The Big Picture
- Upload Season 3 explores the Grey Zone as Luke takes a job there to support his expenses in Lakeview, giving viewers a glimpse into this shady and tangible version of the dark web.
- The Grey Zone is like cyberspace and operates within the World Wide Web system, where digital beings risk being erased from existence if they don’t return to Lakeview within an hour.
- According to creator Greg Daniels, the Grey Zone has different sections, similar to walking out of The Wizard of Oz into Apple’s Cove, creating a beach-themed area before eventually reaching the real world.
Upload Season 3 is finally here, with Nathan, Nora, and the others trekking through the real world and virtual reality as they work to expose and bring down Freeyond. As Upload is a sci-fi series, nearly everything is digital in some way. Its cutting-edge technology offers advanced self-driving cars, 3D-printed food, and a digital afterlife, among other quality-of-life advancements. The primary afterlife in Upload is a posh world known as Lakeview, but even the luxuries of the afterlife facility come with their own out-of-sight, out-of-mind, and also let’s never speak about it area: The Grey Zone.
The Grey Zone was initially introduced during Upload Season 1, as Nathan, Luke, and Dylan trek to the area. With some sneaky maneuvering, the trio gets into the area with relative ease. The catch? If they don’t return to the set boundaries of Lakeview within an hour, they will be erased from existence. The Grey Zone is pretty much exactly what the name implies, with viewers gaining a glimpse into what’s known as the grey market, a bustling — if not also kind of shady — place that operates like a more tangible version of the dark web.
During an interview with Collider’s Editor-in-Chief Steve Weintraub, Upload creator and showrunner Greg Daniels further explained how he views The Grey Zone. For Daniels, The Grey Zone “is pretty much cyberspace, and so if it’s all on whatever the World Wide Web is, then it’s gonna be on the Grey Zone if that’s the system that’s being used, you know?” He compares it to playing Call of Duty, saying that if a person is digital and can go beyond Horizen’s boundaries, they wind up in “undifferentiated nothingness,” similar to walking off the map in Call of Duty in the early days of the game. Daniels continued by explaining how The Grey Zone would eventually morph into different sections, so to speak, should someone continue moving through it. He included another noteworthy comparison, using a Wizard of Oz analogy to build upon his explanation:
“Then, eventually, you’d stumble into the Apple version, Apple’s Cove, and it would be different. It’d be a beach theme, and the whole thing would be there, but you could walk into it in the same way you walk out of The Wizard of Oz. If you walk out of Oz, you go through a desert, and then you get to the Real World eventually.”
The Grey Zone Makes a Comeback in ‘Upload’ Season 3
The Grey Zone only popped up briefly in Upload, but viewers will get to see a little more of it in the show’s newest season thanks to Luke. With the Nathan that Luke knows back in the real world, Luke is without his best friend. On top of that, his Lakeview expenses are racking up, and his means to pay for them are running dangerously low. So, to maintain his funds, Luke decides to take a job in The Grey Zone. Meanwhile, Nathan and Nora navigate their relationship in the midst of the Freeyond conspiracy, Aleesha climbs the Horizen ladder, and Ingrid gets a second shot at love with the backup copy of Nathan in Lakeview.
New episodes of Upload Season 3 are released weekly in pairs every Friday on Prime Video. Look for more from our exclusive interview with Greg Daniels soon.
