Black Mirror is known for making viewers think. Whether it's about social media and the validation it may or may not provide ("Nosedive" will make you rethink Instagram, it certainly helped Bryce Dallas Howard out with her social media feelings) to possible new uses of technology ("San Junipero" and its outcome will make you cry), there's definitely a lot of food for though.
"Obviously there is an element and layer of commentary in the episodes, but we try for it not to be too preachy or too moralizing because I think sometimes that can off-putting and a viewer doesn't really want to have a notion battered over their head because then they're watching something different," Annabel Jones, executive producer on Black Mirror, told E! News. "We try to sort of create compelling, entertaining films that are also thought-provoking and challenging."
In "Men Against Fire," soldiers battled "roaches," mutated beings from a biological weapon. But in a twist—naturally it is Black Mirror—it's revealed the roaches are in fact actual people; the soldiers were made to see them as mutated enemies, but they were other humans believed to be inferior. Us and them, mentality.
Jones said the episode sort of reflects the increasing xenophobia she's witnessed in Europe and the change in language referring to people as "swarms," so people need to be more aware and "whether we should just be slightly more open-winded and think about what we're doing."
House of Cards' Michael Kelly, who stars in the episode as Arquette, the psychologist, said it's the same in America, specifically with Donald Trump.
"You look at what's happening currently politically in our country…that hatred and xenophobia that the other party is pushing out there to the world and it really stops and makes you think," he said. "Like you said, there are swarms of people or swaths of people, we are categorizing certain people as lesser or not equal when we are all equal."
Watch the video up top for more from Jones and Kelly.
Black Mirror season three is now streaming on Netflix.