The Man in the High Castle season 3, episode 1 recap: ‘Now More Than Ever, We Care About You’
Last season on The Man in the High Castle, Juliana teamed up with Abendsen and was reunited with Trudy from another world. Joe was arrested for treason along with his father.
Smith became a national hero for uncovering that treason, inspiring his son to turn himself in to be euthanized for his genetic condition. Himmler takes over as Reichsminister.
Now Juliana is a full-fledged freedom fighter. She’s ditched the lame haircut and has traded in the latest fashions for some sensible pants and a machine gun.
She and Trudy are hiding out in the neutral zone with Abendsen and his wife Caroline. Trudy is from a world where Juliana is dead, so it’s fateful that they are brought together, but Trudy is restless and literally homesick, unable to transport herself back.
Juliana is curious about her part in the films, especially since she’s even randomly in a fake newsreel that Abendsen put together years ago. She wants to know what her place is in everything, how it all ends and what her destiny is.
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Joe is tortured and “re-educated”, being made to execute his own father before being initiated into some kind of group that bears a symbol that resembles an upright three-pronged pitchfork. Members of this same group attempt a raid to capture the Abendsens but are killed by Juliana and Trudy.
They go into hiding, split up until its safe. Juliana and Trudy stay in Denver where Juliana has a romantic evening with a local black market connection named Wyatt Price (Jason O’Mara).
Before she can see him again, though, she and Trudy decide to visit Tagomi in San Francisco to watch the remaining films and get his help with the ailing Trudy.
Meanwhile, the Reich is having a big ceremony to honor Thomas Smith’s brave sacrifice to uphold Nazi ideals. They are renaming his high school in his honor, but while others have been inspired by Thomas’s bravery, his parents are understandably having a hard time accepting the righteousness of his death. Helen especially is unstable and often drunk.
The ceremony is attended by Reichsmarschall George Rockwell and J. Edgar Hoover, who privately discuss the failed raid on the Abendsens and “Berlin’s” displeasure at having lost three of his Lebensborn in the process. They’re concerned about Smith finding out about it and decide to pin the raid’s failure on a traitor in his office.
Erich Raeder arrives at Joe’s apartment to supply him with his new cover identity and papers – Joe Cinadella, the name he used in the novel.
They meet in the ally under cover of darkness and Joe kills him with a shovel, two men arriving shortly after to clean up. It seems that Erich was chosen as the scapegoat traitor, and that part of Joe’s new job in this secret Lebensborn organization is as an assassin.
Erich was always Smith’s most trusted right-hand man, so one would think that this would not go over well with Smith, only making him more suspicious of whatever it is they’re trying to hide from him.
The Man in the High Castle season 3 is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.