Black Mirror renewed for season 5 by Netflix

The good, no, great news first: Black Mirror has officially been renewed for a fifth season by Netflix.

The news is accompanied by a teaser video (no new footage) below riffing on the acclaimed episode “Be Right Back.”

But while Netflix is confirming a new season, there are two key pieces of information that are being held back — at least for now.

The first is when the Emmy winning anthology series will return. Black Mirror has not yet started production on a new season. Season 4 — which premiered at the very end of 2017 — was already filming this time last year. So while Black Mirror could debut this year, there’s also a chance that the show could join The League of 2019, along with 2018-skippers like the final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, season 3 of HBO’s True Detective, season 3 of Netflix’s Stranger Things (presumably), and a few other top serialized shows.

The second mystery is how many episodes will make up season 5. Black Mirror has had one of the most unusual histories of episode orders we’ve ever seen given its flexible stand-alone anthology format and origins as a Channel 4 production in the U.K. (where short orders are far more common). The first two seasons were only three episodes each and aired in 2011 and 2013, respectively. Then there was a single stand-alone Christmas special in 2014. Netflix purchased the show in 2015 and ordered 12 episodes, which were eventually split into two seasons of six episodes each and aired in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Season 5 could consist of another 12 episodes aired a year apart like last time, or could once again go in an entirely different direction.

So we don’t know when Black Mirror is coming back or how many episodes we’re getting, we just know that it will, in fact, return. Fingers crossed we get at least a Christmas special this year. In the meantime, here’s our gallery ranking all the Black Mirror episodes (no easy task).