Amazon has announced the 10-episode second season of its Emmy Award-winning series, The Man in the High Castle will be released for streaming via Amazon Prime on December 16, 2016. Along with the announcement, there’s also a new trailer promoting the upcoming season.
This trailer, which suggests that the show’s tension is turned up a few notches from the events of the previous season (a welcome change of pace to be sure), follows a teaser trailer that was released earlier this summer.
The pilot episode of The Man in the High Castle was originally released as part of Amazon’s “pilot season” in January 2015 and quickly became one of the most-watched pilots ever produced by Amazon Studios. It was no surprise, then, when Amazon announced that they would produce a full season of The Man in the High Castle, which was released on November 20, 2015.
Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle is adapted from Philip K. Dick’s Hugo Award-winning 1962 novel of the same name, and although the show’s story split rather quickly from Dick’s seminal work, it still retained some core elements of the source material — the rising conflict between the Axis powers over their co-occupation of the United States, a neutral zone buffer between the regimes in the Rocky Mountains, the existence of the mysterious titular Man in the High Castle, and the ever-present Dickian exploration into the nature of reality.
Rufus Sewell as Obergruppenführer John Smith and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as Trade Minister Nobusuke Tagomi (who delivered the best lines), turned out fantastic performances, and the show won two Emmy Awards — Outstanding Main Title Design and Outstanding Cinematography.
While the show was beautifully shot and really evoked an atmosphere of dread and fear that living under a totalitarian regime would bring, the story plodded along — especially in the middle of the first season. Even as an ardent fan of Philip K. Dick, I was wondering where the story was going and when the pace would start to pick up. It wasn’t a show that demanded to be binge-watched (at least not with the same intensity as Luke Cage).
Despite the departure from the original source material and the slow-burn pacing of the show, it remains a favorite among viewers with a Amazon rating of 4.5 stars (with 88,428 reviews!), with many (I count myself among them) eager to watch a second season.
For those fans who want more than just a few trailers to keep them satisfied until December 16, Amazon also released a teaser clip from the upcoming season featuring Juliana Crane (played by Alexa Davalos) being interviewed by Obergruppenführer Smith (there are, of course, spoilers here):
If you want to get up to speed on the events in this world where the Nazi and Japanese forces took control of the United States after World War II, watch season one on Amazon, free as part of your Amazon Prime subscription. If you don’t have Amazon Prime and want to check out the series, Amazon offers the entire first episode via Amazon Prime or YouTube for free.
And, of course, I highly recommend Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, which is available for Amazon Prime members to read for free via Kindle.
