After just four amazing episodes, Upload has officially logged off for good. Its final season is sure to leave fans with more tears than laughs, though there are certainly still plenty of laughs to be had over the course of the final season which brought the show’s story to an emotional conclusion that is sure to create a lot of conversations among the fans who have followed along with the show over the course of the last several years.
Warning: The following post contains major spoilers from the final season of Upload.
Much of the emotional weight lands in episode 4, the series finale, when the fight to save Lakeview from the increasingly monstrous AI forces one of the show’s most beloved characters to make the ultimate sacrifice.
With the Evil AI guy becoming powerful enough to now enter the torrent and potentially take over the web, Horizon has no choice but to close the torrent and try to enact their final Hail Mary to save Lakeview. Aleesha is able to get a message to Luke to inform him of their plan to save Lakeview by getting the AI clone from the real world back into Lakeview to take down the Evil AI. They have a very short window to achieve the plan, and in the process of helping to save the day, Luke ends up paying the ultimate price when he saves Nathan and ends up being pushed into the torrent.
The moment was one that actor Kevin Bigley, who plays Luke, felt was a fitting end to Luke’s story.
“I think that it was completely and totally fitting,” Bigley reflected on the series finale moment when speaking with Show Snob at San Diego Comic-Con. “When you think about how he got there, what he's all about and what he loves most in the world, it really means a lot to him to come through for his friends, and I think he does that.”
Robbie Amell, who plays Nathan, agreed, calling it a “beautiful” moment and admitting that he “got choked up” by Luke’s hero death. And so did a lot of viewers.
Luke’s moment of bravery was deeply earned—rooted in years of loyalty and lightheartedness. It wasn’t flashy. It was human, and it proved how high the stakes of the finale truly were.
Nathan’s death in Upload was just as heartbreaking and emotional to the cast as it was for the fans
While Nathan and Luke’s friendship was one of the show’s many focal relationships, Nathan and Nora’s journey has always been the emotional heart of Upload. In the finale, fans hoped that the pair would get their happy ending after all they had gone through over the course of the first three seasons. Sadly, that was not the case.
It quickly became clear in the finale that Nathan’s time was coming to an end. As his body fails him, Nathan makes the ultimate decision not to go through the process of being downloaded or uploaded and chooses to die naturally. Before he passes, he and Nora exchange vows in a virtual wedding ceremony and Nathan spends his final time with Nora.
During a virtual walk through the park, Nathan tells Nora not to put her life on hold and to live her life once he’s gone. He tells her she helped him become who he is because of her and assures her she doesn’t need to feel sad. As he calls her his angel and the love of his life, he disappears from the simulation as he takes his final breath in the real world.
The scene was just as difficult to film as it was for fans to watch, with Amell admitting that he had trouble getting through the scene during the table read. However, he recognizes that it was a beautiful way to bring Nathan and Nora’s love story to an end.
“I had trouble getting through the Nathan and Nora scene at the table [read] like just not getting emotional. Part of it is because it's been 7 years and 4 seasons and this journey, but part of it is also Greg [Daniels’] writing is so honest and is so natural and feels like a real way that two people who love each other would come to terms with something like this. I thought it was beautiful, but it was very sad.”
That realism, even in a futuristic world of digital afterlives and clone bodies, is what gave Upload its edge. Despite the tech, it was always about the people.
Andy Allo, who plays Nora, had a more conflicted take.
“I didn't think it was perfect, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. [Laughs.] In season 3, she really got to experience what it'd be like to have a dream and getting a taste of that, ‘Oh, I can do something else.’ I think Nathan got to see that, and then so for this last season of her almost getting his approval of like, ‘Hey, you can have a life, it doesn't have to be all about me, and don't let our love hinder you,’ I think that was really special and relatable… [it was] heartbreaking, but hopeful.”
Her arc—choosing to live, to grieve, but not be paralyzed by it—is beautifully embodied in that final scene of the series. A stranger offers her coffee. She flashes her ring. He walks away. Then, in a quiet gesture, she moves the ring to her other hand, letting the flash drive within it connect to her tablet as we discover Nathan has left her with a final gift: a drive containing some of their many memories together.
Ingrid gets an unexpected happy ending
Meanwhile, the surprise of the finale might be that Ingrid and “her” Nathan actually get a version of a happy ending. Sitting on a couch in Malibu sometime in the future, Ingrid and recently downloaded clone Nathan are being interviewed as a power couple. Not only are the pair happily together, but we learn they’re expecting a baby and truly got their happy ending.
Allegra Edwards, who plays Ingrid, sees it as a complex victory.
“From the beginning, it just felt like Nathan and Ingrid had been doomed, but then in a surprise twist, [they get] a happy ending. I think their happy ending is happy, but it’s not what either of them pictured... I don’t know if it’s totally happy, but it’s better than she certainly deserves—and maybe she deserves it by now.”
Still, the losses remain. Luke is gone. Real Nathan didn’t survive. Even as Ingrid and Clone Nathan move forward, there’s an unspoken grief behind their happiness.
“There is still a cost in the Luke of it all, and I would say that Ingrid would still probably have her own grief about real Nathan also not making it. I think all of these characters have found a way to separate the two Nathans as two individual people, so they've all suffered a loss, and I feel like in the epilogue, that kind of interview at the end with Nathan and Ingrid sitting on the couch talking to Gigi Gorgeous in Malibu with my haircut, is that they feel the loss of both Luke and Nathan.”
Upload season 4 is streaming now on Prime Video.