Spoilers The Man in the High Castle season 4

[WarpFactorZ]

Wow, I waited 5 years for that? I started watching MitHC when it first aired, then dropped it for a while. It became my exercise show (i.e. elliptical or biking while watching). So, I worked through it slowly.... sometimes VERY slowly (not to self -- don't exercise to a show that proceeds at a pace 100 orders of magnitude below a snail's).

Anyway, I thought the fourth season really picked up the pace and was gunning for an awesome conclusion. But wrapping things up in the last 25 minutes seemed very forced.

I get that the ending leaves things up in the air: American is becoming American again, and armed with nukes will not fall to the Nazis (at least easily). But it felt a bit... hollow.

Last note: did anyone else feel we were going to get a Roy Batty death soliloquy from John Smith? I mean, it even started "We've ... seen things... others wouldn't believe."

 

[Gaith]

I get that the ending leaves things up in the air: American is becoming American again, and armed with nukes will not fall to the Nazis (at least easily). But it felt a bit... hollow.

I found that ambiguity to be a plus. North America may have re-asserted its independence from European rule, but there's been a genocide of black Americans, and the government the Nazis oversaw still rules the country east of the Neutral Zone, which means a lot of people who've done a lot of terrible s*** are still in power, while many brave resistors are dead.

It would have been easy to make the first appearance of the Stars and Stripes in this timeline a triumphant, touching catharsis. For that young woman to bluntly tell Lem that it alone isn't good enough anymore was a much more powerful, though disquieting, moment, IMO.

 

[diankra]

I agree that it is a very open ending, as the Nazis still control Europe, but isn't the last scene at the portal all the people the Nazis killed crossing over? Lots of Jews, gays, gypsies...

 

[bigdaddy]

The last scene makes zero sense so you can use it to argue for or against anything.

 

[Gaith]

^ Pretty much. It was a poetic ending far more than a narrative one, and I'm one of the few who liked it on its own terms.

 

[137th Gebirg]

It was “left up to the viewer’s imagination”, so said the show runners. A monumental cop-out if I ever heard one.

 

[bigdaddy]

It was stupid and not needed at all.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Yes.

 

[bigdaddy]

I would have had The Man in the High Castle use the machine to find his wife and then have the machine break. Anything better than that.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Yeah, that would've been a much better ending.

 

[Marc]

I would have had The Man in the High Castle use the machine to find his wife and then have the machine break. Anything better than that.

or the machine breaks before anyone does anything and the high castle world is sealed off from the rest of the multiverse.

According to the wiki entry for the book, Dick had planned a sequel where the nazis use the machine to access other worlds but by the time he'd finished researching and writing the first book, he couldn't take anymore of them.

 

[bigdaddy]

or the machine breaks before anyone does anything and the high castle world is sealed off from the rest of the multiverse.

According to the wiki entry for the book, Dick had planned a sequel where the nazis use the machine to access other worlds but by the time he'd finished researching and writing the first book, he couldn't take anymore of them.

Nah. I like my ending better.

The Man in the High Castle leaves the universe for another as the show is named after him.