What does it mean to live forever? That’s been one of the central questions since the start of Upload, which saw its protagonist Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell) end up in Lakeview after his life was cut tragically short. For someone who’s technically been dead since the opening minutes of the series, he’s felt awfully alive as he’s gone through many trials and tribulations trying to figure out what caused his death and how to keep on, for lack of a better word, living. It’s never easy to say goodbye to any show, but this four-episode swan song feels like a fitting farewell that, like so much else on this show, is a bonus chapter audiences should be pleased to receive.
The devastating deletion of one of the Nathans at the end of season three has left a new dynamic in the real world, with Nora (Andy Allo) and Ingrid (Allegra Edwards) now friends and the latter working with Horizen. Happy endings aren’t in store for everyone, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to achieve something that feels like the best option given increasingly complicated circumstances, which include the evolution of the A.I. Guy (Owen Daniels) into something far beyond what his creators could ever have imagined.
Four seasons is no small feat for any show, especially one which first began at the height of the pandemic in May 2020. But it’s been a wonderful ride, and even if four episodes hardly feels like a formidable sendoff – and each runs only about half an hour – it does give Greg Daniels and the creative team the opportunity to wrap things up and finish this story. It’s never quite over, of course, given the ever-changing nature of what it means to be alive, but this show manages to find its way to a satisfactory ending, even if devoted audiences who have been with it since the beginning would still love to see more.
What this show has always done best is focus on its core ensemble, which also includes Zainab Johnson as Aleesha and Kevin Bigley as Luke. While other series add countless characters with each new season and abandon some who were initially quite important, this show has never deviated from the six series regulars who make it what it is. It’s been great fun to watch Luke find his strengths as he continues to cling to his best friend Nathan, and to see Aleesha climb the ranks at Horizen while still maintaining her sense of what’s right and what definitely doesn’t even approach ethical. Ingrid is endlessly entertaining, still keeping pieces of her self-involved bourgeois nature as she finds herself in much less glamorous surroundings.
All six stars make this final season well worth watching, and the complicated chemistry that Amell shares with both Allo and Edwards is as winning and wondrous as it’s ever been. Nathan’s concern with how his new form isn’t quite as ripped as he once was is well-balanced with a more somber meditation on where he’s going in the future, and Allo and Edwards handle the emotional highs and lows of Nora and Ingrid’s character arcs very well. Johnson and Bigley are a great team, even when Aleesha and Luke are budding heads, and Daniels delivers in a major way with a seemingly infinite number of interpretations of artificial intelligence as it gains more knowledge and chooses to express it in the most peculiar of ways.
With only four episodes to finish everything out, Upload can’t answer all of its questions but has done a good job of distilling its plot down to a few simple pieces, elevating certain arcs and tempering down others. It’s a smart strategy that pays off, since audiences can be invested in a more focused way and feel that this season, which runs just over two hours, closes everything out nicely and as satisfactorily as any series finale is meant to do, still leaving some room for nostalgia and a wish to revisit this world. Upload has been a formidably entertaining send-up of what a digital afterlife could be, mixing intelligent notions of human fallibility with outright comedy, and this last chapter is a great way to do what no one ever wants to do: say goodbye.
Season Rating: 8/10
