity isn’t a walk in the park. Infinity has 30 million players, all looking for Star Wars-style space battles and some good old-fashioned shoot-’em-up gaming. But while Infinity‘s players can always respawn if they die, the crew of the USS Callister can’t. For them, this is it — and they need to find a way out.
By the end of the episode, they do! Kind of. Let’s break down the crew’s plan, their final fate, and how multiple characters returned from the dead to help them out.
What is the Heart of Infinity?
Billy Magnussen, Osy Ikhile, Cristin Milioti, Milanka Brooks, and Paul G. Raymond in “Black Mirror.”
Credit: Nick Wall / Netflix
After months of scavenging and robbing Infinity players to survive, Nanette and the rest of the USS Callister crew — Nate (Osy Ikhile), Elena (Milanka Brooks), Kabir (Paul G. Raymond), and Karl (Billy Magnussen) — decide they need to change tactics. If they can somehow create their own personal universe, just like Robert did, they can seal themselves off from Infinity and have a free existence out in space.
To create that universe, they’d have to access the source code, represented by an awe-inspiring spinning structure known as the Heart of Infinity. There’s just one problem: Only two people can access the Heart of Infinity. Robert Daly, who’s dead in both the real world and the game, and James Walton (Jimmi Simpson), whose real self is alive, but whose game self burnt up while fixing the USS Callister’s thrusters during the escape from Robert. Or did he?
James Walton is still alive in “USS Callister: Into Infinity.”
Jimmi Simpson and Cristin Milioti in “Black Mirror.”
Credit: Nick Wall / Netflix
Karl reveals that Walton has a room on the USS Callister, which should be impossible. When the ship reset after leaving Robert’s universe, it spawned rooms for every living player. Walton was nothing but a space crisp by the end of “USS Callister,” so how could he get a room?
Nanette and Kabir reason that if any of Walton’s disintegrated little bits made it through the wormhole with the ship, that would be enough to make him respawn as a new player in Infinity. New players don’t spawn onboard the ship, though: They respawn on a new planet.
The crew tracks Walton’s planet down, but they aren’t the only ones looking for him. In the real world, reports of rogue Infinity players without player tags have created concern within the Infinity offices. Walton, in particular, is feeling the pressure, especially when a reporter from the New York Times reveals that an illegal DNA digital cloner was found on Robert’s personal desk. If clones are in Infinity, then the whole company is implicated in a major crime.
Realizing the rogues are none other than their clones, Nanette and Walton jump into Infinity and meet up with their in-game selves. That’s right, we’re getting a clone face-off!
While real-world Nanette wants to help free the clones by getting them into the Heart of Infinity, real-world Walton opts for a more murderous form of cover-up. He kills Karl and tries to kill the rest of the crew. No clones means no evidence, right?
Murder is already bad enough, but there’s a more sinister edge to Walton’s actions. He doesn’t even think he’s doing anything wrong, because he doesn’t see the in-game clones as humans, despite their full sentience. (To be fair, real-world Walton barely sees anyone as a human. He treats poor Nate like he’s a human coffee machine!)
Once again, Black Mirror is raising questions around digital consciousness, but “USS Callister” doesn’t dwell on that philosophical conundrum too much. Instead, it throws major new plot twists at us. First, real-world Nanette gets hit by a car while fleeing Walton, sending her to St. Juniper Hospital (Easter egg alert!) and setting Walton up to exterminate the clones.
Meanwhile, in-game Walton reveals why his real-world counterpart is so against the crew reaching the Heart of Infinity. It’s not because he doesn’t want them to escape into their own private universe. It’s because a digital clone of Robert is in the Heart of Infinity, building the game.
Mashable Top Stories
“USS Callister” brings Robert Daly back as a digital clone.
Walton recounts the early stages of Infinity‘s development to the rest of the USS Callister crew. He wanted to expand the game’s universe faster than Robert could work. “There’s only one of me,” Robert tells him.
But what if there wasn’t?
Turns out Walton was one of the earlier investors in the DNA digital cloner that Robert was using. The machine originally came from the porn industry, meant to be a way to create a sentient, virtual sexual partner. Thankfully considered a human rights violation, the technology was outlawed before it went to production. But Walton kept a copy and used it to clone Robert into the game so he could work on it nonstop from within.
That’s what’s in the Heart of Infinity: not the game’s source code, but a clone of Robert with godlike powers.
Nanette enters the Heart of Infinity in order to ask Robert to send her and the crew to a universe of their own. At first glance, this Robert is a far cry from the vicious, vengeful man we came to know in “USS Callister.” He’s reserved, especially after eons without human contact, but willing to help Nanette after she tells him what the original Robert did.
“I’m so disappointed in myself,” he tells her after listening to Nanette’s story. “What you described does not sound like me. I’m a nice guy.”
With those last four words — a hallmark of a toxic man who believes women owe him something for his niceness — the alarm bells start blaring. Robert works on setting up the separate universe for the clones, but it’s clear something is off.
For Nanette, the trauma of her time under Robert’s command lingers. She hastily appeases Robert’s clone after revealing she hasn’t watched Space Fleet, then listens to him compare her situation to several of the show’s episodes with a forced smile plastered on her face. This version of Robert might not understand the skewed power dynamic that comes with his control over the game, but Nanette certainly does.
Robert’s clone succumbs to Robert’s old ways.
Outside the Heart of Infinity, real-world Walton manages to send an in-game party invitation to anyone the USS Callister crew has ever robbed. As that battle rages overhead, Nanette continues her tense visit with Robert.
He offers her a choice. Following the car accident, her body in the outside world is braindead and hooked up to a cerebral monitor. Robert could send her consciousness through that, granting her her body and life back. That would wipe out the USS Callister and everyone on it, though. Should she save herself, or save the crew?
Nanette chooses the crew, at which point Robert reveals it was all a test, just like in the Space Fleet episode “Quandary at Outpost 5.” He can actually create the pocket universe and send Nanette back to her body.
“You said you couldn’t do that,” Nanette says.
“I know,” he replies. “I had to pretend I couldn’t so we could role-play the whole Space Fleet thing.”
And there it is: Nanette may just be in Robert’s garage, and she may not be wearing a Space Fleet uniform, but she is once again trapped, forced to play out his Space Fleet fantasy.
The situation only worsens from there, when Robert says he’ll be copying the crew into the new universe instead of cutting them from Infinity entirely. That means the Infinity set of the clones is doomed to be hunted and killed — all except for Nanette. Robert intends to keep her copy for himself. He says he won’t hurt her, but Nanette — and anyone who watched “USS Callister” — knows that isn’t true. In fact, Robert goes right ahead and proves it when he removes Nanette’s mouth in an effort to get her to be quiet, a chilling parallel to her first punishment at Robert’s hands in the original episode. Clone Robert doesn’t seem to understand the full scope of his powers, but that doesn’t stop him from harming Nanette, either.
This time, though, Nanette gets the upper hand, killing Robert’s clone with the Bargradian cutlass he’d shown off earlier in the episode. But with Robert’s clone gone, Infinity stops working and begins to delete itself permanently.
What happens to the USS Callister crew after Infinity is deleted?
Osy Ikhile in “Black Mirror.”
Credit: Nick Wall / Netflix
Nanette manages to find the hard drive Robert told her would save everyone and insert it into his “retro shit” computer. Just in time, too: Infinity, even all its backups, deletes itself permanently.
Nanette wakes up in the hospital, but she’s not alone. Without any Infinity, the USS Callister crew hasn’t been transported to a separate universe. Instead, they’re in Nanette’s head, able to see through her eyes (the set-up is very reminiscent of the Inside Out control room) and talk to her through her phone.
“USS Callister: Into Infinity” flashes forward a couple of months. Walton has been arrested, and Nanette and the rest of the surviving crew have worked out a system: They close their eyes when she changes, goes to the bathroom, or hooks up with anyone. In return, she lets them watch The Real Housewives of Atlanta through her eyes. Oh, and she’s apparently working on ways to extract them from her head, although it doesn’t seem like she’s working too hard on it.
So there you have it. The crew of the USS Callister finally manage to escape Infinity, only to find themselves in a strange new living situation. Like with “USS Callister,” the ending of “USS Callister: Into Infinity” is among Black Mirror‘s lightest. Being trapped in someone’s brain — or having four roommates living in your brain — seems like it could become a nightmare, fast. But that’s a story for another sequel episode.
Black Mirror Season 7 is now streaming on Netflix.
