Prime Minister Callow from the infamous pig episode of Black Mirror season 1 is now negotiating Brexit, Charlie Brooker’s twisted anthology series has revealed. In terms of pushing boundaries into uncomfortable territory and shining a light on the grimmest parts of the human condition, Black Mirror set out its stall quite clearly from day one. Before finding a home on Netflix, Black Mirror premiered on the U.K.’s Channel 4 network with “The National Anthem,” in which an artist kidnaps a princess of the Royal Family and threatens to kill her unless the British Prime Minister has sex with a pig on live TV. Prime Minister Callow goes through with the act, but the episode’s sickest twist reveals that the Princess had already been released before the bacon-bothering took place - and people would’ve noticed if they hadn’t been too busy watching the Prime Minister’s latest sexual conquest on TV.
Since “The National Anthem” aired in late 2011, the landscape of British politics has changed considerably, and is currently dominated by the ongoing issue of Brexit. Fueled by highly controversial ring-wing politician, Nigel Farage, the U.K. held a referendum in 2016 on whether to leave the European Union and the country voted in favor of this proposal by a 2% margin. In the 3 years since, it has transpired that many of the promises made by Farage and his ilk were based on untruths, and evidence continues to suggest that leaving the EU will do more harm than good to the U.K., causing the issue to become an aggressively divisive topic. While the U.K. government, led by Theresa May, sought to deliver on the referendum’s result, exit negotiations with the E.U. in Brussels have thrown up countless problems and various politicians in charge of handling the process have resigned.
The second episode of Black Mirror season 5, “Smithereens,” deals with the impact of social media and centers upon the Smithereen company. Around the 23-minute mark, during a scene at the company’s headquarters, a social media feed is shown, with one item reading “Prime Minister Callow to Meet with EU Negotiators In Brussels.”
This is a clear nod to the tragic protagonist from Black Mirror’s very first episode, and gives fans an insight into the character’s fate. At the end of “The National Anthem,” viewers saw that, although Callow’s marriage fell apart, his political career didn’t suffer as a result of the pig incident and if the man is still Prime Minister in Black Mirror’s latest season, Callow must have won another election, suggesting his popularity continued to grow. Evidently, the U.K. felt that their Prime Minister conducted a great public service when he had sex with a pig.
The reference is also another example of Black Mirror’s anthology stories being somewhat interconnected. Like the Pixar movies, there are numerous compelling theories online suggesting that every Black Mirror episode is connected and although creator, Charlie Brooker, has claimed that the series takes place more within the same “psychological” shared Black Mirror universe than the actual same physical world, he has also confirmed several explicit links between some stories. For example, Abi from season 1’s “Fifteen Million Merits” can be seen on a billboard in a season 2 episode. Additionally, a brief shot of a news story in “The Waldo Moment” revealed that Prime Minister Callow and his wife had, unsurprisingly, decided to divorce.
Often in Black Mirror, it feels like characters are being punished for making certain decisions - a theme that was made even more explicit in Bandersnatch. If there’s one thing both the Leave and Remain sides of the Brexit debate agree on, it’s that the negotiation process between the U.K. and the E.U. has had a disastrous effect on British politics, and Theresa May recently announced her own resignation as a result of this. As such, it feels like Brooker is adding insult to injury for poor Prime Minister Callow with this latest development. As if having sex with a pig on live TV wasn’t bad enough, now he has to go and negotiate a Brexit deal that many believe simply isn’t achievable.
More: How ‘Striking Vipers’ Fits Into The Black Mirror Shared Universe
Black Mirror season 5 is currently streaming on Netflix.
