'The Man in the High Castle' Recap: 'Detonation'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

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

Normally when I watch a television show on a streaming service, I tend to watch one episode at a time so I can properly sit down and digest everything that I just witnessed in the story. But the last three episodes of the second season of The Man in the High Castle completely changed that rule for me. I had to know how this story was going to end, and I had to know right away, so in rare fashion...I powered through these final episodes, on the edge of my seat the entire time thanks to the grand setup that the last episode assembled for all of us.

After all, Hitler and Heydrich were dead and Martin Heusmann was now the Chancellor of the Reich and finally revealed to be the big bad of the series and part of me wondered as I settled in for the ninth episode, 'Detonation' how the heck they were going to top that kind of epic reveal and as it turns out...a blend of the gentle storytelling this season has offered our way and the outright intensity that the last episode brought forth would come together to provide us with another stunning story, one filled with some incredibly jaw dropping moments.

But before we get into those, let's talk about the gentle moments, because this episode returned us to Trade Minister Tagomi's alternate life in an alternate San Francisco, where he was more or less privy to the duality of man in a rush of hurried moments. Because on one hand, peace was coming to America once again with the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but on the other hand, the arms race was still on and the footage of a Hydrogen Bomb being tested in the Bikini Atoll shook Tagomi to his core forcing him to make a big decision to return 'home' and he took that footage and said his goodbyes to his alternate family...in the hopes of using this footage to save his own world from destruction.

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As Tagomi made the trek back to his world, chaos was becoming the norm in the Greater Nazi Reich. Because armed with the knowledge that Hitler was dead, The Resistance went to work, getting to Lucy's husband by way of Juliana...and forcing him to announce live on air that Hitler was dead before an official announcement could be made. It put the pressure on John Smith to quell The Resistance as quickly as possible, but before he could put his plans in motion, Heusmann took a moment to address the entire Reich, informing its good citizens that Adolf Hitler was poisoned by an assassin from the Japanese Pacific States and that the Reich would take swift vengeance against them in what Martin called an 'outright act of war'.  

That meant at long last, the war the Reich had been hoping for was now inevitable and as preparations began for the conflict...The Resistance all over the GNR and the Pacific States, jumped into action. They had of course, been waiting for this moment of weakness and in San Francisco, Frank was finally ready to truly give his all for a greater cause, and volunteers to drive a car filled with explosives into Kempaitai Headquarters to send quite the message and get Frank a little payback in the process. But while the delivery and arming of the device goes off without a hitch, Frank and Sarah are stopped mere seconds before Frank is recognized by Kido, forcing a firefight mere moments before the bomb goes off...

So there you have it, just like that the episode ends with devastation and sheer implication that Frank and Sarah are dead and to top it all off, war is coming and this has to be the darkest episode the series has put forth yet because it truly feels as though everything is falling apart and this one left us without hope or a way out and heck, to make matters worse, there's a good chance the secret is out as well on Thomas Smith's illness since he visited Juliana about said illness and their conversation was recorded. Either way, this is it, one episode left in the books, and one last chance to save the planet from the Third World War and at this point, the world is either going to be plunged into a hellish nuclear nightmare, or somehow the good people in this story will find a way to save millions of lives...until next time...

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