<P> Premiering in January 2015, the pilot was Amazon's "most - watched since the original series development program began ." The next month Amazon ordered episodes to fill out a ten - episode season, which was released in November, to positive reviews . A second season of ten episodes premiered in December 2016, with a third season announced a few weeks later . </P> <P> The central characters are Juliana Crain, Frank Frink, Joe Blake, John Smith, Nobusuke Tagomi, and Takeshi Kido . The series takes place in an alternate 1962 . </P> <P> Juliana Crain is a San Francisco woman who becomes entangled with the resistance when her half - sister Trudy is killed by the Kempeitai, just after giving Juliana a film reel that contains newsreel - style footage depicting an alternate history in which the Allies won World War II and Germany and Japan were defeated . The film is entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, and is part of a series of similar newsreels being collected by someone referred to as "The Man in the High Castle". Juliana believes the newsreel reflects some sort of alternate reality and that it is part of some kind of larger truth about how the world should be . Her boyfriend, Frank Frink (who keeps his Jewish roots hidden in order to avoid extradition and death at the hands of the Nazis), believes that the newsreel has no relation to real - life events . Juliana learns Trudy was carrying the film to Canon City, Colorado, in the Neutral Zone, where she was going to meet someone . Juliana decides to travel there in Trudy's place to find out what her half - sister's mission was . When she arrives in Canon City, she encounters Joe Blake . </P> <P> Blake is a 27 - year - old New Yorker who is a double agent working for the Nazis under Obergruppenführer John Smith, a former US military officer who joined the Nazis and rose through the ranks to become a senior officer in the SS . Blake is pretending to be a member of the resistance while he searches for the resistance contact in Canon City, which is Juliana, substituting for Trudy . </P>

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