I liked the show if you overlook certain flaws, like the constant relationship drama and shoehorned hookups. That made no sense historically, same-sex relationships were illegal in most of the world back then, and under Nazi rule, flaunting that was practically begging for a death sentence.
The portal ending made zero sense. At first, I assumed the portal was bringing back people who had died, but none of those faces looked familiar. Then I joked with family that maybe they were refugees, but they were all wearing nice, clean clothes. So, what, tourists? Why would a crowd of people just be waiting around on their side, casually strolling through into an alternate reality? Great, you won the war, and now you have an unvetted crowd of strangers to feed, house, and screen for murderers.
Like on their end, that portal would open inside an abandoned US coal mine. To walk through, they would have to hike into a random cave, see a room filled with barely painted-over Nazi symbols, bypass local security, and keep walking anyway. If normal people stepped through an anomaly into a dark cave guarded by armed partisans and covered in swastikas, 90% of them would turn right back around out of basic self-preservation.
It would have made far more sense if resistance fighters or even an alternate Nazi regime came through. If our Nazis could build a portal, what was stopping an alternate Reich from doing the same and invading? Authoritarian regimes rarely stay friendly for long, and watching two Nazi empires wage war against each other would have been far more compelling. The entire portal plot was a huge missed opportunity, unless I missed something critical in the final minutes.
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The collapse of the American Reich was just as confusing.
If Smith shot himself in the woods and Bill Whitcroft took off his Iron Cross to call off the San Francisco airstrike, Berlin would not just shrug and grant America independence. An undefeated global superpower winning on every front would have branded Whitcroft a traitor within ten minutes, scrambled transatlantic bombers, and deployed panzer divisions to crush the rebellion.
Even if America attempted a clean break, half the world was still under firm Nazi control. Germany would never sit on its hands when it had the overwhelming military might to seize the territory during the chaos. A totalitarian, military-industrial empire does not vanish overnight simply because one regional leader committed suicide. In reality, officers under Whitcroft would immediately attempt their own power grabs. After World War II, top Nazi officials literally believed they would walk out of the Nuremberg trials scot-free; they do not simply abandon power.
Finally, the concentration camps make no sense within Smith's arc. When John talked to his wife, he claimed he did not want them. But once he secured an autonomy pact with Berlin to run North America as he saw fit, he had the authority to shut down the camps and roll back the regime's social mandates. Yet he kept them running anyway.
The entire finale felt completely off, especially the final few minutes.
