Spoilers ahead for Man In The High Castle seasons one and two.
The Man in the High Castle seemed like the perfect TV show for dark times. For anyone worried that the next four years will herald a crackdown on civil liberties or the empowerment of groups who believe only certain lives have value, Amazon’s alternate-history drama gave us a group of people trying to survive a world that seemed truly hopeless. But now that The Man in the High Castle has returned for a second season, it’s turned into a different kind of show — and a much less interesting one.
The Man in the High Castle was created by Frank Spotnitz as an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1963 novel of the same name. In the series, half of America was annexed by a victorious Nazi Germany after World War II, and the West Coast became a colony of Imperial Japan, laying the groundwork for an alternate Cold War. Any protest is brutally suppressed, and an ineffectual resistance barely clings to life. The only hope comes from a series of mysterious newsreels that seem to show a different reality. Both Adolf Hitler and a mysterious figure known as the Man in the High Castle are eagerly collecting those films.
The first season gave flawed people in bad systems impossible choices
The first season explored this world by giving flawed people in bad systems impossible choices between political ideals, loved ones, and basic ethics. John Smith (Rufus Sewell) was an American Nazi officer tasked with killing his own son to comply with eugenics laws. Takeshi Kido (Joel de la Fuente) was a police inspector covering up a crime meant to bait Japan into war. Frank Frink (Rupert Evans) was a Jewish machinist who wanted revenge against the Japanese for killing his family, but his plans backfired terribly. The finale put viewers in the position of rooting for a plot to assassinate Hitler, even as they knew his death would probably lead to a devastating power struggle. Every seemingly good decision, including the implied option of resetting history through the films, could break something irreparably.