Stefan Butler

"Stefan: I’ve actually had a bit of a breakthrough with the game. I think I got bogged down before... but now I can see. Dr Haynes: So you’ve finally finished it? Stefan: Finished, delivered, everything. I’ve been trying to give the player too much choice, so I just went back, stripped loads out. Now they’ve only got the illusion of free will, but really, I decide the ending. Dr Haynes: And is it a happy ending? Stefan: I think so."

- Stefan, after murdering his father in the "History Repeats" ending.

Stefan Butler is the protagonist of the 2018 Netflix interactive movie Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, and one of its most prominent possible villains. A talented but troubled game designer living in the early days of commercial game design, Stefan's greatest ambition in life is to design a game based on his favorite book, the classic choose-your-own adventure novel Bandersnatch by Jerome F. Davies. However, long-standing mental trauma, mounting deadlines from his employers, a problematic relationship with his father and the difficulty of adapting the notoriously complicated book to the relatively new medium begin to wear on Stefan's mind as his self-imposed mission continues. Over time, his stress is exacerbated by the fact that he appears to have experienced the events of the last few days before, and continues to relive them whenever he finds himself unable to overcome a problem. Ultimately, these trials may drive Stefan to dangerous extremes - including murder.

He was played by Fionn Whitehead, while his younger self was played by A.J. Houton.

Prior To The Series
Stefan Butler was born in England, likely during the early 1960s, and enjoyed a relatively unassuming childhood up until the age of five. By this time, the young boy had become attached to one of his toys, a knitted rabbit doll that his mother had made for him when he was a baby; however, his father Peter disapproved of the toy, believing that he should have grown out of it long ago. Over time, this became the subject of numerous arguments between Stefan's mother and father, particularly when the in-laws began commenting on it as well.

With a visit to the child's grandparents being planned, Peter was in no mood for another lecture on permissive parenting from his father-in-law, and decided to act: stealing the toy rabbit from Stefan's room, he hid it where his son would never think to look for it and believed that would be the end of the matter. However, Stefan proved more attached to the toy than his parents expected, and took up so much time looking for it that he ended up delaying their departure from the house, causing them to miss the 8:30 train they'd intended to catch; in the end, he refused to leave at all, remaining behind with Peter while his mother took the 8:45 train alone.

Later that day, father and son witnessed a news report revealing that the 8:45 train had derailed on en route, killing almost everyone aboard - including Stefan's mother. Both were grief-stricken by the death, but Stefan took it particularly hard: believing that his mother would have survived if only she'd taken the earlier train, he blamed himself for causing the delay, but he also blamed Peter for the deception that ended up prompting the delay in the first place. As a result, the relationship between Stefan and his father became increasingly strained, until they rarely spoke to each other unless they absolutely had to.

Over time, the trauma and neuroses caused by the accident grew to the point that Peter was forced to sign Stefan up for regular appointments with a psychiatrist. Though the name and nature of his condition isn't specified, it was apparently considered severe enough for Stefan to be regularly medicated, with dosages being doubled in the event of stressful situations. At the start of the film, Stefan's current therapist is Dr. R. Haynes, the two of them having been seeing one another long enough to work up a reasonably amiable rapport.