Black Mirror Season 7: USS Callister: Into Infinity Ending Explained, Cameos and Easter Eggs

The crew of the USS Callister is back (except Shania)! Serving as Black Mirror’s first-ever direct sequel, we get to see the fallout from that beloved episode and see where our crew and real-life counterparts end up. Strap in, we’ll dive into the ending of USS Callister: Into Infinity and look at some of the easter eggs and cameos.

As you may have read over recent days, the team behind the show and Netflix debated how USS Callister would return. When we first learned about a sequel being in the works all the way back in 2021, we heard it would be a three-episode limited series (something now confirmed by Deadline), but ultimately, the team settled on a feature-length episode, and it worked out quite well. 

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USS Callister: Into Infinity Ending Explained

Picking up from where USS Callister left off, the crew now in the infinite world are struggling against the economics of the game alongside the prospect of potentially dying from 30 million players all hunting each other down. Things look desperate, and their exploits of robbing players haven’t gone unnoticed. 

Meanwhile, in the real world, Nanette is racked with guilt over the death of Robert Daly, in which she played a pivotal role. To make matters worse, a New York Times journalist is booked in to see Walton and goes in a bit of a different direction than the CEO hopes with his line of questioning. 

The story progresses with Walton employing the help of real-life Nanette to track down the rogue no_tag players who have been robbing players and causing a stir on forums. Things progress from there, with the real-life and video game clones eventually meeting, and CEO Walton, burdened by the fact that his company could be shut down if it’s brought to light that he’s been using an illegal clone, does whatever he can to stop the truth from getting out. 

Video game Walton provides some backstory about how Infinity came to be, which leads us to realize that Robert Daly is back for this episode (Charlie Brooker said he wasn’t returning – garrgh!) and plays quite a pivotal role. We see him in a flashback to when the game (or experience as Bob then called it) was in development early on. Fast forward, and the game is still not ready for launch, where one of Walton’s failed businesses comes into play. He invested in a company that allowed you to clone DNA, to which Robert agrees to put himself at the center of the universe and spend his life building out Infinity. 

Robert Daly then presents Nanette with a branching choice (the branching symbol goes here, first introduced in White Bear!): either go back to her old body, now in a deep coma in the San Juniper hospital, at the expense of her entire crew (this was the green floppy disk) or rescue the crew and spend the rest of their existence in a secure server where the game’s economy does not burden them or the chance of getting killed (the red floppy disk). 

Nanette chooses the noble option and picks her crew, but Daly reveals it was just a test and that you could get the best of both worlds (well, not really). He gives her another option (a blue floppy disk): save everyone. The devil is in the details, though, with Nanette noticing that Robert used the phrase “copy and paste” rather than “cut and paste”. The option would’ve meant that another version of Nanette would’ve stayed there with Robert and eventually/immediately get subjected to his psychotic behavior exhibited in the first episode. That’s not an option. 

That leads to another confrontation with Nanette losing the ability to speak again (Hello, Mr. Anderson Matrix interrogation scene again!), leading to a showdown which sees his prized Bargradian Cutlass lodged in his jugular. 

Now dead (again), Robert’s demise triggers a kill switch on the entire game, and the heart of the game begins to collapse. In the heat of the moment, all of the floppy disks Daly created are scattered along the floor, and Nanette has to pick one that allows her to save her crew. She initially panics, and what looks like the blue one actually sees her waking up in the hospital bed with one big problem – the crew has been transported out with her and are now in her subconscious, and sees what she sees. 

Was this the best ending possible? Perhaps. Had they been transported to the other safe universe, they may not have lasted long. Daly’s kill switch ultimately led to the deletion of all game versions and backups (fatal content error 606), and that would’ve almost certainly extended to the private versions of the game, too. 

Of course, Nanette now feels the burden of having her crew in her head, although, like with the Black Museum episode and the teddy, she doesn’t necessarily have to listen to them. Her only connection with the crew is through her mobile phone, which she almost hangs up on while brushing the popcorn off her notes on how she plans to extract them. Will she give up on that mission and get sick of watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta? This crew doesn’t even have the ability to say “Monkey needs a hug!”. 

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Other burning questions for USS Callister: Into Infinity…

Why is Elena Tulaska blue again?

One question you might have is why Elena, who regained her human skin color when transported through the wormhole at the end of USS Callister, is back in blue for most of USS Callister: Into Infinity. It’s not covered in depth, but Dudani explains why: “We had to revert to her alien skin to cure her eczema.” The team, struggling for credits, said they couldn’t afford to return her to her natural skin from the game’s exploitative shop. She doesn’t seem to mind, though, saying she’s “foxy.”

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Wait, was that Nida and Gaap in Infinity!?

Yes, your eyes didn’t deceive you. Nida and Gaap, from last season’s Demon 79 episode and part of the Red Mirror label, were amongst the players at the end hunting down our heroes. What were they doing in Infinity!? Why is Nida in the devil outfit, given that it’s actually Gaap who is the devil? Let the speculation commence! Of course, this makes Anjana Vasan one of the most frequent players in Black Mirror, having now appeared in 3 episodes in total, with the other being Nosedive, in which she played a Space Cop. 

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Who gave the New York Times’ journalist the tip?

Another burning question is who tipped off the New York Times’ journalist on the DNA replicator box Daly used to clone his work colleagues? That’s never really discussed. Nanette is the obvious answer, given that she was invested in the line of questioning taken, but she seemed as surprised as Walton was.  

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Other Easter Eggs

• When Nanette and Nate are closing in on Pixie’s ship, she is wearing headphones and listening to Ashley O – On a Roll which comes from the season 5 episode “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too,” starring Miley Cyrus. She can be seen *still* listening to it much later in the episode on her computer. 
• The hospital in which Nanette is stuck in a coma has been frequently referenced for some time now. San Junipero was named after Saint Juniper’s Hospital, where TCKR’s lab is located. It’s also the hospital featured (or at least the ward) in the Black Museum episode. 
• There were a bunch of nods and references to pop culture throughout, not least Star Trek, Star Wars, and even a little Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy nod this episode too, with a reference to Infinity Improbability Drive (Heart of Gold).
• Walton grabs a copy of the Space Fleet magazine in the episode, which features many cameos. You’ve got the Waldo bear seen in season 1 and the Metalhead dog equipped with a knife in the bottom right corner. 
• Popular YouTubers DanTDM and TommyInnit were among the players who joined the hunt for the USS Callister.

• On the news report at the end with James Walton being arrested, there are a number of different tickers including:
  • Mysterious Talisman Found in Plane Wreckage
  • Hotel Reverie Reboot Hits Streamberry 
  • Thronglets 2 Launches to Critical Acclaim (Netflix just released the first cursed iteration of Thronglets to Google Play and iOS)
  • Rivermind CTO Steps Down …

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Director: Toby Haynes
Writers: Charlie Brooker, Bisha K. Ali, William Bridges, and Bekka Bowling
Starring: Cristin Milioti (Nanette Cole), Jimmi Simpson (James Walton), Billy Magnussen (Karl Plowman), Osy Ikhile (Nate Packer), Milanka Brooks (Elena Tulaska), Paul G. Raymond (Kabir Dudani)

Did we miss any major easter eggs, or do you have a different interpretation of the ending of USS Callister: Into Infinity? Let us know in the comments.