"The Man in the High Castle" Recap: "A Way Out"

Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

Once in a great while, a season finale comes along that is so incredibly good and so incredibly powerful that you're left feeling abandoned when the episode comes to an end simply because you cannot believe how good it was and because you're dying for more of the story. It's rare, but as I recently discovered, that's the kind of finale The Man in the High Castle was happy to bring to the table and I am still in awe of how damn well they wrapped up season one and set everything up for season two. 

Now a lot happened in this finale, and quite frankly, it would have made more sense to extend this episode to an hour and half, but oh well, it was still damn satisfying and while a lot happened, two key plot threads are still dancing in my mind and we'll get to those in a moment because first...let's wrap up the easy stuff. For starters, Inspector Kido found out the Germans were behind the assassination attempt on the Crown Prince to start a war, meaning he could not reveal this fact to keep the peace but in the end Ed took the fall for the whole thing. Plus Juliana was willing to help Joe escape because she believed that he was not as evil as the films indicated. So, with all of that wrapped up and done, let's talk about the stuff that still has me in shock.

Let's start with the continuation of the whole mess between Heydrich and John Smith because this plot line was downright terrifying. It turns out that Heydrich wasn't going to just turn his gun on John and blow him away in the middle of the woods, that would be too crude. No instead they hiked to a remote cabin where Heydrich revealed not only his plan to remove Hitler from power, but to get the German war machine restarted and deal with the Japanese and well...any other race deemed inferior and to top it off...there were quite a few top ranking Nazi officers willing to go with him. It's the first time ever in the show I was rooting for a Nazi because I wanted John Smith to find a way out of this mess and deal with Heydrich accordingly because his plan to upset the peace that had been found after the war left me unsettled.

---

But the show wasn't done with its surprises just yet. Because as John dealt with the traitor, Wegener arrived at Hitler's mountaintop castle and well...this scene was absolutely stunning. Because as it turns out, Hitler was not as ill as we were led to believe. In fact he is in perfect health, just aged by father time and in possession of a small library of the films, which he spends his days watching. But not only is he healthy physically, his mind is still incredibly sharp since the Führer if fully aware of the assassination plot from Heydrich and he knows that Wegener doesn't have the strength to kill him. Turns out he's right and Rudolph commits suicide. But not before Hitler makes a call to Heydrich. Surprised to hear the Führer alive, that brief distraction gives John the chance he needs because he was smart enough to call for backup and after some brief gunfire, he has the drop on Heydrich and is able to inform Hitler that he has captured a traitor. 

But the most stunning moment of the episode came courtesy of Trade Minister Tagomi as he left work to find a place to meditate and decide his next move with war on the horizon. He went to the center of San Francisco and as he took the time to settle his soul and focus on the world around him...something magnificent happened...the world around him transformed. Suddenly the Japanese Pacific States were no more and the streets were filled with red, white and blue as he found himself in the middle...of the United States of America. Somehow he had transported to our world, well, the 1962 of our world and this final moment of season one oddly enough seems to move the show into a realm of science fiction and left me with so many questions.  

Does it mean that the films are in essence slices of alternate universes? Because it's clear now that two different worlds exist and Tagomi has traveled between both of them. Not to mention, is there another person out there like Tagomi who can travel these worlds and is leaving the films behind in an effort to save lives and show them a better way? It's hard to say but I'll be damned if this episode didn't get my imagination going and seeing as to how a second season of the show has been announced, I'm excited to get the answers to these questions and to see what happens next with the Greater Nazi Reich since we now know that there is a large contingency of top Nazi commanders ready to start a new war and see Hitler go away. Either way, this was a stunning first season for this show, I'm still in awe of how amazing it turned out to be. Season two cannot get here soon enough, I have to know what happens next. Until then.

---