Upload season 3, episode 1 recap: “Ticking Clock”

Catching up with the last season of Upload, main character Nathan was able to have his consciousness downloaded back into a new body in the real world, where he was finally able to be with Nora in real life. This season opens up with the two of them happy together, only for Nathan’s head to explode.

It’s a dream sequence, but it’s a reminder that the technology isn’t perfect, and that Nathan is likely living on borrowed time in the real world before his new body falls apart.

Upload season 3, episode 1 recap – Problems in paradise…as usual

In the world of the Lakeview, Luke is trying to find a replacement best friend, now that Nathan has been reuploaded into the real world. Ingrid meanwhile has decided to move on with her life after the events of the last season, where she realized that Nathan will never be the partner that she wants him to be.

This progress is stalled however when Tinsley, the new angel employee, discovers that Nathan is missing and reuploads a new copy in order to keep from getting in trouble. The new Nathan is a backup from a few weeks earlier and one that has no idea that he’s no longer dating Ingrid.

With this new Nathan, Ingrid sees a new chance to get exactly what she wants and restarts her whole scheme from the previous season. Meanwhile back in the real world, while Nathan and Nora are happy to be together at last, they still have to deal with the Freeyond conspiracy that was uncovered in the second season.

Posing as janitors, they sneak into the company with the plan to shut it all down. Unfortunately, Nathan can’t complete the shutdown, however, they discover an address for the servers where he should be able to take the whole system down.

Upload season 3, episode 1 recap – It’s been a conspiracy this whole time

Once they arrive at the servers, a new wrinkle in the Freeyond plan is revealed. The server is way too small to be able to hold all the data needed to store the souls of all the people that are supposed to be uploaded to it.

Then they find a press release that is meant to be sent out in the future about the destruction of the Freeyond servers by the anti-technology rebels, and the loss of the millions of lives that are being stored on Freeyond. It seems like the whole plan was just to get rid of millions of people, and more importantly, their votes.

Nathan sends out the press release to reveal the plan. While he does that, Nora, along with Matteo, heads to the upload center to try and gather up all the stored souls from the Freeyond facility.

After taking control of the upload room, Nora is trying to get all the hard drives that people are stored on when Detective Sato shows up to stop them. It turns out that he had been working for the big corporations this whole time and tries to kill Nora to keep the truth about Freeyond from getting out.

He shoots Matteo, and while Nora tries to upload Matteo to save him, she has to kill Sato first. Unfortunately, Matteo dies before he can be uploaded.

Nora sends Nathan a message about the situation, and he hurries to meet her. But as he’s running his nose begins to bleed, reminiscent of Nora’s nightmare, as the episode comes to a close.

Upload season 3, episode 1 recap – Remember all the stuff you need to know?

It can be easy to forget between seasons, but Upload is a show that has a surprising amount of complicated lore. You have the Upload world and all the rules as to how that works.

But you also have the dystopia real world, the big business conglomerates, the technology averse rebels that live in the woods, the idea of a free version of the Upload that actually might just be a conspiracy that has to do with voting power, as well as the mystery behind it all of whom was trying to kill Nathan and why. It’s a lot to try and remember, especially with the long periods between each season.

There’s a recap from the beginning of the episode, but even with that it still feels like you spend a lot of this episode trying to remember what was important from the last season and exactly where everybody’s relationship stands. All that to say the show picks up right where it left off, and it feels like it takes at least an episode to try and catch up.

There are moments where you might see somebody and struggle to remember if that’s a character who’s important in the show, or just an actor who looks familiar because you’ve seen them in something else. By the end of the episode, it feels like we’re starting to get back into the swing of things.

What did you think of Upload season 3 episode 1? You can watch Upload season 3 on Amazon Prime Video.