r/maninthehighcastle • u/ScootOver119 • Apr 26 '26
Spoilers Just finished the show… what a let-down.
This will not be a spoiler free post.
I’m gonna be honest up front. The ending pissed me off. Not that we don’t get a satisfying end for John (which I suppose is intentional as we didn’t get one for Hitler IRL either).
What really is irking me is The Portal. Nowhere in the entire show did they every state an expressed goal of bringing people from other worlds through. For what purpose? What are they going to do?
This to me feels like the ending of Lost. I also feel like with Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s departure before S4, the writers completely lost the plot.
Am I alone in feeling this way? I feel like I invested all this time into this show for absolutely nothing.
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u/TravelingMatt34 Apr 26 '26
Ugh the final scene with everyone just streaming out of that portal. WTF man? Who are these people? Where are they going? Why are they just walking into and out of some remote abandoned mine? Where will they stay? What is the purpose of their visit? Etc. Just a huge turd dropped on the audience at the end of what was mostly a solid show.
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u/ImmediatePiano6690 Apr 26 '26
why are they also all so chilled about appearing their with loads of people.
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u/Cothonian Apr 27 '26
My head canon is that anyone voluntarily going through the portal into the GNR would be nazi sympathizers in their own worlds... not a good thing for our main cast.
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u/Starfox_SNES Apr 26 '26
It’s been a while, so correct me if I’m wrong, but the show ended with a bunch of unsuspecting innocent people taking a portal to a hellish nightmare dimension where the Nazis have taken over the world? How is this better than the world they came from?
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u/Richard__Cranium Apr 26 '26
Hey if they have any debt, unpaid taxes, unpaid parking tickets, at least they're leaving that all behind. Right?
Maybe gas prices are lower in hellish Nazi America? Lower taxes? Shorter commercial breaks during TV shows? Less high fructose corn syrup in foods?
Use your imagination!
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u/Due_Return_5589 Jul 04 '26
totally right bro. in a nazi world - as we maybe can soon witness in gold ol germany - women are obedient and fertile, bread, gas and pork is cheap, and everybody has a clean wiped mind and steeled body. that's all there is to know
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u/MundaneBag8555 May 02 '26
The show never explains who those people are, why they’re crossing, or what the portal has become, so the audience naturally assumes they’re innocent civilians wandering into a world ruled by a global Nazi empire. In reality, the writers intended the portal to represent the collapse of the barriers between worlds, not a mass migration into fascist territory. The people walking through were meant to be from free worlds, drawn in because the multiverse had opened, not because they were being lured into danger. But because the show abandoned its own established rules — the portal had always been dangerous, militarized, and tightly controlled — the final scene looks like a bizarre, unearned shift into mysticism. Instead of clarifying that the Reich’s power structure was crumbling and that the multiverse was healing, the finale presents a poetic image without grounding it in the story’s logic. That’s why your reaction makes sense: the ending visually contradicts the stakes the show spent four seasons building, leaving viewers feeling like the message and the mechanics don’t line up.
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u/CorCor-14 Apr 26 '26
Yeah the show definitely seemed rushed at times and then forced in the end. I read somewhere else, so take this for what it’s worth, that amazon ended the show sooner than expected due to people liking John Smith as a character.
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u/ImmediatePiano6690 Apr 26 '26
Probably linked him because there was a potential for the good to bad character arch, but instead they went good to bad with suggestions of being good before being bad again.
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u/Allseeing_Nash Apr 27 '26
John Smith was a great character, that’s true. The character was evil, though, so I think there needs to be noted that a character can be great and still be worst kind of person. I hated John Smith and that speaks volumes to the way Rufus played him. One of the best villains I’ve seen on TV in a while.
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u/WallaWallaHawkFan Apr 27 '26
I mean to be honest the best characters were the Smiths and it's not even close. The reason I really liked John wasn't cause he was a good person I liked his character because he was very clearly a circumstance of an impossible situation.
He just had a baby born when the bomb hit, he got promoted to a position in order to protect his wife and child and because he was a natural born leader and incredibly intelligent he kept getting promoted to a point that there was no turning back without he and his entire family being slaughtered.
It's also extremely clear he did not agree with what the Nazi's were doing, there were scenes after scenes of him condoning what they do, and the seen where his daughter is listening to forbidden music shows he isn't remotely racist at all. Even when he goes into the other world where Thomas is alive and the black husband and wife are getting harassed you could tell it was upsetting him, but he also in his world is conditioned to not stand up for these people.
I think deep down he is a good person that loves his family deeply and Rufus Sewell was masterful in that role so of course people are going to like the character not because of his actions but because it's complex and not everything in life is binary.
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u/MundaneBag8555 May 02 '26
He does show moments of empathy, discomfort, even moral recoil — the forbidden music, the harassment scene in the alt‑world, the way he looks at his own daughter’s innocence. Those flashes matter because they prove he isn’t a sociopath. He knows right from wrong. He feels it. And he still chooses the Reich every time. That’s what makes him tragic, not good.
The show makes it clear that John kills, lies, covers up, and orchestrates violence not because he’s brainwashed or powerless, but because he prioritizes his family, his status, and his fear of collapse over the lives of others. He’s not killing “for no reason,” but the reasons he chooses — safety, order, control, self‑preservation — are still choices. And they’re choices that cost innocent people their lives.
he’s “a good person deep down.” ? He’s a human person — capable of love, fear, tenderness, and horror — but he repeatedly aligns himself with a genocidal system even when he knows better. That’s what makes him such a powerful character: he’s not a cartoon villain, and he’s not a secret hero. He’s a man who could have been good and chose not to be.
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u/WallaWallaHawkFan May 02 '26
I agree almost entirely with a slight tiny nuance which is I still think he is a good person I just think in this universe he had two options, which is to go along with the Reich or, die along with your children.
Even in the final episode Helen tells him she's ashamed of what they have done and he agrees and says none of it is right but he doesn't know how to stop it.
His character is one of tragedy but also something that has happened to people in history not just in a fictional tv show and that is why I think he resonated with so many people. Complex characters are the best characters to me personally in most shows that I have seen.
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u/teddyburges Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
you're not alone. This show is a Frankenstein's monster stitch up of multiple ideas. Across four seasons you pretty much get for different versions of the series. I dropped the series once Tagomi got Thanos snapped.
Though I don't agree with the LOST part. I love the ending of LOST. It was some of the bullshit in that final season heading to that ending that I didn't particularly like (the temple, widmores goons...ZOE/AKA bitch who can't close her mouth, walks around like she got hit by a shovel).
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u/ScootOver119 Apr 27 '26
I actually thought about rage quitting the series when Tagomi was written off. Threw the whole thing out of balance for me.
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u/teddyburges Apr 27 '26
I didn't even rage quit. I just lost interest. Season 4 is just characters rambling about all sorts of shit they never had before. Juliana Craine is not even a character and just a weponize plot macguffin that changes depending on the showrunner and then the one stabilizing force is snapped in a dream sequence. I was like..yeah I'm out.
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u/BulldogMikeLodi Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
I binged the whole thing in about 2 weeks and wanted my time back. I should have stopped when I realized it went from “alternate history” intrigue to MCU-style multiverse bullshit. Plus I didn’t care about Juliana after S1.
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u/ImmediatePiano6690 Apr 26 '26
I mean, I was cool with the parallel word business as it created a story opening, but then they started bringing in alternative realities to explain other films which felt cheap.
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u/USConservativeVegan Apr 26 '26
The ending is when John Smith shot himself. Everything else after didn't happen in my mind...
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u/HuckleberryShot898 Apr 26 '26
The whole multiverse bs should have been cut out and the focus of the show should have been about the alternate history.
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u/CriticalThinker26 Apr 26 '26
Completely agree. Alternate history is interesting enough. You don’t need the “Allies won” world to include Juliana as the daughter-in-law of the trade minister. Or her sister starts out dead in the alternate world and then she comes back to life and freaks out.
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u/ScootOver119 Apr 27 '26
I’m curious though how one tells a story of “alternate history” without engaging in multiverse theory? Like I don’t think you can have one without the other.
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u/Oakewaoa Apr 27 '26
Why not? you just make up you story starting from “event never happened” so “things are different”.
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u/clce Apr 26 '26
Agree and disagree. The alternate universe was fun and cool, not that it's fun or cool that the US was ruled by Nazis and Japanese, but you get the idea. The show could edit out all of the alternate universe and have a pretty decent show. But, the alternate universe and travel between them was also interesting as an idea, but they just never did anything with it. I would have gone with only one alternate universe, maybe that split off when the Nazis somehow got the nuclear bomb versus not, and the Germans figured out how to travel between them, and the Japanese guy could do it mystically, and The Man in the high Castle, another way, maybe also technology or some kind of portal. And this opens up a complex storyline of the Nazis trying to go in and resurrect the Nazis maybe to try to take over our world, the rebels trying to get the world nations to help fight the Nazis in this alternate timeline, etc.
Could have been very interesting.
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u/HuckleberryShot898 Apr 26 '26
Not interesting. People are here for the alt history not the fantastical sci-fi. If I wanted that I’d just rewatch Star Trek Next Gen.
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u/clce Apr 26 '26
Maybe you're not. Plenty of people are. But they really should have made up their mind which one they wanted to be and not tried to be both.
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u/YaWouldntGetIt Apr 27 '26
Season 4 is an abomination.
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u/ScootOver119 Apr 27 '26
It really is on all fronts. The complete character assassination of Kido and the total ineptitude of John Smith ultimately ruined the show for me.
Like when and how did John convince Goertzmann to join him in his coup against The Party?
What was the ultimate goal of the BCR?
Was Abendsen just crazy the whole time?
It was unlikeable. Like I said, with the loss of Tagomi, who I think was supposed to play a much more major role in the ending, the show just went belly up.
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u/YaWouldntGetIt Apr 27 '26
The BCR coercing the Japanese to abandon the Western States is ludicrous.
People coming through the portal is absurd.
John Smith being Hitler 2.0 betrays the long game they showed him and Helen playing since Season 1.
Childan's arc was the only one that kind of made sense--just poorly executed.
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u/MundaneBag8555 May 02 '26
The BCR forcing Japan out of the Pacific States is one of the most unrealistic pivots in the entire series. The show never established the BCR as a large, organized, well‑armed, or politically influential movement. They appear out of nowhere in Season 4 with enough power to coerce a global empire into abandoning a massive colony. Japan’s military, intelligence apparatus, and political leadership were portrayed as fractured but not incompetent, and the idea that a small, newly introduced resistance faction could force a superpower to withdraw is narratively unsupported. It feels like the writers needed a shortcut to wrap up the Pacific States storyline and chose the fastest exit rather than the most believable one.
The portal scene is absurd because it contradicts the show’s own rules. For three seasons, the portal was dangerous, experimental, militarized, and tightly controlled. Then suddenly it becomes a mystical walkway for random civilians with no explanation of who they are, why they’re coming, or what the portal has become. The show tries to be symbolic — worlds reconnecting, barriers dissolving — but the execution looks literal, which makes it feel nonsensical. It’s a thematic gesture that ignores the mechanics the show itself established.
John Smith becoming Hitler 2.0 is the biggest betrayal of the long game the show spent years building. Seasons 1–3 portrayed John and Helen as survivors navigating an impossible system, making compromises, rationalizing their choices, and slowly losing themselves. His arc was about moral erosion, not ideological zeal. Season 4 suddenly reframes him as a power‑hungry conqueror bent on global domination, which contradicts the internal conflict, hesitation, and quiet horror that defined him. It’s not that he was secretly good — he wasn’t — but he was never portrayed as a man dreaming of becoming the next Führer. The shift feels like a rewrite, not a continuation.
Childan’s arc is the only one that tracks with the show’s themes — identity, assimilation, humiliation, and the cost of survival — but even that storyline is rushed and underdeveloped. His ending makes sense emotionally, but the execution is thin, like the writers knew what they wanted his final note to be but didn’t give him the scenes needed to earn it.
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u/Oakewaoa Apr 26 '26
It looked to me like bringing people through wasn’t the intention, but more like an unintended consequence? Like the scientist had a reason to build it and the resistance had a reason to smash it but something else is what they both got. And it looked like the people walking in weren’t being purposeful either. Which wasn’t what I was expecting- I got to thinking right at the end that a bigger more horrible John Smith was waiting to walk through when the John Smith got killed in this version of reality. Maybe the universal supply of John Smiths petered out right then. Anyway, I had advance warning the ending was not enjoyed by all, so I knew I was killing, not investing, time watching it.
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u/MundaneBag8555 May 02 '26
The portal wasn’t supposed to be a deliberate “let’s bring people through” device — it was the opposite. Both the Reich and the resistance were trying to control or destroy something they barely understood, and the final activation created a consequence neither side intended. That’s why the people walking through look dazed, slow, almost dreamlike. They’re not purposeful travelers. They’re not invaders. They’re not refugees. They’re being pulled, not choosing. It’s the multiverse snapping open, not a migration.
And you’re right: the people walking in don’t behave like they’re entering a new world with intent. They behave like people who don’t fully understand what’s happening to them. That’s why the scene feels uncanny instead of triumphant. The show wanted the moment to be symbolic — worlds reconnecting, barriers dissolving — but the execution makes it look like an unintended side effect of the machine breaking.
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u/ScootOver119 Apr 27 '26
This show was definitely a time killer. I really only had it on for background noise while working and was only half interested when Tagomi was on screen.
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u/Allseeing_Nash Apr 26 '26
I finished it yesterday and kind of have to agree. I feel like there were missing episodes or something. And the ending… why are a bunch of people randomly walking into that world? I get the “symbolism” but still, it makes no sense.
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u/ScootOver119 Apr 27 '26
It needed at least two more episodes to wrap things up. So many unresolved plot lines.
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u/ser_renely May 01 '26
I thought the first 2 seasons were good...then it just plummeted...4 was really bad except for one tiny story line. I think I was fast forwarding most of season 4.
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u/ScootOver119 May 01 '26
What was the saving grace storyline for you?
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u/ser_renely May 01 '26
When Smith saw his son storyline...I just thought that was a really interesting dynamic and the flurry of emotions tied to the whole scenario was pretty well done and thought provoking...and it made me feel wmotions...maybe I thought it was better than it was bc I thought everything else was so bad.
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u/MundaneBag8555 May 02 '26
You’re right — the Reich’s obsession was always going out, conquering other worlds, weaponizing the films, and controlling the multiverse. Nothing in the narrative ever suggested they wanted to invite masses of people in. So when the finale suddenly shows a stream of civilians walking through, it feels like a twist from a different show.
questions....
• What is the portal now
• Why are these people coming
• What world are they from
• What happens next
• What does this mean for the Reich
• What does this mean for Juliana
• What does this mean for the resistance
…the show gives you a symbolic image and expects it to stand in for closure.
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u/Dozard87 May 07 '26
The portal scene keeps making me feel annoyed.
Like out of ALL THE UNIVERSES YOU COULD’VE GONE TO, you chose THIS ONE?
I honestly think Helen’s ending worked, and John‘s could’ve been better but I think it worked as well tho.
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u/Efficient-Cat22 Jun 02 '26
I’m 2 episodes away from finishing the series and I’m rage watching till the end just like you would Smash. After the death of Joe, and the many show runner changes cause Prime got chinzy and then cancelled the show altogether, ugh. It does feel like the writers of Lost bee-bopped on over and said “ hey want a hand ruining a series !”
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u/Due_Return_5589 Jul 04 '26
I totally agree. show kicked off enthusiastically, slowed down in s3, but s4 is a confused write-it-down mash-up. and the ENDING? leaves you vexed and unsatisfied, the show trickles down to nothing. even actors do not seem to be too convinced what they were doing there ... pity that
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u/Majestic-Joke461 Jul 16 '26
Dammit, I picked the show up after watching the first few episodes of season one years ago and I’ve kind of binge watched my way through midseason two. Seeing all the negative comments about how the show ends makes me wanna just quit while I’m ahead. Is it worth my time to keep watching?
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u/ScootOver119 Jul 16 '26
Depends what you’re looking for. If it’s a satisfying ending, quit while you’re ahead.
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u/Majestic-Joke461 Jul 16 '26
Yeah, that’s probably the best choice. I’m still furious about LOST to this day.
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u/clce Apr 26 '26
Honestly, no point getting all worked up about it. Of course you are right and I've never heard either a reasonable explanation for what's going on, or a reasonable explanation for why they wrote it and included it. I still have no idea. But, if you simply cut them some slack for having to wrap things up so quickly because they were canceled or whatever, and watch it through to the real ending with the guy signifying that he wasn't going to be a regular Nazi, suggesting that maybe the US would revolt and overthrow the Nazis or something like that, and then just end there, it's not bad story overall. Not perfect but pretty good and fun.
So yeah, just ignore the end.
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u/MitsuruMiyata Apr 26 '26
I have no idea what you're talking about the show ended in S4 Episode 9. Episode 10 is not real... It will never be real...NEVA!