Finally, the long wait to make yourself super-depressed about the state of the world and where we’re all headed is almost over! Yes, soon you can again plunge into the dark melancholia of experiencing a near-future society in which our own technology has destroyed something fundamental about our humanity, because Black Mirror’s new season is debuting this month on Netflix. On October 21, six all-new episodes of the dystopian anthology series will be released, and as this trailer shows, the series has lost none of its penchant for taking the seemingly inevitable next steps of technological evolution and demonstrating how it will doom us all to an endless unhappy existence. From Bryce Dallas Howard’s “solid popularity arc” reflecting our new obsession with rating everything to what looks like some sort of immersive wargames experience, the show continues to explore the dark underbelly of progress—though the little adorable cartoon animal popping out of the table suggests it won’t all suck.
Better still, it looks like another season has already been greenlit. io9 reports that series producer Annabel Jones has confirmed the show will get more installments following the release of season three. Speaking at a screening event in London, Jones says, “Thankfully Netflix loved the show, stepped in and commissioned six films. So that allows us to play out on a bigger canvas, and take more risks, explore worlds without destabilizing the Black Mirror sensibility. It’s great. And we’ve got another season coming up too.” So fear not, fellow human addicted to stories of our own ruin,that will likely play out in real life several years from now, resulting in our becoming players upon the stage of the very narrative in which we all slowly fall—you’re good to go.