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John drops the cover story about the Adler murder for his new press contact Thelma at the party, but suspicion is starting to grow that the Smiths had something to do with one or both of their deaths. At a really awkward public event that’s basically using their son’s death as fuel for the propaganda machine, John and Helen Smith have to smile and nod. This theme is emphasized later in the episode at the premiere of Nicole Dormer’s film about the “sacrifice” made by Thomas Smith. They need to be the face of the Reich, and that face needs to be strong. Stop drinking and popping pills in public. He tells her that she has to change her public face. Will this draw the Smiths closer together? Shared secrets have a tendency to do that. Meanwhile, John Smith has covered up the death of Alice Adler at the hands of his wife, Helen.

They chitchat and catch up at the reception, but it’s not long before Joe is whispering her name. And yet something in him shifts when he sees Juliana at the reception - and actor Luke Kleintank is very effective at conveying how Juliana may be the only thing left in this world that Joe really cares about, but he can’t show that too explicitly or possibly be deemed a traitor. Joe has clearly been hardened by his torture and forced execution of his father.

He has tracked one of the few remaining traitors who tried to overthrow the Reich and executes him in his own home, only after killing the two Japanese guards in the car outside. Juliana Crain is one of those people Joe Blake is another.īefore their reunion, we get to see how tough Joe Blake has become as a Nazi enforcer. Did anyone else know it was Joe doing the shooting the first time they saw it? The episode treats it like a revelation in the closing scenes but it looks like him from the first time it’s shown, and the whole show is about how certain people will make historical differences no matter the alternate reality. The episode opens with Juliana watching that film in which she’s a prisoner in an underground tunnel, stopped and shot by an SS soldier who then shoots himself. In one, Juliana Crain watches Joe Blake shoot her and then himself in the other, John Smith sees his dead son Thomas in an alternate, happier reality in which he’s still alive. What makes it even more satisfying is both arcs thematically intersect in the closing scenes as their main protagonists watch films of alternate realities that devastate them. There are subplots like Ed/Robert in no-man’s-land and the return of Hagen, but this hour unfolds primarily on two fronts - in New York City with the Smiths and Joe/Juliana/Tagomi in the Japanese Pacific States. One of the reasons this episode works better than so many others is the focus brought to it by Dickerson and the writers this week. This episode had the tight pacing that this show so often lacks, finally reuniting Juliana Crain and Joe Blake, deepening John Smith’s understanding of the crazy world of this show, and ending in a cliff-hanger that fans of the show kind of saw coming. The incredible cinematographer and director Ernest Dickerson helms the best episode of The Man in the High Castle in a long time, certainly the best of this season. Photo: Liane Hentscher/Amazon Prime Video