Nathan Brown and the residents of Lakeview are bid farewell in the fourth and final season of Prime Video’s “Upload,” which consists of four episodes that attempt to wrap up all the loose ends. The episode starts after the events of the third season, which ended shockingly with Horizen capturing both the digital and real Nathan because, in theory, they are both company property. The suspense revolved around one Nathan’s survival while the other was eliminated by the malevolent corporation. That question has an answer at the start of this season, but by the end of the season, things have become considerably more complicated. BEWARE OF SPOILERS.
Upload Season 4 Plot Synopsis
The fourth season of ‘Upload’ kicks off with a wedding scene featuring Nora and Nathan at the altar, where they exchange vows. However, this joyful moment is revealed to be a virtual reality experience for Nora, as Nathan is actually deceased. Horizen has chosen to keep Nathan’s digital self in Lakeview, where he is preparing to marry Ingrid. Meanwhile, Nora is consumed by her grief, isolating herself in her room and repeatedly reliving the memory of their intended wedding in VR.
When she finally emerges from her room, Nora experiences what she believes to be a vision of Nathan, only to later realize that it’s not just a vision but a projection of him, indicating that he is still alive. As this unfolds, Ingrid and Nathan go through with their wedding. In a parallel storyline, Aleesha takes on a role as a spy for Oscar Mayer Intel, aiming to take down Horizen. Initially motivated by fear for her safety, she soon recognizes the corporation’s exploitative practices, which are designed to profit off every living person while the wealthy continue to accumulate wealth at the expense of the innocent.
Horizen introduces a new system called Workload for Lakeview residents, which eventually leads to an offer for their human employees to transition to this system. This change results in the tragic loss of Tinsley’s life, as she is digitized without much choice. The company also downsizes its human workforce, prompting Aleesha to take action before she faces termination herself. The management notices that their AI is too empathetic and decides to replace it with a new, more profit-driven AI. Initially, this change seems beneficial, but the new AI soon reveals a darker side.
Is Nora’s Nathan Dead?
It is assumed that Nora’s Nathan is deceased at the start of the season. By the end of the second episode, though, it is revealed that Horizen staged his death and is being held alive in a facility that performs human experiments. The billionaire overlords are using Nathan as a lab rat to study the human brain and develop new ideas that will enable them to live forever in a variety of ways. Unfortunately for Nathan, this entails suffering from torture that surpasses the extreme pain he endures. Every time his brain burns out, he loses his memories.
His condition will worsen over time, and eventually his brain will stop functioning, and this time he will be permanently dead because the more than forty scans have destroyed his brain so completely that it cannot be rewired back to its original state. Despite their best efforts, Nora and Nathan are unable to find a solution. Nathan’s brain cannot be fixed, not even by the AI guy who has been living on the streets of New York for so long that he has developed into a miracle healer. The couple eventually has to come to terms with their situation.
By extending the simulation to their honeymoon, they go one step further. In the simulation, Nora takes Nathan to Montreal because he requested that they travel there. Despite his lack of baking skills, they discuss his ambition to start a bakery. They wish each other good mornings and good nights they were unable to experience as they stroll through the city. Ultimately, Nathan advises Nora to move on with her life and not get stuck this time. He exhorts her to venture out, rediscover love, and lead the life she is entitled to.
What is in Nora’s Ring?
We learn where each character has ended up at the end of the episode, following the storm over Lakeview and the world’s rescue from an evil AI. It is evident that a while has gone by since Nathan’s passing, and we meet Nora at the cafe where she went with Nathan on their fictitious honeymoon. She appears to have taken his final advice to heart and is making an effort to live rather than just exist in a simulation. A man approaches her as she is using her device to sketch the scene in front of her, but she politely responds that she is married.
She acknowledges that she is still clinging to Nathan and decides it might be time to let go. As a result, she moves the ring Nathan put in her left hand during their mock wedding into her right. She returns to her drawing, but this time the ring asks to pair with her gadget. She finds out that the ring contains the second scan of Nathan’s brain—the first scan occurred in Season 1 when he passed away and moved to Lakeview—after being shocked but allowing the pairing. When Horizen captured Nathan and began experimenting on him, this scan was completed. Their projection became hazy as his memory deteriorated with each scan.
The clearest version of his memories can be found in this scan, which has been completely unaltered. The good-hearted Horizen employee gives Nathan all of his memories from Scan 2 stored in the ring device when Nathan asks him to save his memories of Nora. Nathan gives Nora this gadget as a wedding ring, but he never has time to explain what it contains—most likely because his brain is getting worse and he forgets. But now that Nora is aware of what the ring holds, there is a chance to bring Nathan back.
He can be replicated in Lakeview using Scan 2, just as he was at the start of the show with Scan 1. Nora and Nathan won’t have to worry about paying for the services or being taken advantage of by Horizen because Lakeview is now essentially a non-profit organization managed by the good AI guys. If all goes according to plan, they may eventually be able to download Nathan and give him a new body, which would provide a happy conclusion to his and Nora’s tale.
How is the Evil AI Defeated? What Happens to Lakeview?
Although Horizen’s desire for exploitation has been apparent since the first season, their ambition to profit from the deaths of people in Lakeview in the fourth season is especially sinister. Adding another iteration of the AI guy is one of the ways they try to make the place even more exploitative. In the past, the AI guys were trained to be more human, which meant that they truly developed empathy, cared for their visitors, and were willing to put other people’s needs ahead of the business’s profit-making interests.
But the company didn’t like this, so they introduced a less sympathetic version of the AI guy to counteract his empathy. This one is committed to the company’s mission and is distinguished by his black hair. He eventually becomes the only AI guy remaining after gradually absorbing other AI guys.
The worst part is that all of this absorption makes him stronger and makes him start to entertain a form of self-control. This culminates when it absorbs the final AI guy, who was hiding as a coconut and who became so hyper-aware following data exchange with Apple’s VR Resort Cove’s AI guy that it nearly reached singularity. Now that he has self-awareness, the malevolent AI guy disregards the needs and goals of the company. The streaming path, which is typically used to drive impoverished visitors out of Lakeview, is an easy way for him to escape Lakeview and reach his next target—the real world.
The streaming is halted in order to prevent the malevolent AI guy from leaving Lakeview and destroying the world as we know it. But this is only going to keep him out for so long. Someone more powerful than him is required to truly destroy him, and only one AI man has attained that degree of strength and expertise. The fact that he is not in Lakeview is the issue. This AI guy was let loose in the streets of New York in Season 3, and now he works as a miracle healer in Midtown. The AI guy is unable to assist Nathan and Nora, who are looking for him to help with his brain issue. He can assist Aleesha and Ingrid, though.
This problem is made worse by the fact that the good AI guy has so much real-world experience that his file is enormous and will take several minutes to upload. This allows the malevolent AI guy plenty of time to get out of Lakeview. But Luke chooses to step in when he notices her heading for the stream. By employing a trick that returns him to Lakeview’s lobby, he surprises the malevolent AI guy.
This buys them some time, but the bad AI guy comes back rather quickly, and Luke lacks the element of surprise this time. Since the enemy is far more powerful, Luke is flung into the stream, erasing his file and permanently killing him. Digital Nathan replaces Luke as soon as he passes away. While attempting to stop the AI guy, he also finds himself in danger of dying. Luckily for him, the good AI guy has already been uploaded, and he defeats the evil AI with ease.
The good AI can rewire the evil AI and drive out all the other AIs and visitors that he had ingested to fortify himself because of the power he gained from his experiences in the streets of New York, which the evil AI could never obtain in Lakeview. After everyone leaves, Lakeview returns to its previous state as the malicious AI dissolves. This time, though, things are better because the good AI man is strong enough to maintain Lakeview without Horizen’s help, and he and the other AIs no longer need Horizen’s help.
. They make the place their own, and because Aleesha instilled empathy and humanity in them, they wish to maintain Lakeview for the visitors, albeit as a non-profit. Thanks to the good AI guy and others like him, people can now continue to live in the afterlife and no longer have to pay for their uploads.
Does Ingrid’s Nathan Download? What Happens to Nathan and Ingrid?
The next step in Nathan’s relationship with Ingrid is for him to acquire a physical body, be downloaded, and return to the real world after they get married. But eventually, things in Lakeview become so chaotic that the black-haired, malevolent AI guy nearly wipes Nathan out of the world. But Nathan and Lakeview are spared because of the good AI guy. Nathan gains a lot of perspective from this near-death experience, and any hesitation he may have had about downloading is totally gone. eventually receives a physical body, and he and Ingrid begin their married life. Ingrid becomes pregnant shortly after, and they appear ready to welcome their child. However, that is not the only change in their lives.
Because of what happened in Lakeview, they wrote a book about their experiences, and it became a bestseller. In the meantime, Ingrid has launched a company selling fat suits—but they aren’t as bulky and unsightly as the ones she had to wear in order to communicate with Nathan in Lakeview. It turns out that she wasn’t the only one who had problems with the original suits, and she has made them look lovely and glitzy. Ingrid’s business is flourishing, and their fame and success eventually land them on a major talk show where they discuss their current situation.
They also provide an update on their friends, mentioning that Aleesha has joined Oscar Mayer Intel as a full-time spy (although no one knows the exact nature of her work), Ivan has married his vacuum cleaner, Lakeview is now a non-profit organization run by good AIs, and Nora is also progressing in her life. Everyone has a happy ending.
