‘Upload’ Showrunner Greg Daniels Answers Burning Questions & Teases Season 4 Hopes
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Upload Season 3, Episode 8, “Flesh and Blood.”]
Upload‘s third season has come to a close, leaving fans waiting for some answers after yet another cliffhanger surrounding loves, Nathan (Robbie Amell) and Nora (Andy Allo).
After bringing a case against Horizen for copying uploads illegally, the pair ultimately win the case, but as they’re exiting the court, Nathan is handcuffed and taken away by Horizen employees as downloads haven’t been legalized. In other words, despite Nathan being in the real physical world, he isn’t seen as a person by law.
This squashes any possible plans he and Nora had for their immediate future until we learn in the finale’s final seconds that the digital copy of Nathan still living at Lakeview and currently engaged to Ingrid (Allegra Edwards) is also in limbo, as one version told Nathan’s loved ones that only one of them is allowed to exist. But as Nora questions in the last minutes of the episode, which one? It’s a question that will remain a mystery until (and if) the show returns for a fourth season.
(Credit: Prime Video)
TV Insider caught up with showrunner Greg Daniels (The Office) who offered up some answers to some lingering questions around Season 3, including possible meaning for that kiss between Aleesha (Zainab Johnson) and Luke (Kevin Bigley), that Nathan cliffhanger, the future for downloads, and more.
We learned this season that being downloaded into a body isn’t lethal. Is there a chance we could see some of the Lakeview characters join the real world?
Greg Daniels: I think you’re right. I think that when you have that kind of ability to have people flip back and forth between different states or copy themselves or whatever — just as a storyteller you need to be careful — [it’s] powerful medicine. And you want people to care. So if it can get too intellectually manipulated, I think it’s true that that is a new wrinkle for Season 4, but I don’t know if we want to use it. I have a lot of ideas for Season 4, but we haven’t sat down and broken it yet because of the strike. But that is definitely a possibility.
After Luke helps Aleesha with distracting Karina (Jeanine Mason), she kisses him. Should we read into that at all?
Well, because there’s a gap between seasons [and] we’re still producing the show. I like that there are things to wonder about while you’re waiting for Season 4. Do you know what I mean? You can write a lot of different scenarios for where the show goes in your own head as a fan and then see what we did with it. So I wouldn’t want to close off any possibilities. I just think there’s been a lot of world-building, and if you really sort of commit to it, then it’s just fun and interesting. I don’t know where it’s going to go. But it’s super fun to think about and hopefully, we’ll make good choices and maximize the fun.
Horizen announces Betta, a new program that prevents copies from being uploaded to the virtual afterlife. Is it safe to assume that there’s a lot of deleting that has to go on after employees fessed up to creating a bunch of duplicates?
Well, I mean, I think it’s really interesting to find out that there were a bunch of duplicates and that it’s definitely the intention of the company to be compliant with the no duplicate law if they can, so you don’t get in trouble, but we don’t know what’s going to happen.
Is the goal to always end on a cliffhanger? This time around we’re not sure which Nathan survived after Horizen deleted one of them.
Well, I do think it helps keep viewers interested until the next season, but just as a general writing principle, things like that are great at act breaks at the ends of scenes. If you could make [a story] that has a lot of throw forward with a lot of stakes for all the characters at the end of every scene you would. It’s just fun storytelling to me.
Upload, Seasons 1-3, Streaming now, Prime Video
