The fourth and final season of Upload contains only four episodes. It’s a short season and they’re not particularly long episodes either, staying at around 30 to 50 minutes long each. This is the final season, and it feels like there is a lot to wrap up. With the cliffhanger of the previous season… it promptly skips over it for the first episode. Life goes on for most of the characters. Ingrid and Nathan progress their relationship, eventually having a wedding and stressing over that.
While Nora is shown to be depressed given the events of the last season. She’s become reclusive and this is the biggest change to the character. Despite being introduced and shown as a strong character, she spends this whole season being useless, with barely a coherent thought and mostly a bubbling mess. She’s best friends with Ingrid and Aleesha now, who both genuinely care for her, but Nora is not a likable character this season.
It takes the first episode to get back to the crux of the cliffhanger and deal with its impact. It seems like a waste of a lot of time to get to this point, especially since the trend is that most of the events thus far feel inconsequential. The plot and character motivations continue to be muddled. The plot feels aimless and you’re not sure what message the series is wanting to show. It only briefly touches upon the ethics of copying someone’s memories and uploading them so that they can continue living, along with their rights and the progress of extreme capitalization, but none of these are actually wielded and portrayed in a way that’s clever or thought provoking.
The season eventually moves at a slightly faster pace and soon clears up the cliffhanger from last season. Not that there was much doubt, but it is nice to see it resolved sooner rather than later. The way the story threads and plot arcs are resolved feels offhanded. The big background arc was mostly already resolved by this point, so it’s more to do with the endings of the characters and what they do afterwards. There is an inclusion of a threat with the digital afterlife but with only four episodes, it’s quickly resolved and is tacked on as a result.
The AI is shown to be developing at a much faster rate but is growing increasingly like a normal person. This was always an issue with the series, there is less focus on the digital part and how it all works and blends with real life, but more on the characters and their relationships. There is a disconnect with how physics works, like when the AI are fighting each other in the digital world, it’s still resolved by punching harder than the other. Or when you wanted to delay the AI getting to a location, you just needed to push it away? The analogy doesn’t quite work.
This is not a show about right or wrong, nor the consequences of it. The bad guys don’t lose, but the good guys still win. Despite the big conspiracy, nothing drastic happens to those important bad people and the inhumane experiments continue to happen. Despite escaping from a powerful organization, they don’t try to track down Nathan ever again. Characters are caricaturized so that they’re dominated by one personality aspect. It makes them one dimension. People from the future act without any empathy or are clueless at everything. It’s supposed to satirical, but it’s not done in a clever way.
Overall, the fourth and final season of Upload is disappointing. It’s an ending at least and provides some closure to the characters. The show started off strong but just couldn’t get a proper grip on what it wanted to be: a romcom or a serious thriller. It tries to do both but leans too heavily on the romcom aspect to the detriment of everything else. Plot arcs are inconsequential, there are plot holes, and the pacing is off. This is the weakest season yet where it feels like a whole bunch of nothing.
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