Black Mirror: USS Callister recap ahead of season 7 sequel Into Infinity

Season 7 episode 6, USS Callister: Into Infinity, will follow on from where we left off with the characters - but where exactly was that?

If you're struggling to recall the original episode, then never fear - we've run through all of the key plot points below, so you're up to speed before diving into season 7.

Read on for everything you need to know about what happened in Black Mirror: USS Callister.

What happened in USS Callister?

USS Callister follows Nanette Cole, a programmer starting work at Callister Inc, the company best-known for its immersive simulated reality game Infinity.

Players stick a device to their temple and immediately feel as though they are really charting the terrains of other worlds, acquiring credits and battling foes.

The company was set up by CTO Robert Daly and CEO James Walton. Walton treats the shy and timid Daly poorly, and the latter harbours a grudge because of it.

Daly takes a shine to Nanette, but she is warned about his "stare-y" behaviour by her new colleague Shania. Secretly, Daly scavenges Nanette's DNA from her coffee cup and uses it to create a digital clone of her within his own development build of Infinity, which is modded to resemble his favourite sci-fi show, Space Fleet.

The DNA cloner also replicates Nanette's consciousness, and this new version of her wakes up in the game. She finds other staff members - Walton, Shania, Elena (who in the game has blue skin), Nate and Kabir - have also been cloned, with Daly taking out his personal grievances with their real-life counterparts out on them.

He has also cloned another colleague, Karl Valdack, to be his mutant arch enemy.

Nanette is told to play her part as a lieutenant on Daly's ship, the USS Callister, but she refuses. He quickly demonstrates his power to her, removing her facial features to suffocate her, but without her dying. He can control everything within the game, and thus can torture them for all eternity if they disobey.

Nanette plays along for a time, but when Daly is out of the game she finds a way to communicate with her real-life counterpart via email. The real Nanette, however, shows it to Daly, who dismisses it as spam.

Daly heads back into the game to confront the crew, and transforms Shania into a monster when she speaks back to him.

When they are without Daly once more, the crew discuss plans. Walton reveals Daly cloned previously cloned his son, threw him out of an airlock and made Walton watch.

Nanette discovers a wormhole, which she realises is an uplink to the next update of Infinity. She and crew plan to fly through it, which she believes will delete them all.

However, they realise that first they must steal Daly's stash of their DNA in the real world, to stop him from simply re-cloning them after this happens.

When Daly returns, Nanette goes on a mission with him and distracts him. Meanwhile, the others gain access to Nanette's photo cloud account and blackmail the real version of her by threatening to leak her explicit, private photos.

On the crew's instructions, the real Nanette orders a pizza to Daly's house, which makes him exit the game. As he goes to the door, she sneaks in through the back and steals the samples.

While this is happening, the game version of Nanette rejoins the crew and they fly towards the wormhole on the ship. When Daly returns, he attempts to catch them in another ship.

As they go through an asteroid field, the Callister crashes, meaning the thrusters need to be repaired. This has to be done manually, in what is evidently a suicide mission. Walton takes it on, taunting Daly over comms as he does. As the thrusters start back up, he is incinerated.

The crew escape through the wormhole as it closes, and Daly is stuck behind. The firewall notices that his development build has been modded, and therefore shuts him out of the controls. He is unable even to exit the game, meaning the real-world Daly is sat in his chair, unable to move, and goes on to die.

The crew find themselves on the other side of the wormhole. Although they expected to be deleted, they actually ended up in the regular version of Infinity.

All modded designs to the spaceship and their costumes are gone and Elena, Shania and Valdack all restored to their normal appearances.

They set off into space free from Daly's control, with Nanette now as the captain, but soon realise they will no longer be alone - they will be sharing the universe with other real-world players.

That's where we left the crew, with the story set to be picked up in USS Callister: Into Infinity.

The synopsis for the new instalment says: "Robert Daly is dead, but the crew of the USS Callister – led by Captain Nanette Cole – find their problems are just beginning."

Black Mirror season 7 will stream on Netflix from 10th April 2025. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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