‘Upload’ Keeps Getting Better, Weirder, and Even More Meta
There's a lot to like about Prime Video’s Upload, the barely speculative AI-afterlife rom-com from creator Greg Daniels (The Office) that kicks off its third season Oct. 20. The ensemble’s virtual-versus-real world performances? Sharp. The digital-heaven production design? Cartoonish and absurd enough to read as camp. And the dialogue! For the series’ human and AI characters alike, Daniels and the Season 3 writing team have turned out some arrestingly natural lines.
Still, it’s impressive that Upload has become so likeable. It is, after all, a show whose central drama pivots around a corporate-owned, spam-filled neoliberal hellscape—one that hews so uncomfortably close to the trajectory of our real world that several throwaway jokes from the first two seasons have already, to some degree, come true.
In case you’re just catching up, here’s Upload’s basic deal: At the start of Season 1, Robbie Amell’s bro-coder Nathan died in a freak driverless car accident and had his consciousness unwillingly “uploaded” by his spoiled rich girlfriend, Ingrid (Allegra Edwards), to Lakeview, a very luxe, very WASP-y digital afterlife run by tech giant Horizen. Once there, Nathan discovered he had been uploaded sans some important memories— namely, that his driverless car accident wasn’t so accidental after all. Turns out that in order to prevent him and his business partner from releasing a no-cost digital afterlife alternative called Freeyond, a mystery big tech bigwig had Nathan (dun dun dunnnn) murdered.
Oh, and while in Lakeview, Nathan also fell in love with his still living, criminally underpaid “Angel,” Nora (Andy Allo). That “while in Lakeview” detail is crucial, as in the action-packed Season 2 finale, Nathan’s Lakeview-bound consciousness was “downloaded” into a clone of his original body, which Ingrid had secretly spent the entire second season—and most of her savings—growing in a clone lab for the rich and famous. (And also Logan Paul.)
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This twist alone would have made the stakes for Season 3 compellingly high: Among other things, being in a living, breathing human body means that Nathan can finally make a real stab at a relationship with Nora. However, because Horizen keeps its workers in such a constant state of precarity and fear, when Nathan’s new angel, Tinsley (Mackenzie Cardwell), discovers in the season’s first episode that he’s disappeared from the Lakeview system, she just… reboots his consciousness. Better that than risk getting chewed out (or worse) for dropping the virtual ball! Similarly, because Horizen’s Upload Management Centers are run by people promoted to their individual levels of self-interest and/or incompetence—a category that this season includes Nora‘s estranged and morally conflicted best friend, Aleesha (Zainab Johnson)—this “duplicate consciousness” situation is left unchecked for an ethically outrageous (if dramatically fruitful) length of time.
Unsurprisingly, the “Two Nathans, one data plan” boondoggle is the primary narrative engine of Season 3. Not only does the rom-com side of the story benefit from giving all three sides of the Nora–Nathan–Ingrid love triangle something new and interesting to work through, but Nathan's bromance with his Lakeview BFF Luke (Kevin Bigley) also shifts into new gears. And bringing Nathan back into the realm of the living also gives the show more opportunities to explore some of the thornier dimensions of the real world that Horizen helped—and is mercilessly still helping—to build.
Upload’s interest in the banal brutality of the real world this season extends beyond Nathan (and, by association, Nora). Johnson’s Aleesha, in her disorientingly rapid ascent up the Horizen Corporate Ladder of Evil, gets nearly as much dramatically complicated screen time, and even AI Guy (Owen Daniels) gets to do some new and fascinating stuff IRL(ish) as a result. Similarly, Ingrid’s rapid descent down the Evil Ladder of Generational Wealth forces her, over the course of this third season’s short eight episodes, into becoming an active participant in humanity to an extent that concretely humbles her—a journey that Edwards plays with appreciable nuance.
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Strong acting is the real throughline this season. In the face of the synthetic perfection being marketed by the likes of Horizen and OscarMeyerIntel, the ensemble’s emotionally committed performances layer each scene with a grounded, extra-dimensional warmth. Even when the actors are tasked with executing classic slapstick comedy, they do so with naturalistic flair. (No spoilers, but at one point, a banana peel is involved.) The returning regulars have created such a well-worn space that the new faces just slot right in. It’s a genuine joy to watch—so much so that you almost forget the unrelenting cruelty (and distressingly familiar) strain of immiseration capitalism that makes up the show's beating heart. Almost.
That said, a lot of the goodwill this new season of Upload earns through its ensemble gets tested by a baffling series of narrative gaps. There is just so much that happens off screen instead of being dramatized, up to and including Luke’s discovery of Back-Up Nathan, Nora’s breaking with the Ludds, and literally anything that happens to AI Guy after [redacted]. These are important parts of the story! It’s weird!
Still, if you’re willing to leap those narrative chasms—and if you can make peace with the fact that you’re watching the kind of show whose flavor of “dystopian comedy” is distressingly near to reality—Upload has become a genuinely compelling binge. Just be warned: The cliffhanger that this season ends on, which is interspliced with a fake Horizen commercial that takes Better Off Ted’s Veridian Dynamics ad-break gag and turns it to 11, is grim. But in a world where this show can stream on this platform and still get renewed, that’s comedy!
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