Upload Season 3 Cast Talks Double Nathans, Life After Death, and Cliffhanger Theories
Upload returns for season 3 and finds two Nathans living vastly different lives. While newly downloaded Nathan navigates his relationship with Nora and tries to take a down a mysterious conspiracy threatening millions of lives, a backup copy of him is activated in Lakeview that gives Ingrid a second chance at love. Kristen Maldonado of Pop Culture Planet spoke with the cast of Upload about double Nathans, life after death, and cliffhanger theories.
This season Robbie Amell gets to play two different versions of his character Nathan: a version downloaded back into the real work and a backup in the virtual afterlife. “I won't lie. I'm very lucky the the writers are very good and they wrote two different voices for the characters. I also get to have one of them opposite Allegra and one of them them opposite Andy, so I'm very spoiled,” he told me. Download Nathan is going through a pretty serious storyline of murders and election fraud and trying to not have his head explore, while backup Nathan is pretty oblivious to what’s going on and just working on moving on from Nora. “It was fun to get to play the same play the same thing over again in a slightly different or with a different outcome.”
Some of the craziest scenes Amell had we’re playing opposite… himself. “The scenes with myself were wild. It was like, do it with an acting double, have him walk out. Do it with nobody. Put an earpiece in, do it to my own voice so that I can get the timing down and hope for the best,” he shared. “Luckily our crew and and our post-production team is so good. It looked great and people seem to dig it, which is very cool.”
This season, Ingrid finally has a Nathan, but feels conflicted when her wants her back and attempts to take the big step towards marriage. “I thought that was so interesting and, if I'm being honest, it was like a little tough for me to wrap my head around at first. Watching it again, I was like, ‘Oh, I think I see what this is.’ She has been so laser focused on mission. You can't falter for following through with a plan and really sticking to her guns. She's committed. Maybe she should be committed,” Allegra Edwards joked. “The thing that I think is so beautiful and interesting about that is the question that we all have to confront eventually: what happens when you actually get what you want and do you feel deserving of it? If it's been so unattainable to you up to a certain point and then you get it, does that make you second guess yourself? Have you just been invested in the chase or have you just been invested in the work of it? Do you like the problem of it?”
Edwards continued: “On top of [that is] this added layer — which I think is so beautifully written and huge kudos to our fabulous writers — what if what people are saying about Nathan is true? That he's less than human. There's still a part of herself that I think Ingrid wants the best and wouldn't want to admit to herself that she's settling for a piece of code or someone that isn't a real man. There's this thing of like, ‘Do I deserve this? But also I deserve more.’ The fact that both of those things can live in the same person, at the same time, in a courtroom is amazing. It's just really well written.”
Meanwhile, Nora finally gets her opportunity to be with Nathan in the real world. “It’s been a long time coming. It’s that feeling of really wanting a relationship with Nathan and trying to make it work,” said Andy Allo, sharing that the duo might’ve broken through the barriers of life and death, but now there’s the new obstacle of how does their relationship work in person. “That was really beautiful just to to see their arc together. How they fight, how they make up, how you know they navigate those different things and also accepting each other. Even his upload day and her wanting it to be this really special day. It’s going so badly yet he's so like, ‘No, I'm just happy to be here.’ That sacrifice but also partnership where you really cheer the other person on. He’s saying, ‘Hey, I want you to have a life whether it’s with me or not with me. I want you to be happy.’ That was such a beautiful moment in Nathan’s character of his growth too.”
This season even brought some new additions to the cast like Roswell, New Mexico’s Jeanine Mason as Horizen executive Karina. “Oh God, it was honestly, it was a dream,” she said about working with the cast. “This is a special corner of the TV universe. I feel really lucky that you guys welcomed me into the fold and I had the best time with [Zainab Johnson].”
Mason noted that playing Karina allowed her to tap into a different side of herself. “This isn't a kind of character I normally get to play. I was so excited about getting to be evil. What Upload does so well is these characters truly represent corporate greed, like these big examples of evilness,” she said, focusing on balancing her character’s corporate side with her attraction to Aleesha. “One of my big things early on was, how do I have enough presence and sex appeal in my five foot self to match the goddess that is Zay? I remember that first day on set just being like, ‘I need to just like meet you where you are with your presence in Aleesha.’ It was just […] fulfilling, fun. I feel like it made me grow as an artist for sure.”
While fans have loved Luke and Aleesha’s dynamic, Zainab Johnson called her scenes with Mason some of her “favorite moments on set.” “I knew that once we did our we did our chemistry read via Zoom, which is always strange, [that there was] something about Janine. Then on set like it was almost like […] she had been there this entire time,” said Johnson. “I knew that Aleesha and Karina had to capture something slightly different and I feel like Janine and I did. My favorite moments on set with Janine [are] whenever she's going from this doting love interest to [when she] just flips it on a dime and becomes this shark.”
Johnson added that she loved how the writers gave us a glimpse into a future where you have these “two beautiful women of color on screen and they’re engaging in this same-sex relationship” and it’s just normal. They don’t need to explain anything. “This is the future where there’s fluidity,” she said. “I love that Jeanine and I got to play with that.”
In addition to a new love interest, Aleesha also finds herself taking huge risks in this third season. “I love Aleesha's last scene of this episode. She doesn't know what the consequences [are]. She's a character who is used to doing what she wants. We see her get scolded a little bit, but what we love about Aleesha [is] she’s gonna do what she wants,” Johnson said. “But then there's this moment where it's like… but maybe there's some real consequences to essentially whistleblowing.”
Now that we know downloading back into the real world is actually possible — what’s next? “I think the next logical question with that is how many times can you upload and download? Upload is still kind of flawed and and all of our digital after lives are a little funky, but if we could just keep — you know like the star-bellied snitches, anybody? — just keep recycling our old body and then upload for a little bit and then new body… I mean could we download into pigeons if we want to?” asked Edwards. “How many do you get before your soul expires or does it? That's what I want to know next.”
This season also ended with a wild cliffhanger teasing that one of the Nathan doubles didn’t make it. “We don't know for sure. The writers keep it pretty tight lipped, but we have our theories,” Amell shared. “We're kind of split. We think it could be the backup. Obviously that makes the love triangle hit a little more back to season one where the backup and Ingrif are about to get married and Nora doesn't have a Nathan anymore. Then you have to look at if it is original Nathan, is he alive in the real world or are downloads not a thing that are allowed yet? There's the whole he's owned by Horizen, does he have to live as an upload? […] Our whole writing team they are very, very good at what they do and they're very creative. We're all fans of the show, so I am very excited to read season 4. Hopefully we get to soon and hopefully we get to to work on it very soon after that, so my fingers are crossed.”
All three seasons of Upload are streaming on Prime Video.
