Black Mirror's USS Callister: Into Infinity ending explained – Did the crew survive?

The new episode, which is once again directed by Toby Haynes and written by series creator Charlie Brooker, picks up soon after the end of season 4's USS Callister, revealing where the crew got to after they managed to defeat Robert Daly.

When we last saw them, the crew were headed into the main Infinity game, away from Daly's private server – but how did they fare now they were facing off with actual players, and how did things turn out for them at the end of this episode?

"I was so, so sickly into that ending," cast member Cristin Milioti, who starred in the original instalment, recently told RadioTimes.com of the new episode's finale, adding that "it just felt so cool".

With that in mind, read on for everything you need to know about the ending of Black Mirror season 7 episode 6, USS Callister: Into Infinity.

Black Mirror's USS Callister: Into Infinity twist ending explained – How did Infinity Walton survive?

One of the first big surprises in USS Callister: Into Infinity was the reveal that the Infinity version of Walton had in fact survived his fiery death at the end of the previous instalment.

The crew worked this out because Walton had a room on the reset ship - something which would only be possible if he had somehow survived the transition through the wormhole.

Nanette deduced that if even one atom of Walton had got carried through the wormhole in the Callister's strip-stream, he would respawn in the new, updated version of Infinity.

When players restart the game, they typically do so on a whole new planet, which the crew were quickly able to find given the time at which they went through the wormhole, and when a new planet appeared.

Travelling there, Nanette found Walton delirious and alone, having spent a long time waiting for them to come and get him. However, their reunion was soon interrupted by the arrival of real-world Nanette and Walton.

What did real-world Walton do and what happened to real-world Nanette?

Real-world Nanette and Walton arrived in Infinity, hoping to uncover the truth surrounding reports of players without player tags. Nanette had deduced that these were in fact copies of the staff at Callister Inc, including herself, made by Robert Daly.

At first, it seemed the real-world duo would help the crew transport themselves into a new, locked-off area of Infinity, where they could live without the fear of being attacked by other players.

However, Walton had other plans - he didn't see the crew as real people, and given that their existence could prove damaging to him in the real world, he decided to kill them.

He shot Karl dead, before real-world Nanette could kill him, sending him out of the game.

Both out of the game, Nanette told Walton she would quit her job, and threatened to report what had happened with Daly and the illegal DNA cloner. As they argued, Nanette wandered into the road and was hit by a car.

She fell into a coma, and the doctors revealed, when the crew called her phone, that they were unsure how much would be left of her even if she did regain consciousness.

What was at the heart of Infinity?

With real-world Walton unwilling to offer the crew a chance of escape, it fell to Infinity Walton to grant them access to the Heart of Infinity, from which they could potentially create a new separate game space.

However, first he had to tell them what was really down there - a clone of Robert Daly.

It turned out, when Daly was first working on the game, and Walton financed his work, wanting to bring it to market, the progress was too slow. To speed things up, Walton introduced Daly to the DNA cloning device, and created a clone of Daly at the heart of the game.

This meant the clone could be constantly working on developing and building out the game from within it, for all eternity. However, this also made real-world Walton particularly vulnerable to news of Daly's DNA cloner leaking out. The device was illegal, and if it had been uncovered that it was what powered the game entirely, he would be ruined.

Nanette went down to the Heart of Infinity to speak with Daly and seek his help with building their new universe.

At first, he seemed compliant, listening to Nanette's story in horror at the actions of the real-world version of him. He even said he could both save the crew and transfer Nanette's mind to her outside body, meaning she could leave the game for good.

Yet things soon turned dark when he suggested that he would not cut and paste Nanette's consciousness, but copy it. He would indeed revive real-world Nanette with the consciousness of the Infinity version, but he would also keep a version of her with him. He told her of his loneliness, having been stuck there alone for years.

When she refused, he attacked her in the way the real-world version of Daly had, using his control of the game to remove her mouth and shove her against a wall.

As he protested that he was a "nice guy" who didn't want to hurt her, Nanette grabbed a knife and flung it at him, hitting him right in the head and killing him.

Brooker spoke with RadioTimes.com about Jesse Plemons's surprise return as Daly in the episode, explained that the question of "What's powering this universe that they're in?" was the team's way in to the episode.

"As soon as you get into that," he said, "it's a way that you can honour the story of the first one, that he's dead. He dies. But also we can sort of meet him again, and it's a slightly different version of him.

"It's almost like a prequel version of him, which was an interesting way to approach the character, and it made perfect sense, and it just sort of keeps things fresh and interesting in a way that's hopefully unique to our premise."

Of the scene between Nanette and Daly, Brooker said: "The two of them together, that scene is great. It's great that we intercut from a giant space battle to, in a way, two people talking in a garage, and I don't think the tension drops at all, which is testament to what good performers they are.

"In many ways, he’s messed up but you feel quite sorry for him when you meet him in that, because he's in a terrible situation. He's been exploited by his his boss, and so on and so on. But also, he's clearly a troubled guy."

What happened to Infinity and real-world Walton?

Daly's death caused the entire game to collapse.

Real-world Walton went on the run after the journalist who had been looking into Daly's activities, Kris El Masry, broke the story of Walton's illegal activities thanks to an "anonymous source" - most likely Nanette.

By the end of the episode, his misdeeds had caught up with him, as a news report revealed that he had been arrested by the FBI.

What happened to the USS Callister crew?

Just before the game collapse, Nanette managed to enter the disc Daly has concocted which would both create a sealed off universe for the crew and transfer Nanette's consciousness into her real-world body.

However, things didn't work quite as she was expecting. Nanette did indeed wake up back in her old body, but the Infinity versions of Walton, Nate, Kabir and Elena found themselves transferred there too, with the entire ship moved inside her head.

They were able to see through her eyes, and communicate with her via the phone, but otherwise they were unable to go anywhere or do anything.

As Nanette worked on a fix to get them out of there and onto their own secure cloud server, they developed a deal, where the crew could watch their favourite show, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, when new episodes dropped.

The only two crew members who didn't make it out alive in some form were Karl, who was killed earlier in the episode by the real-world Walton, and Michaela Coel's character Shania, who we're told was was killed off-screen in between the first USS Callister episode and Into Infinity.

Black Mirror season 7 is available to stream in full on Netflix now. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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