Introduction

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My favorite episode of Black Mirror to date is season 3’s episode 2 - “Playtest.” With its many layers and its suggestion that the human mind largely shapes our reality, the episode reminded me a lot of movies like “Inception,” “Fight Club,” and even "The Matrix." Much like the ending of “Inception,” “Playtest” ends with a scene that leaves the viewer questioning whether it was all real or whether it was all within the mind.

This article offers my interpretation of the episode along with my thoughts on the ending. I attempt to deduce whether or not Cooper actually dies at the end. With that being said, this article contains SPOILERS (one of which has already been revealed) and assumes that the reader has viewed the episode in its entirety. I hope you enjoy.

Synopsis

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Throughout this synopsis you will notice that certain words and phrases are written in bold text. These are subtle details that I witnessed throughout the episode that reveal some of the meaning behind the story. For instance, bolded words and phrases represent experiences or memories that Cooper had outside the simulation that the gaming software eventually uses to frighten him in the game. They also highlight some of the reasons why I come to my overall conclusion about the ending. Feel free to skip to the end of the article if you only wish to read my conclusion on the ending.

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The scene opens with Cooper, sneaking out of his family home. He has a guilty look on his face revealing that he is harboring guilt for deciding to abandoning his mother in her time of need. His mother calls him on his cell phone as he drives away, which he declines to answer.

Cooper then gets on a plane and embarks on an incredible travel adventure. A video of a giant spider is being played on the airline, which presumably seeps into Coopers subconscious. Before their decent, Cooper is told by the stewardess to turn off his phone.

On his last stop of his adventure before heading home, Cooper meets up with a woman named Sonja in London England and he reveals to her that he is on this trip to get away from family troubles. His father, who was his best friend, had recently passed away from late stage Alzheimer’s disease. Not only did he lose his best friend and closest companion but he also has trouble connecting with his mother. He reveals that he doesn’t know how to talk to her.

Back at Sonja’s apartment he states that a scar on his shoulder is from high school, where a bully named Josh Peters stabbed him with a metal rod in shop class. On Sonja’s bookshelf he sees the DVD “Faceoff” and Sonja stabs a stick of butter after fixing him a slice of toast for breakfast.

Coopers mother calls him twice more and again he declines to answer it. In this scene we get the impression that he has neglected to answer his mother’s phone calls for the duration of his trip.

The next day Cooper learns that his bank funds have been stolen and that he is trapped in London for the next few weeks until things get sorted out with his bank. He uses a phone app called “Odd Jobs,” hoping to raise enough funds to buy a ticket home. He accepts a job with a major gaming company requesting him to test a cutting edge gaming application.

In the waiting room of the gaming facility he sees a poster for the game “Harlech Shadow” in which a screaming man is superimposed over a dark mansion with a light shining in a window. Here Cooper meets Katie, a company employee who escorts him passed a man wearing a shirt with a giant spider on it and a computer screen where he sees a game character wearing dark clothes and a hat.

Katie takes Coopers cell phone and turns it off before entering a brightly lit room. He is given a waiver form to read and sign. Katie exits the room to grab a missing page of the document and Cooper quickly jumps up from his seat, turn on his phone and takes a picture of the companies gaming equipment to send back to Sonja who has promised to give him money for pictures of the companies tech. Katie re-enters the room and implants a device into the base of Coopers skull. She calls it a “mushroom.”

Note: Use of the term “mushroom” may be a hint that Cooper is going to receive a hallucinogenic experience.

When Cooper asks Katie if she is qualified to do this procedure Katie states “I haven’t killed anyone yet,” which implies that this procedure has been done several times.

The clock on the wall reads 5:38pm.

The gaming device begins to sync but part way through the process Coopers phone rings – he forgot to shut it off after he took the pictures. It’s his mother calling. Katie quickly grabs the phone and turns it off. The software finishes syncing and the game begins – a highly realistic virtual game of “whack amole.”

CCTV footage of the room reveals that the time is 5:39pm. (Important!).

After the whack amole game concludes Katie extends an invite for Cooper to take the game even further for more money. He agrees and is taken to meet Shou the company’s founder and lead designer. The time is 6:16pm on the clock in Shou’s office. There is a large picture of a mushroom on the wall which again may be hinting that the gaming device is implanting a psychedelic chemical into Cooper’s brain. Here Shou tells Cooper that people enjoy being scared because they experience a sense of relief from facing death but not actually dying. This appears to be foreshadowing.

Cooper is told that the device operates on state of the art intelligence software that syncs to his neural network and adapts to his brain activity in order to scare him. He will be playing a real life simulation in which the software utilizes his own mind to adjust his experience in order to scare him.

Cooper is hooked up to the device once more and he enters into the simulation. This time he finds himself in the Harlech Shadows mansion. He is given an ear piece in which he is able to communicate with Katie. He is told that nothing in the simulation can hurt him and that he can stop the simulation at any time by saying “STOP.”

First Fright

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While sitting in a chair drinking non-alcoholic wine Cooper sees a large spider scurrying across the floor towards him. CCTV footage shows that there actually is no spider and that it is only Cooper who can see it. After several attempts, Cooper finally manages to stomp on the eight legged creature. However, when lifting his foot to inspect the damage he realizes that the spider was only in his imagination.

The game appears to be accessing memories of the spiders that he has been seeing throughout the episode – i.e. on the employee’s shirt and on the airline video.

Second Fright

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The lights flicker. He looks at a painting on the wall that is of the mansion that he is currently in. A light is on in one of the windows and a man appears looking out. The painting is the same as the poster that he viewed in the company’s waiting room. Cooper hears loud footsteps coming from upstairs and when he turns back to the painting, the window is dark once again. At the stairs he turns quickly to find a man standing behind him in dark clothes and a hat. Startled, Cooper realizes that the man’s face is that of Josh Peters - his high school bully. Peters wears clothes that are the same as the image he saw previously on the computer screen. This scene reveals that Coopers recent past is influencing his experience and that the gaming device is mining his past memories. It also suggests that the simulation may utilize a combination of programming along with the hosts memories. Perhaps everyone who enters the game experiences the spiders and the painting and the man in dark clothing? Maybe the host only creates the persons facial features?

Next Cooper is startled in the kitchen by a giant spider coming out of the cupboards. It has Peters face incorporated in it and its mouth is full of dicks. It’s a gruesome Peters/spider mash-up.

Third Fright

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Coopers ear piece cuts out and he can no longer talk to Katie. There is a loud knock at the door. It’s Sonja. She barges in and warns him that he is in danger. Cooper doesn’t believe her, thinking her to be a part of the simulation. He touches her face which reveals that she is in fact real. Confused, Cooper tries to rationalize what’s going on while Sonja persistently feeds his paranoia, saying that he is in danger and that it’s all a set up by the gaming company. The scene ramps up quickly and Sonja grabs a knife and stabs Cooper in the shoulder right where the scar from Peters currently resides. He feels massive amounts of pain as Sonja continues to attack him. He yells “STOP! STOP! STOP!” to no avail. He grabs Sonja’s hair and pulls, eventually removing her entire face.

Eventually Cooper kills Sonja and everything returns back to normal. His ear piece comes back online.

Note: Sonja’s face being removed appears to have come from Cooper subtly noticing the “Faceoff” DVD in Sonja’s apartment.

Fourth Fright

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The fourth fright consist of paranoia, manipulation and loss of control as Katie now feeds Cooper lies through the ear piece. The game is adapting to Coopers states and the doubt that the Sonja simulation implanted in him. The simulation is burrowing deeper into Coopers subconscious. It is no longer looking for the jolting fears that worked previously. Instead it searches for Coopers inner most fears. Ultimately, Cooper fears becoming his father and losing his memories and his identity. The simulation of Katie taunts him despite the fact that he has now removed his ear piece. Katie repeats over and over that he should have called his mom as Cooper begins to forget who he is. Right before Cooper is about to cut the mushroom from his neck with a shard of glass, Katie and Shou burst into the mansion to stop him. Cooper lays on the floor mumbling that he doesn’t know who he is or what’s happening to him.

Note: Interestingly, psilocybin (magic mushrooms) actually have this effect when taken in high doses. The mind temporarily (until the substance is metabolized) goes blank which makes it impossible to think about who you are as a person. Psilopybin experiences are a sort of loss of identity – a loss of ego which can be a very scary for some people. Perhaps the writer of the episode is hinting at their own personal experience with mushrooms? This would explain all of the mushroom imagery.

Layers of Reality

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Still in the mansion, Cooper is now screaming as he is being dragged away by unknown employees in white laboratory suits. In the outside world Katie quickly disconnects Cooper from the game and he finds himself back in Shou’s office. Katie states that he had only been under for 1 second and that the simulation is much too powerful. It is dangerous. Cooper boards a plane and goes back home to see his mother.

However, it is quickly revealed that this is just another layer of reality. The following scene reveals that the software has the ability to layer multiple realities on top of each other just as Katie mentioned in the white room before the whack amole game. This scene ultimately leaves the viewer questions whether things are real of whether they were part of the simulation all along. Cooper enters his mother’s room and finds her crying.

“I need to call him. Where did he go?”

“Mom I’m right here.”

“I have to call him.”“I have to call him.”“I have to call him.”

“Mom! Mom! Mom!”

The scene cuts back to the white room where Cooper first put on the device. Its 5:38pm on the clock and his phone is ringing with the call from his mom once again. Katie quickly removes the gaming head piece as Coopers eyes roll back into his skull and blood drips from his ears. His head convulses several times and then he is still. Unknown employees put Cooper into a white body bag insinuating that he has died.

After a brief casual discussion between Katie and Shou, Katie notes that the elapsed time of the simulation was 4 seconds and that a systems crash occurred because of phone interference. She notes in her observations that Cooper “called mom.”

Conclusion: It’s all a Part of the Game

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My overall conclusion is that Cooper does not die in the end and that the final scene is just another layer of the simulation. I believe this for several reasons. For starters, most of what happens to Cooper in the simulation is directly related to experiences that he had prior to entering the simulation. He experiences several frights relating to spiders which I believe seeped into his subconscious mind (i.e. the plane and the employee spider t-shirt). We also saw this with the mansion painting and when Josh Peters appeared wearing dark clothing like the gaming character that Cooper saw on the computer screen in the company office space. From this we can conclude that the gaming software is using his actual memories to generate images that will scare him in the game. Since Cooper had been told twice to turn off his phone (once on the plane and once by Katie) and since he was harboring guilt for not answering his mother’s phone calls, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the software had accessed those memories to create the final blow that would cause his death in the game.

Other reasons why I believe Cooper is still alive and that the death is a part of the game are as follows:

1. Katie turns off Coopers phone at 5:38pm before the device fully syncs. If he dies during the syncing process why does he experience the full effects of the gaming simulation? The game working to its full capacity before it is fully synced seems unlikely to me – you can’t play a computer game before its finishes loading.

2. The clock on the wall reads 5:38pm when the game starts and Cooper supposedly dies after only 4 seconds. However, CCTV footage during the whack amole game reveals a time of 5:39pm. I have a hard time believing that in a hallucinogenic or dreamlike state that anyone would imagine watching themselves through a close circuit video camera. That seems unrealistic to me. It is more likely that since this is a laboratory test, Cooper’s is actually being recorded by the company.

3. The conversation between Katie and Shou after Cooper dies is too casual. The two employees show little concern or remorse that an innocent man has just died. They discuss Coopers death as if they were discussing a clerical error or a minor production mistake. Overall, this seems unrealistic to be a true reality. It falls more in line with our fears that corporations do not care about humanity and that people are mere tools and pawns meant to act as lab rats or a means of obtaining profit. It makes more sense that this would be a part of Coopers fears within the simulation.

4. Shou explains to Cooper that people like being scared because they face their death but do not actually die which gives them a sense of relief and release. This seems to be foreshadowing and suggests that Cooper will die but that he will ultimately wake up with the realization that it was all just a game.

The End

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Thanks for reading. What are your thoughts on the episode? Did you come to a similar conclusion or do you believe that Cooper did in fact die in the end?

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Images from Black Mirror Episode "Playtest"