AI looms large in the fourth and final season of quirky sci-fi comedy Upload
Death comes for us all, but in the near future world of Upload, there are more choices of afterlife than you would expect as the fourth and final season debuts this week.
Robbie Amell returns as Nathan Brown, who has been through the virtual wringer for three seasons, starting with a life-threatening car accident and a choice between surgery or being uploaded to the digital afterlife where he will be able to continue to participate in relationships with his loved ones via virtual reality headsets. Choosing the latter, Nathan begins life after death in the digital world of Lakeview, which quickly reveals the inequities of uploaded life.
Rife with hidden expenses and cheaper, lower tiers of digital afterlife akin to purgatory, he comes to realize the actual experience of living forever in a virtual realm is not as advertised.
Disillusioned, Nathan leaned on his afterlife handler Nora Antony (Andy Allo), a living woman who works for Horizen, the tech company that runs Lakeview, and away from his wealthy girlfriend Ingrid Kannerman (Allegra Edwards).
In the upcoming season, per Prime Video, an evil AI threatens to eliminate the digital afterlife, and, “on top of greedy executives, lingering mysteries, plus heartbreak in VR and IRL, our characters are tested like never before.”
Before entering the digital afterlife, Nathan was a computer programmer on the cusp of making a deal to bring his free Lakeview alternative to life. Those with a financial interest in keeping premium virtual experiences expensive may have had a hand in Nathan’s death, but that is only a small part of the conspiracy that’s unravelled throughout the Upload.
Nathan and Nora, together with help from Aleesha (Zainab Johnson) in the real world and Luke (Kevin Bigley) and AI Guy (Owen Daniels) in Lakeview, exposed a diabolical political scheme to entice Americans in swing states to upload and lose their right to vote. Later, the two took Horizen to court with the hope of establishing human rights for uploads.
While they managed to win compensation for families of uploads, the settlement details were sealed, no rights were obtained and Horizen started operating under new branding, calling itself Betta. As Betta, under the guise of accountability, Horizen had Nathan detained for threatening to leak their dirty laundry — and that is where last season’s finale episode left off.
Though Nathan made the choice to upload in part to be with Ingrid, her lies and ulterior motives drove a wedge between them, ending their relationship. While things were complicated with Ingrid, Nathan grew closer to Nora, who was reluctant to share her own feelings for Nathan and jeopardize her career with Horizen and, subsequently, her access to Lakeview, where they were able to spend time together.
The will-they-won’t-they finally came to a head when Ingrid’s secret Nathan clone was discovered, which he downloaded into to better help Nora take down Horizen in the real world and be with her. Nathan stepped out of the virtual world and back into real life but was mistakenly duplicated in error in Lakeview. Two Nathans lived simultaneously: virtual Nathan in love with a changed Ingrid, and clone Nathan in a romance with Nora.
The Nathan duplicate went under the radar with Horizen until the trial, where he was caught physically by authorities and virtually in Lakeview. In a video call with his loved ones, all he is able to tell them is that there is only one Nathan now. Which one it is, however, still remains a mystery.
During a recent panel appearance at Comic Com in San Diego, Upload creator Greg Daniels (whose other TV credits include NBC’s The Office, Parks and Recreation and King of the Hill) teased some highlights for the new season — including the role of AI. “I think fundamentally the point we’re trying to make is that AI needs to be given a value system the way a teenager does,” Daniels explained. “Sort of any new member of society has to be inculcated with the values of your society or it’s going to be destructive. So our message, which is probably being ignored, is that we really need guardrails and a sense of ethics in the AI.”
According to Daniels, the final batch of episodes taken together is “sort of like a big fat movie. But we’ve also spent time exploring some new ideas. It’s not all wrapping up and callbacks. There’s a lot of new weird things to explore. They go to a longevity spa for tech billionaires, which we talked about in the last season. Each episode has got its own storyline and theme. We also go to another upload. I think there’s a lot of good stuff.”
The 4th season of Upload premieres Monday, August, 25 on Prime Video