Upload’s Final Season Logs Out with a Quiet, Hollow Fade into Digital Oblivion
Released with a shortened season and little fanfare on a Monday at the end of summer, Upload‘s final season feels more like an afterthought.
Our special, quirky little series about technology, capitalism, and society doesn’t end with a bang; it just… ends.
It also has a relatively bleak outcome. Not even halfway through the finale, I realized I was already mourning what the show used to be, even as I was still watching it.
Upload Season 4 is a serviceable sendoff, as in it does its job, but I wonder what it could’ve been if we had more time, a longer season, and a full plot.
Mostly, the series feels like the tragedy of Nathan Brown (Original).
It takes watching him dying for the umpteenth time in the series to process that it was always his destiny, and also, that Upload recycles the same plots over and over again.
They bring Nathan to the brink of death (or actually kill him) and then take it back. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
Even the ending was supposed to leave us with this lingering sense of hope after we watched him fade away in a sweet simulation of simply going on a stroll with Nora and sitting on a park bench.
And then we fast forward months later, and they dangle this bit of hope in front of us — Nora can download a version of her Nathan again.
I get that, because after the depressing turn this season has taken, and how their relationship has hit a low point, it felt like they had some regrets and didn’t want to hurt viewers too much.
Except, where it leaves me is not feeling hopeful — just tired and still a bit disappointed.
I can’t decide which was worse, the constant game of dead Nathan fakeouts or him not cheating death and actually being dead for good.
They’ve done the former so many times that it has lost all meaning and left me emotionally fried. And the latter makes me reflect on how depressing the story as a whole is in the end.
Neither is wholly satisfying, but it’s hard to say what a positive alternative would have been, so there are no suggestions here, just me sitting here feeling a bit hollow without knowing how to fix it.
Because we didn’t have a full season, there wasn’t much of a way to let its two or three primary plots unfold.
After Nora’s soul-crushing depression montage that could have rivaled Bella Swan in Twilight: New Moon, we learned that OG Nathan wasn’t really dead, as everyone presumed.
They had him at some offsite location where they were performing experiments on him and trying to remake some version of Lakeview. And by the grace of his connection with a sympathetic Dennis, he was able to escape that without a complete erasure of his memories.
But of course, for whatever reasons, he was able to show up in moments with Nora, and while she initially thought he was a ghost glitch, she eventually figured out that he was a projection.
And therein is where OG Nathan started feeling as if Upload was, in fact, erasing him from his own story.
For one, Nora’s grief was upsetting for many reasons. The obvious is that she lost the love of her life, and it feels like Nora is always feeling and experiencing some form of pain (probably because Nathan’s life is always hanging in the balance).
But the other issue was that it felt like no one else was grieving OG Nathan. Ingrid was happy that HER Nathan was still alive and was happily planning her wedding like nothing else had happened.
It seemed that neither she nor anyone else considered that Nora might not want to attend a wedding where the man she loved was marrying someone else.
Nathan’s mother didn’t seem to have any real reaction to him being dead either. Outside of Aleesha trying to support Nora in moving past her grief, it didn’t feel like she was experiencing any either.
And Luke just transferred all the love he had for Nathan onto Backup Nathan. There were many moments throughout the final episodes where I started to wonder if Luke was, in fact, best friends with OG Nathan or just his copy?
Naturally, Nora had to spend a considerable amount of time convincing people that she wasn’t losing her mind and that Nathan was still alive. And, of course, they teased the “Evil Clone” arc when it seemed like Copy Nathan knew more about OG Nathan’s fate and wasn’t sharing it.
Instead, we learned that OG Nathan, via, has genuine growth over the seasons, sacrificed himself so that Backup Nathan can live.
But for the most part, it felt like Nora was mainly going at it alone in her quest to save OG Nathan. Wrangling the others’ help seemed more like a chore for them than a genuine desire to save their friend.
The entire time, it just felt like Nora was the only one who even cared about OG Nathan, and what solidifies this most is the fact that he eventually died, calling himself Nathan Anthony because his backup was the one who legally had his identity now.
In part, there is an unsettling realism about all of that. I’ve been on both sides of the equation regarding dealing with loss. I know what it’s like when you’re still grieving and everyone has moved on with their lives, business as usual.
But I also know what it’s like being that person who gets sucked back into my own life while someone I care about is hurting, grieving, and in pain every second of every day.
Their life is completely shattered, and you don’t know what to do with their grief.
Nevertheless, on Upload, it feels strangely off that the main character fades away within his own series. And the central romance feels like a side plot.
All Nathan and Nora have known this entire series is struggle, adversity, and obstacles. It’s so sad to see that in their final season, it’s more of the same. I love their love, but it also depresses me.
Even the potential of them having a happily ever after involves Nora fighting solo to bring him back into her life, and them presumably trying to live their life together without the love and support of their friends and family.
Because Copy Nathan has that, it is a relief that Ingrid essentially earns her happy ending after all, and she gets everything she wants. She emerges as a character who has undergone a fantastic, rich arc of character growth and evolution.
And I’ve loved what Allegra Edwards has brought to the role. Ingrid is a character who has grown on me, and I can appreciate where she lands.
Luke’s fate is also depressing. He remained obsessed and a bit in love with the Nathans, but it was like there was no way for him to exist outside of them, so the next best thing was for him to die a heroic death.
I hate the idea that there was just nothing “more” for him ever. As if the moment Nathan found happiness and a life outside of him, he no longer had an identity.
And apparently, allowing him and Aleesha to be together was out of the question, despite both of them acknowledging their feelings for each other in some way.
I know it was not intentional, but watching two of the central romances as well as two women of color get shortchanged out of their love stories is dispiriting. Is it anything new? No, but that repeated narrative, regardless of its intentions, is just so tiresome.
The Aleesha OMI spy thing felt like something for her to do, and so we could get cool moments in which she got to be badass like a member of the Dora Milanje.
But I still had no real grasp of the extent of what she was supposed to be doing.
And the AI aspect conveyed two conflicting messages about it.
The season heavily featured the AI Guys, which was a double-edged sword, as it felt like we had too much focus on some side characters at the expense of the main event.
We faced the evils of AI in the form of the black-haired version, which was growing sentient and on the cusp of taking over everything.
He didn’t listen to anyone. Aleesha’s boss perfectly represented that of tech billionaires and the like, who are only interested in how much money they can make and expenses they can cut, and nothing else, despite the harm they’re causing.
Numerous references highlighted how every single use of AI for something trivial could have detrimental effects on the environment, society, and humanity.
Natural disasters, destabilizing infrastructure, starving out people, and so forth.
Here, essentially, the AI eats itself, growing more powerful because just when you think something is good, the efforts to create something bigger and better only create a larger problem.
But the series also conveys the message that it’s inescapable and unavoidable. It’s here to stay, and there’s nothing we can do about it, but there’s an avenue in which we embrace the best of what it has to offer, approach with caution, and go from there.
In the end, the good AI beats out the bad. Beloved characters die as heroes. Others get second chances, and love transcends everything.
And Upload just kind of fades away and signs off quietly. It’s not a strong end, but it’s one where we’re left, I suppose, being grateful that we got one at all.
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