Netflix‘s final two interactive specials are about to disappear from the platform. Notices have appeared on the What’s on Netflix site for Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, confirming both will leave the service on May 12.
Their exit marks the end of the platform’s era of interactive specials as it shifts its focus to mobile and cloud gaming, according to the publication.
Netflix did not respond to a request for comment.
Interactive content has been slowly disappearing from the platform, since its launch with the 2017 Puss in Book. Only four interactive specials remained in late 2024, with Ranveer vs Wild with Bear Grylls and You vs. Wild removed in January of this year.
Released in December 2018, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was written by series creator Charlie Brooker and directed by David Slade. Starring Fionn Whitehead, Will Poulter and Craig Parkinson, the interactive choose-your-own-adventure tale follows young programmer Stefan (Whitehead), who is adapting a fantasy gamebook into a video game in 1984.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy Schmidt vs. the Reverend was released several months after the comedy from Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, starring Ellie Kemper, ended its four-season run, and was largely unexpected.
The special brings back the series’ core cast members including Kemper, Tituss Burgess, Jane Krakowski and Carol Kane. In it, the dastardly Reverend (Jon Hamm) is hatching an evil plan — and Kimmy needs to stop him in order to get to her wedding on time. Viewers get to decide the characters’ fate.
Interestingly, the removal of Bandersnatch — a largely successful creative swing for Netflix at the time due to its deft form follows function modus operandi — comes shortly after the streamer’s release of Black Mirror Season 7, which includes a sequel of sorts to that standalone project in “Plaything,” seeing Poulter reprise his off-kilter, legendary game creator character.
It’s unclear if the platform will host the projects in the future or in other formats; considering the fact that the titles require specific hosts to engage their unique, playable features, it’s fairly unlikely that there is more than one way this story will end.
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