Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Upload’ Season 3 on Prime Video, In Which Two Nathans Are Better Than One

In the third season of Prime Video‘s afterlife dramedy Upload, our main characters, Nathan and Nora, are on a quest to upend Big Afterlife. Nathan’s consciousness, having been downloaded into a body, returns to Earth to help Nora and her activist friends blow up the system now that they’re realized that the billionaires profiting off the afterlife are playing everyone. Nathan and Nora are no longer working to just shut down a corporation, they’ve put themselves in danger now that they’re fighting against some of the most powerful people in the world and in the afterlife.

UPLOAD (SEASON 3): STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Nora (Andy Allo) and Nathan (Robbie Amell) are making out. It’s loving, it’s tender. “I think I missed a spot,” he says sweetly as he kisses the inside of her arm. And then she notices that he’s bleeding from his ear. A moment later his head explodes.

The Gist: At the end of Upload‘s second season, Nathan’s consciousness was downloaded into a cloned version of his body. Knowing that this process was highly experimental and he may only have 24 hours in that body (previous test subjects’ heads were known to spontaneously combust within a day), he was on a mission to protect his free afterlife program, Freeyond, and in order to do so, he needed to break into the Freeyond system with his retinal scan to manipulate the source code. (He also used his corporeal form to make sweet love to Nora, finally consummating two seasons of flirtation.)

The season ended on a cliffhanger though: With Nathan missing from his luxe afterlife resort, Lakeview, a backup version of his consciousness was being uploaded there, meaning that there might be two of him existing concurrently, let’s call the dead version Lakeview Nathan and the one with a corporeal form Real World Nathan. The major question at the end of season two was how much time we have with Real World Nathan, considering that his head might explode at any moment.

As the new season begins, Real World Nathan’s head does explode. In a dream. A nightmare, actually, that Nora has. But when she wakes, he’s still alive, and they’re collaborating with fellow LUDDs Matteo (Paulo Costanzo) and Ivan (Josh Banday) to try and break into Freeyond, the digital afterlife that promises heaven for all, not just the wealthy, which Nathan developed and was ultimately murdered for. (Meanwhile, Lakeview Nathan has no idea any of this is going down, and he exists on a different timeline where the last month never existed. When his girlfriend Ingrid realizes this, she looks at it as an opportunity to make things right with Nathan, who she has screwed over many a time.)

When Real World Nathan and Nora break into Freeyond, they realize that every major head of a digital afterlife company in in cahoots with one another, and that Freeyond is planning to be be used to manipulate and ultimately kill off “regular” people who aren’t rich. Nathan discovers a video deep in the Freeyond files that preemptively blames the deaths of millions of people, and the loss of their consciousnesses, on the LUDDs. Realizing that Freeyond is about to kill off millions and blame it on the LUDDs to provoke outrage, he makes the video public, putting himself in danger. Before the episode ends, Nora’s ex, Matteo, is killed by Detective Sato, who it turns out was working for Freeyond the whole time, and Nathan and Nora abscond to safety with a bag filled with hard drives containing the consciousnesses of all of Freeyond’s victims.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The most obvious comparison is The Good Place, another show about dead people trying to understand the mechanics and architects of the afterlife. You have to wonder if Mike Schur and Greg Daniels, who co-created Parks and Recreation together, has discussions about their views on the afterlife, given that Schur went on to make The Good Place and Daniels has made Upload.

Our Take: I feel like my mini recap of the plot above is detailed and potentially confusing, and yet it doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s happening in the show. Upload‘s third season is one of those big series shifts that changes the structure of the series in a lot of ways. While the first two seasons explored the juxtaposition of the real world and the luxurious afterlife at Lakeview, the new season raises the stakes by giving us two Nathans, one who is still trying to exist in the afterlife, and one who is essentially trying to shut it all down. Will they cancel each other out? Or coexist? How is this all going to work?

Increasingly complex and layered now, the show is staying fresh by allowing us to see different sides to characters who literally existed on different planes before. Nora and Nathan’s relationship is now consummated, but there remains a lingering dread that Nathan might just go kablooey at any moment. When the show reminds us of that, showing him with nosebleeds every so often, there’s a question of whether or not Real World Nathan will make it to the end of the season. But even if he doesn’t, we’ll still have Lakeview Nathan to keep this story moving.

Sex and Skin: This is definitely not network TV: there is plenty of skin shown on the show, and characters do have sex but nothing is gratuitous.

Parting Shot: Nathan picks up Nora from the Freeyond upload facility. “Where’s Mateo?” he asks. “It’s a long story,” she tells him, adding, “Help me with these,” and Nathan takes a duffel bag filled with people’s uploaded consciousness files and throw it in their van which drives off.

Performance Worth Watching: With Robbie Amell playing two different versions of Nathan this season, he’s going full Sliding Doors with his character, successfully making subtle tweaks that show different sides to Nathan in life and in death.

Memorable Dialogue: Ivan, who works with Nora and Nathan to help bring down Freeyond, is meant to be comic relief, but I’m genuinely mad at some of what they have him say. For instance, when Nathan and Nora kiss, he watches and says, “Schwing!” which I haven’t heard since the 1990s, for good reason.

Our Call: STREAM IT! I will admit that Upload can at times feel a little bit weighted down by a complicated plot (and since it’s been a year and a half since the previous season, which can make it hard to remember details). Still, season three proves that the show is still as reliably funny and original as ever thanks the array of funny supporting characters and an intriguing plot refresh.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.