‘Black Mirror’ Creator Explains Why There Are So Many ‘White Bear’ References in ‘Bandersnatch’

It was both a “happy accident” and “fate,” Charlie Brooker tells TheWrap

bandersnatch black mirror white bear
Netflix

(Warning: This post contains spoilers for “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” that you may be exposed to even if you’ve watched it, due to its different versions.)

Of the many, many references to previous “Black Mirror” installments to be found in the anthology series’ new interactive film “Bandersnatch” (and we do mean many), the episode that gets the biggest direct shoutout is the Season 2 offering “White Bear.”

As with almost everything involving “Bandersnatch,” we couldn’t figure out exactly why this is ourselves — so we asked “Black Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones to break it down for us. And apparently the answer is actually quite simple.

“Well, that was a happy accident, in that, in the early stages of discussing how we do this — when we were mapping it out in the very early stages — we were drawing a flowchart on the white board and I noticed the drawings to the path splitting into two separate things,” Brooker said. “So we thought, ‘Oh, my God! That’s the symbol of ‘White Bear’! So we gotta use that.’ And then we leaned heavily into that.”

“And then Stefan in the film had equally the same experience that Charlie had,” Jones added.

“Yeah, that was why that moment sort of came about,” Brooker said. “Because there is a moment where he sees it and goes, ‘Oh, my God.’ So that felt like fate.”

You can read more from our interview with Brooker (about how he doesn’t remember how to get to the secret ending) here, (about why there are scenes you can’t access) here, and (about how he was worried to tell Netflix how he was going to reference Netflix) here. And you can check out our chat with “Bandersnatch” stars Fionn Whitehead and Will Poulter here.

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