Upload season 3, episode 2 recap: “Strawberry”

In the previous episode of Upload, Nathan and Nora escaped with a bag full of hard drives, each containing someone who had tried to upload to Freeyond. As the second episode begins, it seems like their plan is to go around trying to find the people related to those who had attempted to upload, and give them back their loved one in the form of a hard drive.

Upload season 3, episode 2 recap – The dystopian farm of the future

This plan appears to be going south when it results in the two of them having a gun pointed at them, by the father of the uploaded soul that they’re trying to return. It’s only thanks to the uploaded person’s brother, who has a parting message, that the parents finally believe the reason for Nathan and Nora showing up.

They invite Nathan and Nora in for supper and give them a place to crash for the night. The next day it’s time to go to work on the farm, and in this case, everybody has to work.

While Nathan and Nora are milking the cow, what starts as some playful teasing gets out of hand and they end up getting mad at each other. Nora realizes that having to exist together in the real world is not the same as how their relationship has worked in the past.

The two of them are able to make progress on their relationship by addressing the issues and focusing on how they need to be able to work as a couple moving forward.

Upload season 3, episode 2 recap – A day in the life of New Nathan

Meanwhile, the second Nathan is still at Lakeview dating Ingrid. Ingrid, after talking with Nathan’s new angel Tinsley, realizes that this is a backup of Nathan that Tinsley uploaded after she lost the first one.

Now, Ingrid has a second chance to make things work, but also has dirt on Tinsley, who would be fired if it was found out she lost one of the uploads. Ingrid plans to make things work this time around with New Nathan and starts by trying to make herself more like Nora.

New Nathan, still unaware that he is a backup upload, is confronted by David Choak, who tries to figure out how he saw Nathan in the bathroom in the real world last episode. Nathan has no idea what he’s talking about, and David Choak begins to fear that he might be starting to degrade.

At dinner Ingrid confesses to Nathan that she didn’t upload but has actually been in a hug suit this entire time. This time around Nathan is not mad at her, but happy that she is still alive in the real world.

He’s also happy that she told him the truth and promised that would be the end of the lying. It appears for a moment that Ingrid is making real progress as a person, but right at the end we learn that she had Tinsley on standby to delete New Nathan and upload him again if the conversation had gone badly, suggesting that she is still the same person that she’s been this whole time.

Upload season 3, episode 2 recap – Why is this happening?

As this series starts to get more complicated, it feels like the question of, “why is this happening?” is coming up more and more frequently. Nathan and Nora seem to have a plan to deliver the hard drives back to their loved ones.

But there’s no plan about what to do with them. And if that was their mission, why did they have to stay on the farm a whole extra day to do chores?

There’s an entire AI subplot through this episode that doesn’t seem to go anywhere. It has a little bit to do with Aleesha moving forward and Luke feeling like he’s getting left behind by everyone.

But that doesn’t seem to go anywhere nor have any impact on the greater plot of the show. Of course, this is still just the second episode of the season, so we’re still in the setup stage with plenty of time to see how all of this develops.

However at the same time we’re in the third season of a very serialized show. So much of the previous episode was trying to catch back up and remember everything that happened before.

Now this episode feels like we might still be in that territory, only we’re trying to figure out not only what we should already know from the previous seasons, but what’s important to retain so we’ll know what’s happening going forward. It’s a lot of ground to cover, and with four to 6 plotlines happening at the same time, it’s easy to see why that amount of information starts to feel cramped in a half hour format.

What did you think of Upload season 3 episode 2? You can watch Upload season 3 on Amazon Prime Video.