Upload and The Good Place explore what life after death could be like, and though their concepts of afterlife are pretty much the same, they have some differences too. Greg Daniels and Michael Schur are the minds that brought Parks & Recreation and the U.S. version of The Office, and they have also worked on separate projects. Daniels’ latest is Amazon’s sci-fi comedy Upload, starring Robbie Amell and Andy Allo.
Set in a near future where people have the opportunity to “upload” their consciousness so they can “live” forever in a digital world, Upload follows Nathan Brown (Amell), a young man pushed by his girlfriend to upload himself after a car accident. Once in the afterlife, Nathan meets Nora (Allo), a customer service rep who plays the part of “angel” to the uploads under her watch. Upload presents a whole new concept of “life after death”, and comparisons to a popular TV show began right away.
Upload is being compared to The Good Place, created by Michael Schur, which also has the concept of “afterlife” at its core. While they do have some similarities, there are also some big differences between both representations of what life after death looks like.
How Upload’s Afterlife Compares To The Good Place
Upload is all about technology: it’s so advanced, people depend on it for almost everything, such as printing food and drinks. Technology also controls life after death by creating avatars and pouring people’s consciousness and memories into them, and then placing them into a digital world. Though there are different companies offering this service, the biggest one is Horizen, home of the Lakeview Hotel, a luxurious setting for uploads. Horizen offers different data plans, which might limit an upload’s activities, and its most basic (and depressing) one is the “2GB”. Those in that data plan can’t enjoy the same food, rooms, and amenities as the rest, and instead are sent to a dull part of the hotel.
On the other hand, The Good Place also has all deceased people living in one area, and people don’t get divided for how wealthy they are, but for how much of a good or bad person they were when alive. Both concepts of afterlife have a guide: The Good Place has Janet (and all her variations), and Upload has the “angels” as well as an A.I. Guy. The difference between them, aside from one being fully digital, is that Upload’s afterlife can be heaven or hell depending on the person. For example: Lakeview is hell to the 2GBs, but also to people in a good data plan, like Dylan, whose parents keep refusing to update his avatar to match his real age – but to others, like Luke, it’s heaven. The Good Place has a marked division between heaven and hell, and by the end of the series, those who arrived to hell had the possibility of learning and growing, thus earning their entrance to the Good Place.
Though both have similar concepts of afterlife, Upload and The Good Place represent it differently, and each has its own rules. The catch in Upload’s Lakeview is that it can be heaven or hell depending on the person’s perspective and experience, and both good and bad people live in it, as its distinctions are not made by morals, but by how much you can pay.
