It’s been roughly two and a half months since The Man in the High Castle’s series finale dropped, and I am adrift in the Die Nebenwalt of mourning. I miss looking forward to the next season. I miss following the cast and crew as they posted their behind the scenes shenanigans–I miss everything.
The finale was perfection. How can anything else ever top it? The show ended with such completeness, that I don’t feel the need to make up my own ending as I’ve often done with other shows. It is hard to come to terms with “It is over” when something has been your life for the past five years.
With that being said, I’ll never stop creating High Castle art. It has cemented itself a place in my heart.
With Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle finale dropping two months ago, I thought it would be fun to sit down and figure out who my favorite characters have been across all four seasons. It was not easy narrowing them down to just ten, but I somehow managed to do it.
Without further adieu, my top ten #HighCastle characters!
Honorable Mentions Admiral Inokuchi & the Crown Princess – I adored their practical, yet humane, approach to everything. Juliana – Her curiosity and determination to solve the mystery about the films and her sister’s death in Season 1 captivated me and forever turned me into a fan of the show.
10. Joe Blake – One of my favorite scenes throughout the series is when Joe discovers his past. His gut wrenching reaction and how he eventually swore loyalty to his father made the character all the more interesting for me, so he has earned his place in my top ten!
9. Bell Mallory – She makes it onto my top ten because she went from a cold hardliner to a kind heroine offering peace to everyone who defected from the Reich and Wehrmacht. I can see myself in her shoes. I wish we could have seen more of her.
8. Helen Smith – I adore Helen. She had one of the most interesting character arcs in the series. She went from a loyal wife of the Reich (with all its ideals and obedience) to the ultimate betrayal of those values.
7. Rudolph Wagner – I will always love Wagner. He did terrible things in the name of the Reich, and unlike Smith, his guilt devoured him. When he came face to face with the man he grew to hate, his humanity took over, and rather than end Hitler, he ended himself to save his family.
6. Ed McCarthy – There is no way the sweet, innocent Ed is not going to be on this list! He was a welcome respite to all of the terror and horrors experienced in the Pacific States.
5. Robert Childan – Like Helen, he had one of the most intriguing arcs. I touched on this briefly on Twitter–he went from the selfish, greedy antiques dealer to sacrificing it all for his wife.
4. Frank Frink – He was my favorite character in Season 1. His story that season was the most relatable. You have this ordinary guy just trying to keep his head down and follow along, obeying his Japanese occupiers who, by no fault of his own, was thrown into tragedy and chaos. He could no longer be ‘that’ guy. His life was forever altered, and he had an understandable reaction to it. I was thrilled to see him go back to his Season 1 roots in Season 3.
3. Takeshi Kido – Kido is someone I’ve always loved to hate. He was such a bastard, but I couldn’t help but want to see more.
2. Nobusuke Tagomi – Let’s just say that if Tagomi ran for president, he’d have my vote. He was the ultimate bastion of peace, tranquility, yet held a firm hand when he needed to.
Speak softly and carry a big stick – Theodore Roosevelt
Coming in at #1, my ultimate favorite High Castle character (and possibly favorite character of all time)
1. John Smith – Smith was unlike any character I’d ever seen, which is what drew me to the show after watching the first episode. He possessed such confidence, cunning, and ruthlessness, yet he was also a family man. He managed to climb the ranks of a dark, vile organization all the way to the top, unphased all the way up until the very end when he was forced to look at himself. I cannot stress enough how relieved I am that he did not get an inane redemption arc. His ending only made me like the character more.
As I am reading through Mike Avila’s The Man in the High Castle, Creating the Alt World, I am reminded why I was drawn to the show in the first place: It’s all in the details. I’m going to focus on Season 4 and the things that stood out the most (if I were to write about every little background prop, this would be a door stopper that I’d never finish!).
Battle of Denver
Accurate street names – when they mentioned Colfax ave., I was ecstatic at the attention to detail and taking the extra time to get it right.
On the left is a map from my trip to Denver back in February. Colfax Ave. is circled in red.
Winter Solstice
I was amazed at how much thought and research went into creating the alt worlds of High Castle, especially when they had to figure out how societies would evolve and what kind of holidays would they celebrate.
Himmler (the real Himmler) was big into paganism and incorporated it into the SS [1][2]. I wondered what a Reich Christmas would look like, and the creative team at High Castle did their homework. Circled on the lower left is a cutout of Odin, a prominent deity in Norse Mythology [3]. It appears as though he is a replacement for Santa Claus.
Circled in the upper left is a banner that reads, “Winter Solstice,” commonly referred to as Yule. For brevity’s sake, I’m going to quote Wikipedia on this:
Yule or Yuletide (“Yule time” or “Yule season”) is a festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples. Scholars have connected the original celebrations of Yule to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin, and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht.
The Twilight Zone
Whoever came up with this alternate spin on one of my favorite childhood TV shows deserves a fucking medal. It was pure genius, and I loved every second of it. The writers have stated time and time again that there are parallels between worlds, and this was one of them. Everything was true to the original show in our universe, right down to the music and narrator. It was such a creative twist using Abendsen as the host as a way to turn it into propaganda.
Realistic Technology
During the scene pictured below, the children are being eavesdropped on. When the camera pans to the device on the right, we can hear crackling and static. My immediate thought was there are at least two different factions listening in on them. When you have two different groups using radio to transmit or receive at the same time within close proximity to each other, there will be static and interference on both sides.
I was delighted when we later saw that the children were, in fact, being watched by the Resistance and Hoover and that the static wasn’t just there as a LOOK THEY ARE BEING SPIED ON attention grabber.
And can we just appreciate the alt world maps for a second?
If anyone from @HighCastleTV is reading this, please reproduce this map and sell it! I would love to own one! I still want one of those promo radio sets they sent to random people a few years back…
Hello, and welcome to the one and only Exemplary Television Awards! Today we celebrate the greatest television show of all time. It has earned its mark in television history for its poignant themes, stunning visuals, exceptional acting, and soundtrack. The individuals involved with the creation of the show have earned this medal a thousand times over.
Let’s give it up for Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle!
Welcome to another #FanCastleSunday! Today I’m diving in and taking a deep look at Smith and why his fate was the perfect storm. Smith is one of the most well written and complex characters of all time, played by the talented Rufus Sewell (he truly deserves an Emmy for his performance as John Smith).
