Upload – a pre-quarantine Amazon show that got its second season at the beginning of March almost two years after the release of its first season back in the first half of 2020.

The show is set in 2033 in a dystopian world filled with self-driving cars, 3d printed food, extremist groups, and a solution to death: upload. Upload allows you to cheat death by uploading your consciousness into a virtual world (although you have to pay for a subscription of course) and you can live among other “uploads” in a resort style community. 

The show is centered around the main character Nathan Brown, a young man who was mysteriously killed in a freak self-driven car accident. After being uploaded, Nathan goes on to wonder why his self-driving car crashed, and soon comes to the conclusion that he was murdered.

His reasoning is that he was murdered by the corporation that owns upload because he was coding a startup that would eliminate the need for people to have to pay all the subscription fees and instead they would pay an upfront fee and make a reality of their own after they got uploaded. 

This is where the show gets spotty. On paper, the plot looks great, and I’m usually a fan of the dystopian future shows. But Amazon’s execution was not great. 

The first season started slow and ended on a big cliffhanger. This is normal but most viewers were expecting big things in the second season. Instead what they got was a seven episode season filled with a lot of repetitive filler episodes that didn’t contribute to the plot much.

This can be a good thing with a good supporting cast and entertaining side episodes, but with only seven episodes, it just felt like Amazon studios pushed the entire plot into the last two episodes and didn’t really focus on more complex character and plot development.

Although they tried with the addition of the extremist groups and starting a romantic arc between Upload employee Aleesha and her client Luke, neither of those had the ability to be fully developed with the shortened season.

I would’ve loved to have seen a full 10 episode season from Amazon. If you’re going to release a second season of a good show, see it through. Don’t go halfway and quit. I wouldn’t expect this show to be brought back for a third season unfortunately. It had potential, but it really just couldn’t execute.

Unfortunately I’d have to give the show overall a 4/10 rating largely in part of the second season not living up to expectations.