Man in the High Castle: The Multiverse is Real

The cast and producers of the Amazon series tease Season 3 at New York Comic Con.

By Scott Collura

With The Man in the High Castle heading into Season 3 on Amazon soon, the producers and cast hit New York Comic Con today for a preview of what’s to come from the Philip K. Dick adaptation. The big takeaway? The multiverse.

(Click here to learn about how High Castle and Blade Runner creator Philip K. Dick's legacy lives on at Amazon with the new series Electric Dreams too.)

But right off the bat, a more serious topic came up at the panel: the relevance of producing a show about Nazis in a time when real-world events are taking place like the recent situation in Charlottesville. The producers of the show, executive producers Eric Overmyer, Dan Percival and Isa Dick Hackett, said that perhaps a show like High Castle is more important now than ever.

“Sometimes it’s challenging working on the show with the iconography,” said Dick Hackett, the daughter of the late Philip K. Dick. “But I think [Dick] said it best 40 years ago when he said the enemy is fascism. And that’s what we’ll continue to dive into on the show.”

Percival talked about the challenges of making a streaming show that the audience can binge all in one session if they so choose. “Making it is a bit like watching it,” he said. “It’s one episode at a time. The story thread is continuous. Even now it’s still the same story. Their desires, their fears, their needs. … So our understanding of how the films [on the show] work, their purpose, becomes more pertinent.”

He also promised “more of an insight into the multiverse in the third season. We’ll be focusing on America more. We bring Berlin to New York and Japan to San Francisco.” This was a conscious decision to pull back from some of the more globe-spanning elements of the show in an attempt to keep to a character-driven narrative. “Sometimes spectacle can [overwhelm] that,” said Percival.

More from New York Comic Con:

A clip from Season 3 was played which featured series star Rufus Sewell’s Nazi John Smith as he enters a mysterious lab. We see a woman strapped to a table with all manner of devices prodding her, and the attending scientist explains that they believe she “came here from another world.” Smith is clearly overwhelmed by this notion, asking, “So you’re saying different versions of us exist in other worlds?” The scientist explains that somehow this test subject has learned to traverse different realities. And… she had a film with her when she was apprehended -- one of those all-important films that High Castle is centered around. The clip ends with the scientist saying that the Nazis are now working on ways to travel to other worlds too…

“One of the things that starts to happen is the world begins to crack open for John Smith… the worlds,” said Sewell. “I like the fact that it’s been eked out slowly that by the time you get to these big story changes, we’ve been with the characters all this time. … But it starts to become deeper and stranger.”

New cast member Jason O’Mara (Agents of SHIELD) was cryptic about his character. “When we first meet him, his back story definitely comes into play,” he said. “And he and Juliana [Alexa Davalos] get on really well when they first meet. Exceptionally well! He’s Irish… I’ll say that! His name is probably Wyatt Price… part of the time. He’s a mysterious character.”

More from New York Comic Con:

Davalos said that playing Juliana for three seasons now (the show is still shooting Season 3 in Vancouver) has been a different experience for her. “I’ve never spent this much time with a character,” she said. “So this has been extraordinary. … I love this character and I love Philip K. Dick. One of the things that blows my mind about him is his perception of reality. … The doors have been blown open for [Juliana] now.”

Part of that involves the Season 2 revelation that her sister is now back somehow, despite having been killed off previously.

“It was shocking when Trudy came back a the end of Season 2,” she said. “And I tried to wrap my head around this. Why would Abendsen give her this gift of her sister, who is her sister but isn’t her sister? … It was physical, tangible proof that [the multiverse] is real.”

That crazy multiverse!

The Man in the High Castle Season 3 will debut on Amazon in 2018.

Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura.

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