![the man in the high castle season 1 episode 9 recap the man in the high castle season 1 episode 9 recap](https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-ZG494_queen_E_20131011182535.jpg)
If the Germans are going to bomb and then invade through the neutral zone, can the BCR really stop them? In Berlin, John Smith sees the scope of the German plan, wondering what value California could possibly have if it’s bombed into rubble. They start by dropping leaflets on San Francisco that read, “Resist Your Negro Overlords, The Reich is Coming!” This leads to panic and dissent.
#The man in the high castle season 1 episode 9 recap series#
The writers lead us to believe that the series could end with America on the verge of another war with Germany as they reveal their greedy plan to reduce the West Coast to rubble. The bulk of this episode is a misdirect, keeping secret John Smith’s plan, one it turns out he concocted with Himmler’s new favorite son. In a way, he ends up being the one who embodies a line spoken by Juliana Crain this episode: “If that world is possible, it means this one can be transformed.” He realizes more American sons will die if he goes along with the Reich plan to occupy the entire United States, and he’s done looking the other way. However, it does feel like the drama with Thomas Smith going to Vietnam influences the decisions he made in the reality in which the Nazis won the war. It’s funny how much of this season amounted to something of a fake-out, allowing us to spend so much time with Smith’s focus on the alternate world that we forgot what a leader he could be in his reality the suspicion that he would flee the Reich to a better plane of the multiverse turned out to be misdirection. John Smith is in charge, and no one will ever question him again. Edgar Hoover stabbed in the gut in a Berlin war room and Himmler poisoned to death with an air tank filled with Zyklon B, one of the most horrifying weapons of the Nazi regime. This means it’s time for some wonderful revisionist B-movie history à la Inglourious Basterds, with the slimy J. It turns out that John Smith was not going to Berlin to face his superiors and ask for forgiveness, he was going to initiate a massacre, destroying the Third Reich’s heart in Germany instead of just launching an attack from New York. After all, this is a show about American Nazis - let’s get a little wild! Which we do this episode, with a nice bloodbath to end the series’ penultimate chapter. The Man in the High Castle has carefully avoided some of the obvious B-movie thrills that it arguably should have given into a bit more over four seasons. Well, that was satisfying in a way this show often doesn’t allow itself to be.