The Man In The High Castle Season 4 Review: The Strongest Story Is A Personal One
While the open war the third season hinted at has not come, a different line of attack becomes a significant piece of The Man in the High Castle during its fourth season.
The power of choice, and past decisions coming back to haunt you, is a larger element of this final season than originally anticipated. It’s less about bombast and revenge on behalf of regaining a country, but a smaller, more intimate look at the personal choices of individuals locked in lives they have no way out of.
The fourth season is about the difficulties and sacrifices that happen from putting one’s faith into an idea, and the emotional fallout that causes once your use for that idea starts finding an end point. The cracks have always been there, but this season brings a fine point to those cracks, and what causes them.
Because of this, some characters feel a little sidelined in the process. Juliana Crain has been the lead of the show, but this season takes on a more ensemble approach to show the fight on the frontlines and in the shadows from different, much-needed perspectives.
Race on the show has been used to show the cruelty done upon those without power; with its fourth season, The Man in the High Castle smartly takes that concept and broadens it out to show from a black perspective the endless injustices. It allows for a more poignant and important voice to rise up through Frances Turner’s Bell, whose story allows for a more powerful angle the show needed.
Rufus Sewell’s John Smith has been a fascinating character throughout the series, and continues to be the dominating force here. There’s a level of Smith that previous seasons have hinted at that is given more time and effort to humanize the man who does inhumane things. It’s about digging about and uncovering if he does these things because he believes in them, or if he has no other choice.
This may sound like rewriting his character, but it is done in a way where he stays true to who he has been up to this point, while offering a larger window into who John Smith is deep down underneath the uniforms and armbands, and what really drives his ambition and behavior. It’s clever, and it does right by John’s drive and gives Sewell a lot to brilliantly work with.
Because that’s what The Man in the High Castle’s fourth season is about, really: what drives someone. Is it hope? Hope comes in small but effective doses over the course of these initial five episodes, and usually with a chaser of hardship as punishment. It’s more personal, which is where this season finds a lot of potency.
The larger narrative of the rebel effort to overthrow the Japanese empire in the west and the Reich in the east leaves this sense of impossibility. While the third season dabbled in using messaging and images to inspire an overturn, the fourth season largely negates this and makes it about causing enough small cuts to inspire change.
The way the story is told allows for those small cuts to show that while they may not have long-term effects on those empires, it is allowing for some justice to characters who feel disillusioned by the horrors on daily display.
It can be difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and a little difficult to see if these five episodes can lead to a satisfying conclusion with the following final five. But The Man in the High Castle is taking on the larger issue of race and equality that previous seasons have only touched on. Tying human stories to the atrocities of the empires and their strangleholds makes for a more emotionally charged story.
Juliana and John Smith are opposing forces in a game much bigger than them, and both find richness to their character through showing humanity. While the larger alternate worlds and rebellion aren’t as significant as originally expected, the shift to the more personal angle does allow for something that resonates far brighter: that goodness can win in some form.
The Man in the High Castle proudly boasts this, and does so with great skill. It’s about finding the goodness in people and keeping hope alive against insurmountable odds.
Those looking for bombast and overthrowing hate may find some disappointment, at least during this first half of the season, but perhaps the point of The Man in the High Castle has never been about that, but rather instilling inspiration so that the fight will go on while trying to do the right thing.
What did you think of this season of The Man in the High Castle? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Man in the High Castle returns Friday, November 16 on Amazon Prime Video.
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Kevin Lever
Kevin Lever has been following television closely for most of his life, but in starting to cover it, he has grown a further appreciation. He strives to give the blockbusters their due, and give the lesser known shows a spotlight to find more fans.