Spoilers below if you haven’t yet watched through the fourth episode of Upload Season 2, so be warned!
At long last, Upload Season 2 has arrived to give fans answers to questions that we’ve been mulling over for nearly two years, with the first season having debuted in May 2020. Thankfully, creator Greg Daniels didn’t miss a step in the meantime, as this new batch of episodes provides endless sci-fi-infused hilarity, while also sprinkling in some genuinely important narrative beats. But we can save the truly important stuff for another time, as we’re now going to spotlight one of the funniest pop culture nods in Season 2, which happened to come at the expense of the always braggadocious YouTuber and boxer Jake Paul.
The moment in question came in the early minutes of Episode 204, as Andy Allo’s Nora was on a clandestine mission inside a giant facility with Josh Banday’s Horizen-duping Ivan and Paulo Costanzo’s Matteo. The protest mission involved sabotaging and rendering useless all of the regenerated bodies being housed in the compound, as they all belonged to the rich and the elite. Since Nora wasn’t ever completely on board with all the anti-uploading shenanigans, she attempted to make a last-second save for one of the bodies after Ivan and Matteo’s exit. But upon seeing that the body inside the tank belonged to Jake Paul, she thought better of it and re-sabotaged the machine, leaving Paul’s new body to “die,” as it were.
When CinemaBlend spoke with stars Andy Allo and Robbie Amell ahead of Season 2’s big debut, I had to ask about that particular joke, which lands a little less than three months after Paul’s knockout victory over UFC vet Tyron Woodley. Here’s how Allo put it:
Oh my gosh. [Laughs.] I gotta give it to Greg and the writers. They went for it on that one. [Laughs.] You know, I wonder how controversial that'll be. I'm curious to see what the reaction will be from the viewers on that. That was a very fun day of of going into the regeneration - I don't even know - facility.
While Andy Allo didn’t speak to whether or not there were any other celebs whose names could have ended up in the show, I like to think that creator Greg Daniels and his team landed on Paul instantly and then never backed away from the idea. Not even his brother Logan Paul would have been as good of a joke, despite the fellow boxer also having amassed a population of haters over the years.
Speaking to that, the amount of polarization that Jake Paul inspires kind of makes him that much more fitting for this punchline, since there’s less worry about the reference coming across as too topical and not able to stand the test of time. I’m pretty sure people are going to be railing against (and arguing for) Paul for as long as he’s still running his mouth and swinging his fists.
Robbie Amell did chime in while Andy Allo was answering, as seen above. While he didn’t comment on Jake Paul’s inclusion, he did bring up how many backsides were on display on that set.
Lotta butts that day.
Truer words have rarely been spoken. Stay tuned for Robbie Amell sharing a story with CinemaBlend about his own experience inside one of those tanks.
Upload Season 2 is currently available to stream on the Prime Video streaming service for those with Amazon subscriptions. For those who haven’t yet watched and just wanted to see what the Jake Paul gag was, be sure to catch up on what to remember from Season 1 before diving into the new episodes. And for everyone who’s already finished, check out other shows like Upload that might win you over, and then head to our 2022 TV premiere schedule to see what else is on the way.
