Diksha Sundriyal
Created by Greg Daniels, Prime Video’s ‘Upload’ takes the audience into a futuristic world where there is a life after death, though it’s digital, and one needs to pay for it. Over the course of four seasons, the show follows the story of Nathan Brown, who dies in what looks like a car accident but turns out to be a murder. In the meantime, he develops a romance with Nora, with whom he embarks on a journey to expose the exploitative nature of the afterlife in Lakeview, owned by a company called Horizen. The sophisticated and deep nature of the show’s plot and story makes it one of the best shows on the streaming service, which is why it came as a surprise to the fans when, in March 2024, the show was renewed for a fourth but final season.
Upload was Conceived as a Four Season Arc
For a half-hour comedy that explores crucial issues plaguing our society, ‘Upload’ has a lot to unpack. Its world expands with each season, and the third season ends on such a cliffhanger that it is impossible to believe that the whole story can be wrapped up in four episodes of the final season. Still, that is the route that the show chose, and it turns out that Greg Daniels planned it that way, at least initially. Speaking about the fourth season being the final one, Daniels revealed that when he conceived the story, he planned for it to unfold over the course of four seasons. However, his decision wasn’t set in stone. Having worked in the television industry, he knew that each new season would have the uncertainty of the renewal hanging over it. Moreover, if the show turned out to be a success, it could go on for more seasons than initially imagined.
While Daniels was prepared for both possibilities, he did have the entire arc of the story in mind, and he was glad to have received the opportunity to bring it to a fitting end. Considering the incredibly competitive nature of the streaming world, where big-budget shows like ‘The Wheel of Time’ receive the dreaded axe and never get to bring their stories and characters to a fitting conclusion, getting the chance to end a story the way it was intended is quite a privilege for a writer-creator. While Daniels and his team may have had ideas to explore the world of ‘Upload,’ and there was ample opportunity for them to expand it in numerous ways, they decided to focus the finale on tying up loose ends and giving a proper send-off to the characters, bittersweet as it might be.
Upload Season 5 Could Have Gone Deeper Into the Exploitative Nature of Horizen and Co.
Since the first season, the biggest and perhaps only villain of the show has been Horizen. This is the company behind the business of upload and Lakeview. In every season, Nathan, Nora, and Co. discover its nefarious secrets, and every time, they also discover something new that is being cooked up to exploit more money from the living and dead alike. An interesting thing about this whole thing is that Horizen is not the only company in the business of simulated realities. In fact, David Choak had been in cahoots with a bunch of other billionaires to come up with ways that would make them richer while also, hopefully, giving them immortal life, all at the expense of the general public.
The fifth season could take us further into this dark world and focus on companies other than Horizen and the role they have played in the creation of places like Lakeview and the uploads. The fourth season ends with Lakeview being taken over by the Good AI Guy, but that doesn’t mean that this is the only place that needs to be liberated from the bad guys. Moreover, the season also ends on a seemingly tragic note for Nora and Nathan, as the latter dies yet again. However, the final scene instills faith in Nora, who is now in possession of his brain scan, which means that there is a very good chance that he can be brought back. The following season could have focused on this journey as the original Nathan goes back to Lakeview, and perhaps, uses it as the location to dig deeper and find the dirt on Horizen and its collaborators, and expose them to the world.
Read More: Andy Allo Plays Nora in Upload. Here’s Everything We Know About Her.
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