Greg Daniels is tired of predicting the future.
When Upload first premiered in May 2020, it felt like a vision of a dystopian future that was at least a decade away. Series creator Greg Daniels (The Office) smartly placed his sci-fi series, in which the wealthy 1% ditch their bodies and retire to a five-star resort in the cloud, in the year 2033. It was just far enough away for the show’s magical technology to feel achievable.
But as Upload comes to an end, just five years later, a lot of the science fiction concepts introduced in the show no longer feel that far-out.
“Technology is catching up so goddamn fast,” Daniels tells Polygon.
Case in point: Upload’s bumbling AI assistant (aka, A.I. Guy), played by the showrunner’s son, Owen Daniels.
“We’d been slowly evolving the AI character,” Greg Daniels says, “starting as soulless and chipper, then gradually gaining depth through experience. This season, we leaned into the singularity — AI becoming as smart as or smarter than us.”
Upload’s four-part series finale, streaming now on Prime Video, climaxes with the world-ending threat of an evil singularity. (More on that later.) But for the show’s devoted fans, there’s also plenty of closure within its central love triangle: heroic protagonist Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell), kindhearted introvert Nora Antony (Andy Allo), and the manipulative-but-earnest Ingrid Kannerman (Allegra Edwards).
A few days after Upload’s conclusion, Polygon jumped on a Zoom call with Daniels to unpack that emotional ending and how he struggled to keep the show ahead of modern technology.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for the final season of Upload.]
“We stumble into predictions an awful lot”
Predicting the future doesn’t happen by accident, at least not for Upload. The show’s writers have always tracked the cutting edge of technology, including the latest announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show. They then debate whether each innovation will be good or bad for humanity, along with how it could go wrong in a funny way. All that work seems to pay off pretty frequently.
“Early on, we joked about ‘vape lung,’ which quickly became real,” Daniels says.
While they were writing season 4, AI became an obvious target, but the writers still wanted to find a creative angle. They landed on new research that revealed AI could potentially be trained to translate animal sounds and communicate with them. Upload is all about how new technology gets used in bizarre and disturbing ways, but in this case, the answer was surprisingly cute.
“In season 4, there have been so many accidents in self-driving cars that they've decided to put a little gerbil as the driver that you can talk to from an app on your phone, using this animal-translation app,” Daniels says.
As for that whole AI singularity thing, one major season 4 plotline focuses on an evil, dark-haired version of A.I. Guy who eventually gains sentience and tries to escape from the virtual resort to take over the world. Ultimately, the only thing that can stop him is a benevolent A.I. Guy.
“The idea was there can be both good AI and bad AI,” Daniels says, adding that the concept came out of his own concerns over the technology. “I started thinking we should put AI back in the bottle, but realized that’s impossible. What matters is values. Like any new generation, if you don’t impart a sense of right and wrong, you get dystopia — even more so with AI. My worry is that tech companies aren’t focused on instilling values. Hopefully the show sparks some thought about that.”
Daniels adds that he doesn’t use AI in his own life, and hopes it will eventually hit a limit of usefulness. However, he’s increasingly aware that many of his colleagues in the entertainment industry are already using tools like ChatGPT in their own work, or at least looking for ways to take advantage of the technology.
“I’m sure it’ll have a huge impact on Hollywood,” he says, “but I’m not sure it’ll be good.”
“A meaningful and happy ending”
Not every TV show gets a satisfying ending, especially in the streaming era when cancellation seems to come even more quickly and brutally than before. So Daniels is particularly grateful that Amazon gave him a chance to conclude this story on his own terms — especially after what happened with his last sci-fi show, Space Force, which inadvertently ended on an apocalyptic cliffhanger.
“There's an asteroid coming and then we didn't get another scene,” he says. “That was definitely in my mind when working on Upload.” (When I ask about the possibility of a series revival, Daniels is blunt but optimistic: “I’d love to make more Space Force, though pulling the cast back together might be tough. But I’d be excited to do it — it was a fun project.”)
Upload’s final season didn’t need to reckon with a world-destroying asteroid, but there was one plotline that Daniels knew he couldn’t leave unresolved.
At its core, Upload has always been a love story. The show begins with Nathan waking up in the virtual resort, where he’s greeted by an “angel” named Nora —a living person in the real world who acts as his virtual concierge. Nathan and Nora gradually fall in love, while Nathan’s still-alive girlfriend Ingrid tries to control him from a distance.
Over the course of four seasons, a lot happens. Nathan dumps Ingrid, forcing her to grapple with her own emotional issues. Nathan also “downloads” back into a human body. By the end, there are actually two Nathans (one for Nora and one for Ingrid), but ultimately, only one survives, leaving Nora alone and grieving.
This might feel unsatisfying for fans who spent the last five years rooting for Nora and Nathan to wind up together, but Daniels doesn’t see it like that.
“Ingrid suffered and worked on herself,” he says. “She had an arc.”
However, he adds that Nora’s story in Upload is more complex. At the start of the show, she’s living in a VR world and feeling jealous of her roommate, who’s having casual sex. Nora wants romance, and that’s what she gets, even if it doesn’t come with a happy ending. “Nora’s journey was more profound than Ingrid’s,” Daniels says.
However, in the show’s final twist, Nora finds a ring that contains a full backup of Nathan’s digital consciousness. Upload ends before we find out what happens next, but it doesn’t take too much effort to extrapolate their happily ever after.
“The audience can imagine what comes next in their own fanfiction,” Daniels says.
“People often say the difference between a happy and sad ending is just where you choose to frame the story,” he adds. “This is supposed to be framed as a meaningful and happy ending.”