Entertainment & Arts
The Complete Guide to The Man in the High Castle Season 3 – Premiering 10/5
WW2 historian Paul K. DiCostanzo breaks down Amazon’s upcoming The Man in the High Castle season 3, and the hidden WW2 history driving it.
Nicole Dörmer: The Makings for a Tragic Character?
Amazon Studios The Third Reich trail blazer, Nicole Dörmer
Joe Blakes feminist crush Nicole Dörmer (Bella Heathcote) is one of the most unpredictable characters in this entire story. Given the way she made her way into Joe’s life, the audience cannot possibly help but be suspicious of her motives and goals.
Nicole is clearly the daughter of a pharmaceutical magnate whose primary client is the German Wehrmacht (military), and the SS. Born into genuine gilded privilege, Nicole is best described as a member of the Reich’s plutocracy and aristocracy. Yet she and her fellow young cohorts are the counter-culture movement in Nazi Germany. Nicole is, for all intents and purposes, at the head of the feminist movement in the highly patriarchal Nazi state.
Historically, women who lived under National Socialism had a very specific and predefined role. Motherhood and family were the limits for most women in Nazi Germany, and very few women of note stepped outside the bounds of their subjugated place in that society. Perhaps more accurately, National Socialism saw women as little more than a brood mare for the state. Nicole is dead set to change that about her world.
Aside from these facts, Nicole is a wild-card. It is impossible to know at present where her loyalties truly lay. She is clearly very smart and capable, but how she is choosing to use her abilities in regards to the current intrigues of Joe Blake and his father are entirely unknowable. What we can be sure of is that it’s very unlikely Nicole is purely a bystander of chance in the events ending Season 2, and their continuation in Season 3 of The Man in the High Castle.
Speaking entirely as a member of the audience, one wants her to be on a side that doesn’t aid the Nazi state. Yet if we have learned anything, the natural ambiguity of almost every character in the series dictates the audience be on guard. Everyone in this show has their own very specific agenda, and we can be absolutely sure that we have no idea Nicole’s full desire or allegiance. Chances are that we won’t have to wait long to see where she stands among the many human pawns in this greater game of chess.
