r/maninthehighcastle

They are common nowadays, and since the show left many loose ends I wouldn’t mind one.

Forgot about her parents after Season 2, forgot about Lucy and then forgot about Ed and Frank after Season 3.

I'm wondering since I watched the show I noticed Mussolini and Italy never got mentioned or I just missed it

During WW2, we knew that Japanese were sent to internment camps, but also German and Italian American civilians, as they were considered as "enemy agents". Roughly 15.000 Germans were detained in these camps (and among them, Fritz Julius Kuhn, the president of the American Bund and a notorious pro-Nazi American, who gave his name to Thomas' school).

I wanted to ask you how you would describe the moment these German detainees would be liberated by the Nazis.

In the series, the Japanese-Americans were liberated by the Japanese but were considered lower than their Japanese counterparts for "surrendering" and were labelled as "traitors".

Do you think the Germans would consider their German counterparts as "traitors" as well for being detained ?

I would have liked to see Nazi occupied Britain and Japanese occupied India

They don’t seem the cleverest nor the kind of people that has broad popular support.

After watching for the second time and doing some googling trying to get it exactly what the plot is saying etc, I have concluded that they made a basic flaw that would have made the show much better.

The whole idea of a show world in which there are multiple universes and people that somehow can accidentally or purposely travel between them, or scientifically, is fine and intriguing. But it created a lot of problems to the plot that just messed up the alternate history story.

I don't know if it's in the show or just fan theory or what the showrunners have said, And also a little related to the original book, which I haven't read but read a little about. There seems to be an idea that this isn't just a universe in which the Nazis won and there are other universes in which they didn't .

There is an idea that something went wrong with the Nazis winning and for that reason, other realities keep intruding. But it's never really confirmed and brought out in the plot as far as I can see. Instead, it's simply a matter of multiple universes, some of which the Nazis won in and some of which they didn't .

This makes the whole thing kind of pointless in my opinion. Who cares if there are other universes or films from other universes? It's a little troubling that the Nazis want to access this portal and travel to another universe for some nefarious purposes. But what are they going to do? Try to conquer a United States that also has nukes? It's intriguing that the baddies have alternate lives in which they were goodies and could live in peace with their children. And that's a great motivation if there is something to be set right or corrected. But as it is now, just knowing there's an alternate universe with an alternate you living with his family in peace doesn't really mean much.

And in the plot, people like Julia keep talking about how if people just know and see these films and believe them, that they can somehow set it right by conquering the Nazis in the Japanese? But that makes no sense. Just knowing that in some timelines the Americans won because the Nazis didn't get the bomb, and the Americans did, so what ?

Is that supposed to rally people to fight to free themselves, knowing that it's possible. Of course it's possible to defeat any enemy or overthrow any invaders or colonizers, and people fight for that all the time. I honestly believe that the resistance would be much greater than it is in the show and the US would be impossible to pacify for either Nazis or Japanese. But that's another story. As it is, they act like just knowing there's an alternate universe or two in which the Nazis lost somehow is going to make some difference to people who aren't fighting them now. It makes no sense.

All that said, if there were somehow some glitch in the matrix so to speak, some thing that went terribly wrong, and I don't think Nazis winning is enough to throw off the universe. Bad guys win and build empires all the time. It has to be a result of the timeline glitch, not the cause. You can't just say those Nazis are so bad that there must be something terribly wrong with the universe. It just doesn't work.

However, if you somehow can figure out that There is an alternate timeline, not just a universe but a significant timeline that is what the existing show timeline is supposed to be, and something went terribly wrong but the correct timeline keeps intruding with travelers or film footage or whatever, because it wants to correct itself, then that might inspire people to try to figure out how to help it correct itself.

It wouldn't be that complicated. Maybe the Nazis conducted some nuclear experiment that created a glitch in the timeline. Or maybe the Nazis invented something using the portal technology that somehow through the timeline out of whack or even traveled into the other universe may be back in time or something and gave the Nazis the plans for the nuclear bomb and that threw off the timeline, but the timeline is constantly trying to correct itself.

I don't know how it might correct itself but maybe it might have to do with the resistance getting a hold of their machine in the mountains and reprogramming it to somehow reset and then boom all of a sudden the world is right even if no one remembers it or one person remembers it or who knows?

But I think that would all work because they would have a goal to work towards to somehow correct the timeline that has been wanting to correct itself anyway.

One of the biggest problems I have felt the show has is an inability to decide if it's a multi-universe show or a alternate history show. It was a pretty good alternate history corrupted by the constant multiple universe issue. An alternate history could have ended with a popular uprising that somehow overcomes the Nazis, maybe smuggling bombs into Berlin and Japan and defeating them with a popular military uprising in the US.

Or, it could be an interesting multiverse show in which there are maybe only one or two alternate universes that are actually accessible from this one through the machine but somehow agents from both sides get through to other universes and maybe they get the Americans to help them defeat the Nazis in the show universe. But they never really made that work and instead it just became a jumbled mess.

But, my conclusion is that if they simply made it a story about a timeline that was essentially minding its own business and somehow it got corrupted resulting in the Nazis winning, then it would make sense to somehow figure out a way to correct and restore it.

Anyway, that's my analysis of what's bugging me about the show and why I don't think it really comes together and how it could have made more sense and work better.

If I've got anything wrong according to the actual script and show, or even what the writers and show runners have said, please let me know so I can rethink it. But as it is it doesn't seem quite clear exactly whether there are just multiple universes or as some people have alluded to in the scripts, there's something off with this timeline.

Curious to hear other thoughts

And the actor ain’t so great either!

Supposedly the book sanitised them a bit. I have not read it so I can’t comment on that.

John it is implied doesn’t believe in the racist ideology (if you don’t count the final episode)

What about our two most integral Japanese characters?

What happened to Eva Braun after season 2?

Ending scene aside, I'm watching Season 4 for the second time and finding it actually really good.

Episode 5, which centers on Smith and shows how he became a Nazi and his interactions with Thomas and Helen in the alt world, is amazing and a strong commentary on post-war (and sadly also current) America. Kido's redemption arc , to the extent he can be redeemed, contrasted with his son's breakdown, are very good. Even the much-maligned BCR story kinda makes sense when you consider their alliance with the CCP and remember, as the writers constantly remind the viewer,that Japan's empire was overextended and falling apart at the seams.

Plus there are things I didnt even catch the first time like how Thomas' departure for the Marines and departure to be executed by the Nazis looked exactly the same, and the younger Smith daughter's terrifying Nazi brainwashing.

I mean, I donno, I don't see what is so bad here?

Watch a prequel series covering everything from 1933 with the shooting of FDR to the year prior to the start of the show in 1962, or a series set in the distant future (from the 1970s into the 2010s) continuing the plot after the events of the shows finale?

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I enjoyed "Man in the High Castle", both the book and the TV show, but I think "Fatherland" is better Nazi victory book, as well as film.

Would you be interested in watching a TV show based on that book?

lose and withdraw from the former USA was so satisfying

I’m not a fan of Season 4 or the BCR but after all the pain and suffering they inflicted in the show and irl I’m glad they suffered a loss.

And the imagery of the sun setting was so powerful.

I only wish we got to see the Rising Sun Flag burnt or destroyed.

Season 1 and 2 were good apart from Juliana. But 4 is killing me. John Smith seems so different from S1-3 as well.