The Man in the High Castle’s cast and crew talk season 3 shockers and all too real similarities to today
The Man in the High Castle’s cast and crew preview a season 3 filled with shocks, surprises and all too real similarities to our own timeline.
Warning: Minor spoilers for The Man in the High Castle’s season 3 below.
“There comes a time when all men must bear the weight of their responsibility.”
These words are spoken by Inspector Kido (Joel de la Fuente) in the first season of The Man in the High Castle. Little did Kido, or we as viewers, know how much meaning lay within those words. In the third season of Amazon’s American dystopian series, we’re about to find out.
Culturess spoke with the show’s cast and executive producers at New York Comic Con about season 3 of The Man In The High Castle, which premieres October 5 on Amazon Prime Video. Along with further exploration into the series’ multiverse, and the ability of people called “Travelers” moving between different realities, this season focuses heavily on actions and consequences.
More so the consequences.
Rufus Sewell (Obergruppenführer John Smith) and Joel De La Fuente (Inspector Kido) agree that from the very first episode this season, it gets dark. The punishment Joe Blake must inflict upon his father, Reichsminister Martin Heusmann, was the first major shock, in Fuente’s opinion. Then we have Helen Smith and her “unexpected run in” as Fuente describes it. From there, we see blow after blow dealt towards fan favorites and villains alike.
Photo Credit: Liane Hentscher/Amazon Prime Video
Interestingly enough, it is John Smith who comes under fire the most this season, and as I put it to Sewell, we may actually feel bad for a Nazi. Well, almost.
For the Smith family, Thomas’ death by sacrifice causes their loyalty to the Reich to crack and crumble. John does what he can to remain strong and loyal in the eyes of the Reich, while his wife Helen begins to openly voice her concerns and criticisms. As his family comes under fire time and time again, the nature of John Smith’s work causes him to question the man he has become. Can he remain loyal or will he break?
If Smith watches more tapes that put him in an alternate reality where his son is alive, and they’re sipping on Coca-Cola’s while watching Martin Luther King Jr. speak, he just may.
“It confirms fears and struggles that he’s had right from the start. You know, he knows he’s kind of made a devil’s bargain. He has tussled with the Smith that he might’ve been, you know, that still exists somewhere in him. So even when he appears to be a zealot, he has doubts.”
Sewell adds now that repercussions are knocking on Smith’s door, there is irony to this man learning he’s essentially lived another life that is unburdened and blissful.
Photo Credit: Liane Hentscher/Amazon Prime Video
As for Chelah Horsdal, who plays the supposedly devoted wife of Obergruppenführer Smith, Thomas’ death is her tipping point. Helen comes to realize the imperfections of the Reich’s devotion to a perfect race.
“It affects everything for her in the new season… She begins to question a lot of choices that they have made up until this point,” Horsdal says.
She adds that if Helen could be given a few alt versions of herself, or even see them, she imagines the once-dedicated Reich wife would be ready to take down the patriarchy.
“I always thought that Helen would be an awesome, raging feminist in an alternate reality, that she would be at sort of the precipice of women’s rights… I fantasize that, that she is that woman living underneath these circumstances.”
Photo Credit: Liane Hentscher/Amazon Prime Video
Alexa Davalos, who plays the show’s protagonist Juliana Crane, spoke on how Crane is set with a hard task in season 3 of trying to destroy the Nazi’s technological attempt of traveling to other worlds. She’s personally learned the significance of these worlds, from being reunited with her sister Trudy to seeing more versions of herself, and not just as a sweet mother with a doting husband.
“In the third season, we see her in quite a few. She’s got this sort of antenna now. She’s connecting with all of those things so we see her in quite a few,” Davalos says of Juliana exploring other versions of herself, even remembering other lives. Yet as Davalos explained, “the core is the core even in their alternate selves as the environment changes.”
One striking characteristic of the new season both cast and crew discussed was how elements and even whole storylines may eerily connect with the current American political climate.
Executive producers Isa Hackett and David Zucker note how season 3 was written a year and a half ago. Hackett added that the book the series is based on, written by her father Philip K. Dick., goes even further back, having been published in 1962. Yet viewers may notice parallels with today, as they watch journalism struggle within the confines of the Reich, same-sex couples hiding their truth, and perhaps most vividly disturbing of all, a neo-Nazi march that is all too similar with 2017’s Charlottesville protest.
“What was chilling was the fact that by the time we saw the filming of that, I was used to seeing it,” Sewell says of the Nazi protest scenes. “It wasn’t too shocking to watch things because we were reminiscent from watching the news in a way that I’d never have envisioned when we were doing the pilot.”
Hackett spoke on the similarities between today’s headlines and The Man in the High Castle, noting how her novelist father would feel about the renewed conversations on fascism.
“I think producing the show now in this day and seeing things that we couldn’t have anticipated we would see now — I think it’s especially relevant and important. So I think he would be very, very proud that it is in the conversation and possibly even inspiring people.”
Hackett adds that “in season 3, we really dig into the Resistance more than we have in the past. A more competent Resistance and the notion of resistance in lots of different forms. So on a certain level, I would hope, and I know he would hope that people would be inspired by that.”
Perhaps we will be.
As a modern resistance rallies day by day against the current administration, and we’re barely a month away from the 2018 midterm elections, perhaps The Man in the High Castle‘s Resistance can offer a moment of inspiration as well as hope — even if it is for just a moment, in a different reality, in a show.
The Man In The High Castle season 3 premieres October 5 on Amazon Prime Video.