Now to be fair, I would have never guessed that Upload would have ever made it to four seasons, but Prime apparently has a little more give than Netflix does.
I was also happy to learn that not long after the third season aired, that they were given a fourth and final season order. Sometimes shows aren’t lucky enough to know when a season will be their last, and that sucks. Especially if they are a well reviewed one (I’m looking at you, Glow). So I think the creators and actors alike knew that they had this one last season to wrap up the story they wanted to tell. At least to the best of their ability. Now, was I really surprised to see that this final season was only four episodes? You bet. I don’t know if that bit was a surprise to the writers, but they did manage to make the best of it.
At the end of the third season we are left with an insane cliffhanger. Both the real Nathan and his duplicate’s lives are hanging in the balance at the hands of Horizon. One of them winds up dead, but we have no clue which one. Thankfully we aren’t left guessing for too long at the start of the episode. Poor Nora is left imagining what life could have been in a VR world. Meanwhile, Ingrid has got her duplicate Nathan that still loves her deeply and they are getting married. Since Ingrid cut herself off from her family in favor for a life with Nathan 2.0, she’s been working to get herself the dream wedding she’s always wanted even if it’s going to be in a hug suit.
In the midst of Nora’s grieving, she’s does encounter an aparition of Nathan at pretty regular intervals. She finally comes to the conclusion that Nathan is still alive somewhere, so she just needs to figure out where Horizon is keeping him. Lucky for her, Aleesha has fully become a spy for the opposition to everything Horizon, so she has the tools to get Nora where she needs to go undetected. Nathan, too, manages to use his newfound humanity to appeal to one of the scientists to let him go. After a few near misses, Nora and Nathan do finally reunite in person, but it’s not without its own problems.
Turns out Horizon was using Nathan to constantly test downloading him, which led to a lot of brain damage. He’s lost a lot of memories, but it’s also dealt a death blow to his overall health and it doesn’t seem like he has much longer to live. He does get some final moments with Nora, but even the human form of the AI guy can’t fix the damage done to Nathan. Their final scene together was heartbreaking, and while I’d like to say I hated the decision, I felt it was still a decent choice for the show to end on. Do I wish they had more than thirty minutes together reconciled? Absolutely, but with four episodes, you can’t waste a single minute.
While that is clearly the biggest drama of the whole series, the show does also pit the real world against the virtual one, and the new AI guy is pretty dang close to becomining sentient and destroying all of Horizon and its residents. That’s where the rest of our cast merge together to try and stop the catastrophe. They do manage to, but not without a couple of other casualties. Still, the series does truly end on a more positive note. Just like in our current world, there is no escaping technology, but it would sure be cool if we could use it for good. All in all, this was a cute series worth checking out someday.