But despite his most successful marriage to thrilling detective and science-fiction, High Castle has always been at its best, when a Greater American Reich would be made into tricky moral soil.
Fortunately, season 4 does some great character work, making it one of the scariest of the last three seasons.
Unfortunately, those moments are an otherwise disturbing tale, loaded to serve many characters and weak confidence in its own central conceit.
Season 4 picked up exactly where Season 3 left off, in which Juliana Crane (Alexa Davalos) was shot by John Smith (Rufus Sewell) as he ran into the All-World (ours), with the Allies playing Won the war.
While Juliana spends a year all over the world, the power shift between Reich and the Japanese Pacific states leaves an opening for Smith to consolidate his power.
These shifts are partly thanks to the skilled, escalating activity of the Black Communist rebellion, a newly launched faction of resistance fighters.
Man in the High Castle, Hawthorne Abendsen (Stephen Root) is still in Nazi custody, being forced to finish his life’s work as a clever piece of propaganda that we won’t spoil here.
To follow two higher orders and a resistance, MITHC always had to serve a large cast of characters, often for their own protest.
If you were hoping that Season 4 would get more attention after some of the shows from the previous season ended, you are going to be disappointed.
Season 4 not only introduces a new focal character, B.C.R. Leader Bell Mallory (Francis Turner), but a group of new supporting characters who, in some cases, are completely redundant.
Early episodes of the season are particularly difficult due to the frequent cuts and new additions between High Castle’s plotlines.
Time spent on new characters and outside subplots can be better spent than the flattery of the three main characters. Juliana’s story, in particular, is empty of any meaningful character development.
For the most part, Juliana’s utility in Season 4 is her knowledge of Smith and even more commonly used to move the plot simply.
This is no comment on the performance of Alexa Davos, who is just as strong here as she has been throughout the show, but it is certainly not the weight she was working on with better material.
Much more interested in the Smith and Kido stories of season 4, the two men have faced deserved reimbursement for their actions throughout the series – filled with devotion by each person to their family, and keeping them intact For the length they go.
Smith’s plans to that end, involving the entire world, are fairly predictable, but still seem important thanks to Rufus Seawell’s tense, multi-layered performance. Likewise, Helen Smith of Chella Horsdal has a far more capable, empowered presence this season.
Now that some time has passed since the loss of Thomas, Helen is left with the temper of a mother who has lost her son, causing neither of them to understand fully.
He is very satisfied to see John standing at the end, and this is why his disinterest in this work at Honesdale. Kaif Inspector Kido finds himself in the same dilemma as Smith.
In the more effective (and affected) subplots of season 4, Kido sees her son Toru working on getting out of a dangerous situation that could be due to Kido’s failures.
Joel de la Fuente does a brilliant job of playing another emotionally complex Kido once Toru’s troubles begin and moments come where Kido always adds words of praise to the men in his command with a deeper meaning as we know that he is talking to his son.
