The Man in the High Castle Season 3: First Full Length Trailer and More

Among the world-changing events in Amazon’s new trailer for season 3 of The Man in the High Castle are the Nazi’s bid to rewrite American history by melting down the Liberty Bell, Juliana taking charge of the Resistance, and U2 allowing Pride (In the Name of Love) to be covered by another artist for the first time ever. Bono and the Edge must be fans of the show.

The new trailer is more than 2 minutes long and finally shows much more detail than the teaser trailers did, giving us a good idea of where Castle is going this season. It looks bold and exciting. They are taking the next step in world-building, opening up the parallel worlds for exploration and discussion among more of the cast and the original world.

Overall the trailer shows a natural progression of the storylines from their individual, secretive beginnings in season 1 to an organizational, national level in season 2, bringing us to an explosive, global, possibly multiuniversal level in season 3. With only 10 episodes and a season 4 renewal already in the bag, I’m willing to bet that the conquest/true exploration of the multiverse will wait for the next season, while this season is spent fighting over who is in control of the world when the gates are breached on an official basis.

The trailer and more after the jump.


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Amazon Renews The Man in the High Castle for Season 3 (VIDEO)

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Amazon announced this week that it has renewed The Man in the High Castle for a third season and hired a new showrunner as well.  Eric Overmyer will take over for season 3, after the show spent the second half of season 2 without a showrunner, instead “operating like a republic,” according to executive producer David Zucker.

“As timely as ever, the exploration of characters at a dark point for humanity has provided incredible stories for two seasons,” said Joe Lewis, Head of Comedy and Drama, Amazon Studios. “Eric and his team are doing an incredible job crafting stories about the inner lives of those who struggle to do good in a world that is not.”

Below the cut, watch the season 3 announcement video.

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The Man in the High Castle: Speculation for Season 3 (That Will Obviously Turn Out to Be Wrong)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Be6RvHu0HU

Here are our predictions for season 3 and beyond of The Man in the High Castle. (Or, probably more accurately, our hopes and dreams.) This is what we would do if we were writing the show:

Childan and Ed will be running their antiques business in the Neutral Zone, which will obviously also be a front for some less legitimate side business, and for the new and improved Resistance as well, once Juliana finds them.

Childan and Ed will be having an affair, both finally having admitted they’re either bi or gay. It’s clear Ed’s been in love with Frank since childhood, but he thinks Frank’s dead, so it’s time to move on. They may have him try to act on his crush on Juliana, but I think he knows she’s out of his league, and she’s emotionally unavailable anyway. Statistically, this show needs some queer characters. I’m going with the idea that same sex relations are forbidden in the Empire and the Reich, so no one is out, but things are looser in the Neutral Zone.

Abendsen will help Juliana and Trudy find Ed and Childan. Juliana will be in mourning for everything she’s lost. Tagomi may make his way to her at some point in this reality to make sure she is okay. She and Trudy might set off to find their parents and get them to the Neutral Zone. Eventually Trudy, Sarah, and Arnold will run the Western Resistance.

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The Man in the High Castle Season 2 Episodes 9 & 10 Recap: Detonation and Fallout

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We start episode 10, Fallout, with the only cold open of the season, maybe of the entire series so far. It’s December 11th, 1945. Smith and Helen arrive at a small cottage outside of Washington, DC. Helen is very pregnant with Thomas, who she says is kicking up a storm. As they’re settling in, an atomic bomb goes off in the distance, seen behind them through the cottage’s picture window. They realize the Nazis have bombed Washington. As we know from watching the series so far, this is the event that caused the Americans to surrender to the Nazis.

This little scene is one of my favorite things they’ve done so far. It’s so brief, but it tells us so much, and reminds us of so much. And it’s shot gorgeously. We start out watching the couple from inside the cottage with the camera at a slight distance, framing the room as if it were a family portrait or a painting. There’s even a Christmas song playing in the background. Everything is perfect for them, despite the war. The room is dark, and the sky is graying outside the window as the sun sets. They are in the dark about what is about to happen. Change is coming. John turns on the lights, and they discuss his work at the Pentagon and the baby, with Helen telling Smith that she thinks it’s a boy. They are working to keep their situation happy and normal, despite the war. As they’re talking, a loud rumbling starts, along with a flash of light. For a split second, you think it could be thunder and lightning, but the flashes and crashes continue. Helen and Smith turn toward the window, holding hands. They, and we, realize something is very wrong, but they are in this together. The camera pulls closer and closer to them, then finally between them, up to the window, where we finally see the red sky and mushroom cloud from the atomic bomb in the distance. This is the event that will eventually come between them. This is the episode where that comes to fruition. They walk toward the window, and the camera pulls around in front of them. Now the camera is outside the window, looking in. We’re in the Looking Glass world now, no longer the world that made sense just 5 minutes ago. We see the mushroom cloud reflected in the window while we see Smith and Helen at an angle and shadowed, through the window. Everything in their world and their futures is now off balance, askew, dark.

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The Man in the High Castle Recap Season 2 Episodes 6 & 7: Land O’ Smiles and Kintsugi

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After the slow-building tension of the past two episodes, the pace starts to pick up again with episodes 6 and 7. The characters are starting to put their plans into motion.

Joe talks with his father’s housekeeper, Frau Silva, and discovers that his father had a wife and two sons that he lost in the war. She refuses to answer any further questions after that, but otherwise continues to be ridiculously worshipful and kind of a stalker. Joe escapes her the first chance he gets and goes with Nicole to a Lebensborn overnight drug orgy in the country. While he’s stoned, he sees himself dead, and says goodbye to Juliana and his old life. When he wakes up in the morning, he tells Nicole he’s ready to go back to his father. That seems to mean he’s also ready to embrace being a Nazi, since he puts on the suit Frau Silva had left out for him the morning before, complete with Swastika armband. The Lebensborn appear to have organized themselves into some kind of Aryan superbaby cult. All it took was an orgy and a few hallucinations to convert Joe. Seems like the guy who went through that whole season 1 cross country ordeal and stood up to the great Obergruppenführer Smith multiple times might be able to hold out longer than one debauched night, but I guess he discovered it’s good to be wanted.

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The Man in the High Castle Season 2 Episodes 1&2 Recap: Three Castles

The Tiger’s Cave & The Road Less Traveled

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Time to catch up with Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle! We finally meet the man himself, Hawthorne Abendsen, and, not surprisingly, he’s a little nuts. The “castle” appears to be a giant warehouse full of alternate reality films. Metamaiden doesn’t like him. She’s confused about where these films are coming from, and how the supernatural aspect plays into the full picture of the show. I (metacrone) think he’s high strung from having seen so many potential future disasters, and he’s weighed down with the possible impact of his choices.

All three factions in the show’s world now have access to information about the alternate realities (and, consequently, have their own man in a high castle). The Resistance and the Nazis access it through films brought to Abendsen and Hitler, and the Japanese through Trade Minster Tagomi’s mystical abilities. Both Abendsen and Tagomi seem to have figured out that Juliana is an important, lynchpin character in some way. Tagomi appeared to feel that her locket was too important as a talisman to offer back to her, even as they were both staring at it in his house. I’m not clear about whether Hitler’s specifically trying to have her killed, but Smith has certainly been keeping up with her status and whereabouts.

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