Upload season 3 review: The sci-fi comedy loses its charm
Greg Daniels' Prime Video series feels like a different show in its dull third outing
Oh, Upload, what the hell happened? The endearing, inventive sci-fi comedy sadly loses grasp of its unique appeal in season three, returning as the dullest version of itself. The new season, which premieres October 19 on Prime Video, is disjointed and messy as it spins in circles instead of pushing the story forward. Greg Daniels’ series still has the same beating heart: an unexpected, moving romance between Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell) and Nora Antony (Andy Allo). Their chemistry is intact, but Upload feels otherwise aimless and—deep sigh—boring. And it’s because season two’s finale trapped the show in a tricky corner that it struggles hard to escape.
That second season sendoff ended with Nathan, killed and uploaded into a virtual afterlife called Lakeview, finding his way back to the land of the living. He successfully “downloads” into a new body, finally meeting his handler and love interest, Nora, in person. They’re not in a long-distance relationship anymore (“distance” meaning dead vs. alive or real vs. virtual, of course). So how does Upload chart this new territory, where both leads aren’t in different dimensions of reality? Poorly, despite Amell and Allo’s charming banter.
As it turns out, Upload’s main selling point is the tech-driven Lakeview and the challenge it poses to Nathan and Nora’s relationship. With that hindrance gone, the premise that made the show stand out dissipates. Now both characters are saddled with a generic arc in the drab, dreary real world instead of navigating crazy hurdles in a colorful, fake afterlife. (It’s akin to The Good Place, created by Daniels’ regular collaborator Mike Schur, stripping away its utopian setting.) It’s not that Lakeview is wholly absent (a secondary and disappointing subplot occurs there), but the magic of Upload largely is.
Nathan and Nora now race against time to bring down Horizon, the massive company behind the virtual afterlife. Upload feels timely on the surface because of its war on big tech, AI, and corrupt CEOs. Yet these angles are painted with such broad strokes that they rob the show of an emotional core. It’s almost comical how, in one scene, corporate honchos sit in a dark conference room, mulling over how to profit off of the poor, as we barely even know any of the execs. The stakes are too distant to care about, even with the knowledge that Nathan’s head could literally explode at any minute.