Review: The Man in the High Castle Season 4 Episode 1: Hexagram 64

I have been wanting to both watch and review Season 4 of The Man in the High Castle since it came out but one thing or another always seemed to get in the way. With some downtime from my responsibilities I am hoping to be able to review the season as well as some other shows.

Please note, SPOILERS AHEAD.

The episode starts off where Season 3 left off with Juliana Crain being shot by John Smith just prior to her transitioning to a new universe. In a interesting turn of events she is discovered by John Smith and his son, Thomas, in what appear to be our current timeline. Her initial fear is immediately assuaged whens he sees Thomas as in her timeline Thomas had turned himself over for execution due to having a medical defect that requires his being terminated.

We then see a funeral, one year later, in what looks to be Japan attended to by the Crown Princess and Inspector Kido. This funeral is revealed in flash backs to be for Tagomi. For one I found his death to be quite sad as I always found his character and by extension his actor to be quite compelling. The Crown Princess makes statements that she will continue his life’s work to strive for peace and it seems that an Army General is at odds not only with her but with Imperial Navy Admiral who seems to agree with her sentiment. The general implication is that the army may have had something to do with the death of Tagomi.

The viewer is shown a battle in Denver where the Greater Nazi Reich(GNR) is advancing, it seems in an attempt to not only crush resistance but also to destroy a cache of films that had been shown to bolster resistance fighter numbers. The fighting is intense with Wyatt Price’s resistance fighters being mostly destroyed with the exception of him and Lem. It was an interesting battle scene as you get to see in action the Nazi weapons (MP5s and what look like modern day HIND attack choppers) versus resistance fighters kitted out in what was the US Army standard. We then see that the fighters that destroyed the Statue of Liberty at the end of Season 3 actually appear to be VTOL capable aircraft which are quite modern for the 1960s.

John Smith is present in the attack on Denver and discusses with an old US Army friend, current Nazi soldier, how Japan is losing a war in China as well as a rebellion by a Black Communist Movement within the Japanese Pacific States (JPS). The implication is left open that the GNR may have killed Tagomi and that now would be a good time to strike Japan and reunify America under one common flag, that of the GNR. John Smith states he has some family business to deal with in Montana and we cut to see his wife and two daughters with what appears to be her brother living a ‘normal’ life in Montana.

The Crown Princess is in the JPS, much to the chagrin of the Imperial Japanese Army but with the apparent approval of the Navy. It is implied that Japan agrees they are losing the war in China and that the Navy feels it is time to pull out of the JPS in order to maintain order in Asia. We then get treated to a look at the BCR smuggling firearms that look a lot like the AK-47 and reprisals for the murder of Tagomi by the Kempeitai. They seem to be blamed for the murder of Tagomi but the BCR leadership have no knowledge of the attack.

We cut back to Juliana Crain living a normal life, waitressing tables and teaching Aikido with the help of her assistant, Thomas Smith. She has an out of body experience where she sees Tagomi doing I Ching before disappearing. She awakens to Helen and Thomas stating she was meditating and unable to be awoken. She later goes back into a meditative state and discovered that the pattern Tagomi had done was Hexagram 64 which stands for ‘Not Yet Complete’ before she sees what appear to be Nazi soldiers in the fogs closing in on her.

Kido arrests a black man named Mingus Jones on a tip that he was Tagomi’s murderer. He is seen flushing what is believed to be heroin down the toilet but it turns out it is Penicillin, which is also a banned substance. A firearm is found that is the same type used to kill Tagomi along with papers showing Mingus to be a member of the BCR, but Mr. Jones states it was planted. While he is being brutalized one of the members of the Kempeitai seems to experience PTSD and is dismissed by Kido. It is later learned that this is Kido’s son who has served in combat.

Smith has dinner with his family in Montana before essentially kidnapping his daughters back. It is shown that he has provided protection for his wife to live in the neutral zone even though he wants his family back home. Helen does not seem able to willing to live within the GNR and brings up the way things had been before the war to which John replies that they had made a pact and they were in it together. The episode ends with the daughters being flown away and Helen left with her brother in law at the home.

I found this episode to be rather good. It has a lot of questions still as yet unanswered such as how Jahr Null has gone within the GNR, is Himmler still alive or did the sniper bullet kill him at the end of Season 3? It also humanized a character I found to be a compelling character all along in Inspector Kido. I liked watching him sit there with his son watching baseball and talking as a family. I feel that his character is one of the most compelling thus far in the entire series.

I look forward to what the next episode has to show.

N.B. I have not been compensated for this review and I made it from viewing the show on my own personal account.