Charlie Brooker has dropped hints about Black Mirror's future to Digital Spy, revealing that sequels to old episodes are a very real possibility.
A new companion book to the series, Inside Black Mirror, has Brooker revealing ideas for possible follow-ups to previous stories, including 'Return to White Bear' – a sequel to the 2013 episode 'White Bear' starring Lenora Crichlow.
The original saw Crichlow's Victoria Skillane – revealed in the episode's climax as an accomplice to a child's murder – trapped in a never-ending punishment loop, with her memory wiped every day.
'Return to White Bear', though, would see Skillane start to become aware of the process.
"That was something we discussed at the time, as a potential expansion of the story," Brooker explained. "What if she becomes aware that this is going on, and starts rebelling against it?"
A follow-up to the popular 'San Junipero' is also feasible, though likely wouldn't bring back Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) and Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) – the lead characters from the original episode.
"I wouldn't necessarily want to revisit those characters, because we're very happy with where they ended up and their story," Brooker said. "But that's not to say that we couldn't revisit that world, if there was a compelling reason to do so."
San Junipero – which won rave reviews when it dropped on Netflix in October 2016 – established a world where the elderly can exist, even after death, in a simulated reality. "There's certain stories we've done that lend themselves to either continuing on with the characters or, more often it tends to be, you could do another story with that world as a backdrop," Brooker said.
The Emmy-winning writer is also keen to produce more "portmanteau" episodes – telling several linked mini-stories with a single film – in the vein of 2014's 'White Christmas' and 2017's 'Black Museum'.
"Sometimes, I've got an idea for a story and it's a hook... and it's like 15 minutes of story and I can't work out how to make that a bigger story," Brooker said. "'Black Museum', or 'White Christmas'... I like to think of them as medleys.
"It's like side two of Abbey Road. Not that I'm comparing us to the Beatles! But it's like when the Beatles had these fragments that didn't necessarily add up to a full song. You wouldn't want to inflate [an idea] beyond its lifespan, but if there's a way to link them together, they can become more than the sum of their parts.
"So if you look at an episode like 'Black Museum', that consists of three separate stories – they actually build on each other... so I've got quite a few ideas of that nature and I would like to, at some point, revisit the portmanteau format."
Production is now underway on a fifth season of Black Mirror, which is expected to launch on Netflix in 2019.
Inside Black Mirror is out on Thursday (1 November) from Ebury Press.
