The premise requires some engagement with sci-fi tropes, and it’s to this season’s credit that the crazy, almost Terry Gilliam-esque aspects of shifting through realities amplify with some spectacularly realized moments. In general, “High Castle” presents ideas never seen in other shows. The heartbreaking dilemma presented to Smith in Season 2 - kill his genetically inferior son Thomas per Reich law, or be labeled a traitor - was one of the season’s most compelling aspects, and its repercussions in Season 3 offer up the sort of fascinating family drama not seen elsewhere. Rufus Sewell particularly deserves consideration, as the ongoing journey of rising American Reich officer John Smith is one of the show’s backbones. This cast has always proven itself serviceable, with Tagawa, Heathcote, and Davalos always proving impressive, and new addition Jason O’Mara makes the most of an interesting arc.
Those who hate feel empowered to say it out loud, and in “High Castle,” they’re protected by government law. That doesn’t feel like sci-fi, doesn’t feel like an alternate reality the only part outside the bounds of today is that these prejudices are explicit, not implicit. It’s a show about a universe where, if a person who doesn’t adhere to the “good and pure Aryan way of life,” they are casually eliminated as a matter of due course by the authorities. This is a hard time for a show like “The Man in the High Castle” to be releasing a new season. The power of iconography has always been powerful for “The Man in the High Castle.” It’s explicit in not just in Julianna’s use of the newsreels from other realms, but in continued appearances of Nicole Dörmer (Bella Heathcote), who was introduced last season as the next coming of Leni Riefenstahl and in Season 3 is fully committed to spreading the Reich’s narratives, even while living a lifestyle that falls outside Party-approved lines. However, now that the show has a clearer voice, what it’s saying is troubling.
Our hero Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos) wants to use these reels to understand, perhaps even escape from, this current reality - but shifting through these worlds isn’t so easy, as her sometimes-ally Trade Minister Nobusuke Tagomi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), is all too aware. Being Jewish is punishable by death, censorship is a way of life, and the only real sign of hope lies with the mysterious film reels hoarded by the titular dude in a high palace, known as Hawthorne Abendsen (Stephen Root).
The man in the high castle season 1 episode 10 recap series#
A series about an alternate reality in which the Axis won World War II, it presents a bleak and grey society guided by hatred, and in its third season, the series continues to explore not only the “what if,” but also a far bigger idea: there are other alternate realities in the world, ones that offer more hope than the one ruled by fascism.Īs established by past seasons, “The Man in the High Castle” is set in a version of the 1960s ruled by Nazis and the still-brutal Japanese Empire, where the dream of American liberty is all but dead. From the beginning, “ The Man in the High Castle” has always been a bummer of a show.