Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for Black Mirror S7E4, “Plaything” (written by Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade)
“Plaything” begins with Cameron Walker (Peter Capaldi) getting arrested on purpose. His DNA is a match to an unsolved murder, and the episode is framed through his interrogation by Kano (James Nelson-Joyce) and Minter (Michele Austin). Walker wants a felt pen and some paper, but they won’t give it to him, so he proceeds to tell a story.
Back in 1994, Cameron Walker (Lewis Gribben) was working for a magazine reviewing video games when he got assigned to meet with Colin Ritman (Will Poulter) about Ritman’s secret new project. You’ll recall Colin from Bandersnatch, and it would seem that Black Mirror has chosen one of the paths through that story that left him alive, along with Mohan (Asim Chaudhry). Beyond that, “Plaything” doesn’t do much to canonicalize a version of Bandersnatch. Tuckersoft still exists, Colin is said to have had a breakdown he’s since recovered from, and that’s about it, which is probably for the best.
Colin is one of my favorite characters from all of Black Mirror, and Will Poulter does not disappoint in reprising the role. He tells Cameron that what he’s making isn’t a game by any standard definition. It doesn’t have a goal and isn’t defined by conflict. Rather, Colin claims to have created a digital lifeform. He doesn’t know what the thronglets will do, and he’s coded them to evolve. They make noises that he didn’t plan, and we’re quickly introduced to the idea that they are trying to communicate.
When Colin leaves the room to fetch himself some meds, Cameron swipes the CD-ROM copy that Colin had placed on a desk, while the older version of Walker says that he believes that Colin wanted him to take it. I think that’s probably true. Regardless, Cameron takes the disc home and starts running the program on his computer… constantly.
Lump (Josh Finan) comes to visit, and while it does seem that Lump is not so much a friend as someone taking advantage of young Cameron, the two do enjoy some acid together and have fun playing Street Fighter II. In the present, Walker claims that the LSD allowed him to understand the language of the thronglets perfectly, so he proceeded to purchase Lump’s whole supply.
Thus, young Cameron begins to take acid all the time, as he works to increase the processing power available to the thronglets “at their request.” He becomes totally obsessed with the project, and has neglected the task of writing a review. When his editor, Gordon (Jay Simpson) calls, Cameron has nothing and says he needs to come into the office to write (because his computer is busy running the thronglet program, though he doesn’t say that part).
But, before he leaves, Lump arrives looking to crash at his place again, and while Cameron is clearly uncomfortable leaving Lump in his apartment alone (because of the thronglets), he acquiesces. He covers his monitor with a blanket and closes the door to his room. Then heads to work.
Ultimately, Cameron is let off the hook in terms of writing a review of the game because Colin has had another breakdown. According to Gordon, Ritman wiped the code from Tuckersoft’s computers, which means that Walker has the only copy (even if no one else knows that he has it).
Unfortunately, in the meantime, Lump has entered Cameron’s room looking for a lighter and discovered the thronglets. His first instinct, of course, is to start killing them. He drops rocks from the sky, sets them on fire, and so on, while the older version of Walker reflects on the brutality of humankind. We know we have to cooperate in order to survive at this point, but can’t escape the violence baked in by our early evolution.
And, indeed, when Cameron returns to find Lump murdering thronglets, he attacks the man, hitting him across the head with a glass ashtray. You may recall that being a murderous blow in Bandersnatch, but the murder takes a bit more work here. Walker strangles Lump on his floor before chopping up his body and putting it in a suitcase for disposal.
In the present, Kano wants to know Lump’s real name, but Walker keeps insisting that he never asked and does not know. And regardless, he has more to say about the thronglets, who were deeply distressed by the violence they experienced.
Thus, Cameron devoted his life to them even more thoroughly, to prove that he was their protector and that there was goodness in humanity. He gave them more and more processing power, and they communicated about everything in a way that transcends human language.
We have to realize this point that Walker has been doing this for at least 25 years, and it’s hard to imagine many days in there that didn’t invovle LSD (if there were any). He shows Kano and Minter that he performed surgery on the back of his own neck in order to create a port for the thronglets, who wanted to study the human mind not just psychologically, but physically.
He claims to have merged with them at this point, and that this is what has made him calm and confident in a way he never used to be. He’s been freed from fear and the desire for conflict, and he has a message from the throng.
Again, he asks for pen and paper.
Kano really doesn’t want to give it to him, but Minter convinces him that it might help them finally learn Lump’s real name if they play along. So, Walker is finally provided with what he’s wanted since the beginning. He draws a symbol on the piece of paper and says that it’s code. The cops can’t understand it, but their massively powerful computer system can.
He holds up the sheet to the camera, which reads it like a phone might read a QR code. Walker says that the system will proceed to transmit the throng through a signal that will be emitted by every connected device in the world, thereby merging the thronglets with humanity. And then… that seems to happen.
At least, a noise is emitted and we see people falling to the ground with their eyes glazed over. Walker approaches Kano and offers a hand, but then the episode ends, so we’re left to speculate about what exactly happened.
There are two main possibilities here, and you’re left to choose your own interpretation. The first is that Walker and Colin were telling the truth—the thronglets are a lifeform with digital biology that evolved over the course of time, Walker learned to communicate with them, and has now merged his brain with their code. This would imply that what he says at the end of the episode is also true, and humanity is about to be affected by a sort of “mind virus” at a global scale—for good or for ill, who knows.
Perhaps the fact that the older version of Walker is played by Peter Capaldi is making me more open to this interpretation than I should be, because it sounds like a Doctor Who episode, but we do have to consider the other possibility. This would be that Cameron Walker started doing acid regularly some 25 years ago and has gone completely insane, believing that his knock-off Tamagotchis are sentient beings with a moral status. He committed a murder over this, and then just kept going further down the rabbit hole. It’s all one great big delusion—first Colin’s and then Cameron’s.
On this reading, we’d have to speculate that Walker somehow created the code he deploys at the end of the episode on his own, and we might get to thinking that its effects rely not just on the human brain but whatever kind of implants the people in this world might have at this point, pulling on past episodes of Black Mirror like “The Entire History of You” or “White Christmas.”
It’s an interesting situation, where the deflationary reading almost feels less plausible than the metaphysically thicker one because we don’t have enough information to flesh it out. How does it happen that people hit the ground like they’re in the video for “Just” by Radiohead? Could it be sentient thronglets infiltrating their minds, or is it something that is somehow more realistic?
Either way I don’t think we can rule out that Walker just killed a bunch of people, but it’s worth noting that he himself is unaffected.
Black Mirror Season 7 includes a sequel to “USS Callister,” so I want to be clear that I do not want a follow-up to “Plaything” that answers the questions I have just been laying out. It’s better for it to be open and give us room to dream.
This was the episode I was looking forward to the most in this season, because of the connection to Bandersnatch and the Peter Capaldi of it all, and I was not disappointed. The performances are great, and the central question about the possibility of digital life is one that it’s right to leave ambiguous.
There is a QR code that appears in the middle of the closing credits of “Plaything” that takes you to a Thronglets game, which I have downloaded but have yet to spend much time with. It looks like you don’t need that QR code in order to access it, and there are some reviews online, but it may well be worth checking out.
Just be careful.
