Meet the man in 'High Castle'

BEVERLY HILLS — You’re about to meet "the Man" in The Man in the High Castle.

In its first season, Castle’s title character  has remained a mystery figure. But when the Amazon series returns Dec. 16, he'll become on-screen flesh and blood, producer Isa Hackett said at the Television Critics Association

Castle — which Amazon insists, without providing numbers, is its most popular original series — is based on Philip K. Dick’s alternate history novel set in a world where Germany and Japan won the Second World War. But while the basic idea comes from the book, the series has pretty much gone its own way, though Hackett says there are still some areas left in the original story to explore.

That exploration, however, will go forward without creator Frank Spotnitz, who has left the series. Despite his departure, producer David Zucker insists that “nothing has changed.”  "The team in Vancouver," where Castle is shot and "the team in the writing room is exactly the same.”

The second season, Zucker says, “will be incredibly expansive,” and impossible to predict. But here's what we know: Juliana (Alexa Davalos) will seek asylum with the Nazis; Joe (Luke Kleintank) will go to Berlin and find a new love interest; Frank (Rupert Evans) will become radicalized; and John Smith (Rufus Sewell) will try to protect his seriously ill son.