If you’re one of us who’s been desperately missing the eerie brilliance of Severance (the barren white hallways, the mind-bending doublespeak, and the existential horror of corporate life), Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 6 might just heal you…or at least crack you open again.
USS Callister: Into Infinity picks up where the beloved Black Mirror Season 4 episode left off, and it feels like someone at Netflix said, “What if we gave the Severance crowd exactly what they need, but darker?”
What happens is that after Robert Daly’s death, Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) leads the USS Callister crew as they fight for survival in the vast, brutalized world of the Infinity Game. Think raiding for credits, glitch-induced pain, and an escape plan so risky it’ll make your stomach turn. Meanwhile, in the real world, Walton (Jimmi Simpson) uncovers alarming secrets about Daly’s cloning practices, with the real Nanette initially by his side.
And yes, Nanette might have found a way out — but not without sacrificing either herself or her crew. If Severance cracked open the horror of late capitalism with creepy wellness parties and fake waffle rewards, USS Callister: Into Infinity shoves it in your face with guns, games, and moral no-win scenarios.
Just like we waited three years for Lumon’s secrets to spill, we waited three seasons for what would happen to the USS Callister. And it was worth it.
‘USS Callister: Into Infinity’ is Severance‘s evil twin, and we’re living for it
In Severance, the horror was hidden behind white walls and perky supervisors like Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman). In Black Mirror‘s USS Callister: Into Infinity, it’s straight-up war.
Nanette’s clone crew raids other players just to stay alive, glitches cause real pain inside the game, and Walton’s betrayals are as layered as Harmony Cobel’s fake smiles in Severance. Much like Lumon’s “severed” employees trapped by contracts they can’t even remember signing, the Callister crew is chained inside a universe created by a maniacal boss; except here, their very survival costs lives.
Cristin Milioti’s Nanette Cole is the perfect mirror to Adam Scott’s Mark Scout: each trapped in a nightmare bureaucracy, fighting to give meaning to lives written by someone else. And just like Mark ultimately chooses rebellion at Lumon, Cole risks everything to save her crew rather than escape into her own life.
If you loved the slow-burn dread and sudden gut punches of Severance, Black Mirror‘s Into Infinity is ready to break your heart all over again.
Black Mirror‘s version of “innie” versus “outie” morality
One of the most striking parallels between Severance and USS Callister: Into Infinity is how both shows frame choice—or rather, the illusion of choice. In Severance, Mark’s “innie” life is dictated by outside forces he can’t even name.
In this Black Mirror episode, Nanette faces a brutal choice from Daly’s clone: take the red disk and save herself (like an “outie” prioritizing real life, or an innie prioritizing what Mark did in the explosive Severance Season 2 finale) or risk it all for her team.
It’s no accident that creator Charlie Brooker layered the floppy disk colors like moral litmus tests: red for selfishness, blue for selflessness, green for compromise. Nanette’s final fight, her furious rejection of Daly’s clone proposal, feels like Helly Riggs smashing Lumon’s blue party balloons with her bare hands. Both women refuse to be playthings in worlds built to entrap them.
Ultimately, when Nanette wins, and the crew is uploaded into her real-world consciousness, it’s a bittersweet victory — not freedom, exactly, but something better than annihilation. And just like in Severance, freedom in Black Mirror comes at an immense, personal cost.
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