Spoilers! SO MANY SPOILERS!
Less than 24 hours after it was released on Netflix, and Black Mirror's latest episode
Bandersnatch is pretty much all anyone can talk about!
We go into detail in
our review why the episode/movie/event/game is groundbreaking, but one of the obvious talking points about it is the fact that you can go through the entire thing and come away with a completely different experience to everyone else.
If you've wandered pretty deep into Bandersnatch by now, then you've probably discovered the safe in your Dad's locked room, or the option to call your therapist, both of which require different inputs.
For the safe, if you type in JFD, then you'll see the ghost (maybe?) of the dead author of the book. PAX makes you see that terrifying demon. PAC makes you discover the monitoring program, the one Colin was chatting about while high. And TOY... we'll get to in a bit.
For the therapist phone number, if you do remember the number (20541), then you'll get through to her, but you'll only end up threatening her and being arrested. Although we're not fully convinced there isn't another option to be made that could lead us somewhere else entirely.
There are reportedly 'a trillion' different possibilities, but the number of confirmed endings is far more limited: Five.
There are some that we can only call "dead-end endings", like deciding to jump from Colin's balcony - which just kind of tells you to reset and pick the
other choice - but the following are the hard endings, the ones that feel like they could be a natural conclusion to poor Stefan's story.
PRISON - If you've found the secret monitoring system in your Dad's safe, or if you choose to kill him after the Pax symbol shows up on Stefan's screen, and then decide to bury him, his corpse will be found, you'll be sent to prison, and the game is released kind of unfinished, to poor reviews.
ACTION - If you go to therapist's office after telling Stefan that you're watching him on Netflix, then you'll end up in a fight scene with your therapist, and then another fight with your Dad, before being dragged out of the building, laughing maniacally.
CUT - Same as above, but in therapist's office, instead of choosing to fight her, choose to jump out the window. You'll hear someone yell "Cut!", and the camera will pull out to show Stefan on a film set.
DEATH - You need to have died via one of the above endings, and then given the option to go back and remake the choice at your Dad's safe. Reliving this moment gives you a new password to choose - TOY - and you'll be thrown back in time, now as 5-year-old Stefan. This time you'll find your rabbit under the bed, and if you choose to go with your Mum, you take the same train as her and die with her on it. Kind of. Because we cut back to Stefan in the middle of that very first therapy session, where he dies quite suddenly in his chair.
REPEAT - At the safe, choose PAX. You'll see the evil monster, then later, choose to kill your Dad, and choose to cut his body up. Bandersnatch is released and is a huge hit, but Stefan has repeated the decapitating madness of the original book's author, and his crimes are discovered and the game is pulled from the shelves. Years later, and Colin's now grown-up daughter Pearl is working on the interactive Netflix adaptation of Stefan's game (yes, the very show you're watching), and it begins to glitch in the same way Stefan's game did towards the end, and you're given one last decision to make.
Now, you might be wondering, instead of restarting the entire thing over and over again (Sugar Puffs or Frosties?!?!), is there an easier way to see all of the different endings?
Yep, and it involves you... doing nothing.
If you sit back and don't make any decisions, then Netflix will make the choices for you that will lead you down different branches, and every time it reaches one of the endings, it will automatically choose to go back and re-do one of the decisions that will take you down another branching path, and so on and so on until you see them all.
Now, you won't see every single alternative decision that there is to be made, but from what we understand, you will get to see all five of the endings this way.
That is of course assuming that Netflix and Charlie Brooker haven't pulled a fast one on us, and there isn't another secret ending hidden away in there somewhere...
