There’s A Secret Ending In Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Published on January 4, 2019

As if Netflix needed any more help staying relevant around the social media-sphere, the release of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch has caused a continuous stir around the internet for over a week now. If you haven’t yet seen the interactive movie by now, maybe stop reading about it and just give it a go for yourself. It’s a wild, frustrating experience that’s sure to make you question your own existence once or twice. Viewers have been confused, though, about whether or not the film is supposed to have any one particular ending that sets itself apart from the rest. So far, out of the five endings, there is one that raises even more questions. [Spoiler alerts ahead]

Inside The Film

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch tells the story of Stefan Butler (Fionn Whitehead), a young video game developer with an idea for a choose your own adventure game. Once Stefan gets the OK to produce the game for a company called Tuckersoft, he begins to question his own reality as he gets further along with the game’s production. Stefan eventually enlists the help of a colleague, the famous game developer Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), to give him some peace of mind and complete the game.

At least that’s one of the many ways that the story could go, depending on how you play it. The choose your own adventure game within the film gives viewers the freedom to create their own ending, but not every ending is created equal and many end in the gruesome death of some character within the story.

The average Bandersnatch user may give up after being spit back into the beginning or middle of the film after too many bad decisions. Viewers have concluded that there are, however, five actual endings to the story that do not result in being sent back to another point in the film. One of the endings comes after the other, though, in a secret post-credits scene that will send viewers down an entire new path if they can figure it out.

The Secret Ending

The post credits-scene shows Stefan back on the bus he took in the beginning of the story to pitch his game idea to Tuckersoft. Only this time, instead of being given a choice of which tape to listen to, viewers will see that Stefan loads his own, finished game into the tape player. Out comes an unpleasant set of noises (you can hear the recording on Soundcloud), which some viewers determined was actually the sound of data that could be put into a ZX Spectrum computer.

Once that data is fed into a ZX Spectrum emulator (they did it over at The Wire so that you don’t have to), a QR code pops up with the Bandersnatch icon inlaid within the picture. The QR code leads to a website for Tuckersoft Games, where users can download their own copy of Nohzdyve—the game that Colin created in Bandersnatch. You’ll need to enlist the help of a ZX Spectrum emulator in order to even operate the game, but by all means—be our guest.

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Julia Sachs is a former Managing Editor at Grit Daily. She covers technology, social media and disinformation. She is based in Utah and before the pandemic she liked to travel.

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