Spoiler alert: Don’t read if you haven’t watched “Stranger in a Strange Land,” the final episode of Season 3 of “For All Mankind,” which is now streaming on Apple TV+.
In its third season, Apple TV+’s “For All Mankind” has encouraged viewers to turn their attention to the possibilities of Mars. But that deceptive call meant to take their eyes off the dangers to the house – until it was too late.
Ultimately, the crews of NASA, Helios and Russia bound for Mars unite to launch a very pregnant Kelly Baldwin (Cynthy Wu) back to the Phoenix Station to give birth safely in her controlled gravity over the Red Planet – a successful mission that effectively ties the rest together for 18 months until they can be rescued. But just as victory was declared from the Control Center back on Earth, a homegrown terrorist plot targeting NASA’s increasingly divisive space program paid off when a bomb was detonated outside the Johnson Space Center.
After the dust settles, Karen (Chantel Vincenten) and Molly (Sonia Walger) – two of the show’s original cast members – are counted among the dead.
“This decision was not taken seriously, and we were struggling with it,” co-founder Ben Ndevi said of Karen’s death, specifically. “But there had to be death on Earth that felt powerful enough that it reverberated all the way to Mars.”
The stark and frighteningly familiar attack (yes, the writers are familiar with the 9/11 images) ended the season that shook the foundation of the series’ alternate timeline, which imagines what would happen if space exploration had never stopped with the moon landing. While the moon has been brewing, this season’s frequent setbacks in the race to land on Mars have weakened the space race’s pillar of our national identity.
With a fourth season greenlit by Apple, as announced during the series’ Comic-Con panel in July, Nedivi and co-creator Matt Wolpert — who earlier this week extended his blanket deal with Sony Pictures Television — spoke with diverse About the victims of the epilogue, the controversy surrounding Danny (Casey W. Johnson), how turning the tide against NASA will affect the show and what “For All Mankind” will look like in the 21st century.
Fans of the show might not have fired a pregnant woman into space on the bingo cards for season three. How did you arrive at this complex task?
Ben Ndevi: Even with the duct tape suits from Season 2, when that idea popped up early in the season, she just says, “That’s crazy.” But the more we look at the science, the less crazy it seems. He set the bar for us, and we feel like this show can go to those places while still finding a way to stay true to the science and what’s possible. We take that to the extreme and sometimes a little further, but I think in this case, even as crazy as this moment with Kelly is, it’s based on the questions we ask and the science that we follow.
Despite the dramatic events on and above Mars, the defining moment for the end returned on Earth with the bombing. How do you balance the bets on Mars and Earth?
Nedevi: This was what we always wanted to do. It’s set up so early on that progress in our society comes with a backsliding, and it starts with protests over the integration of clean energy, and people losing their jobs. There is a lot of anger in America. We planted those seeds early. What was very interesting for us was setting up a prediction that the danger is in space, and then messing with that and reminding people that Earth is still very dangerous too.
The images in the aftermath of the bomb are especially surprising for anyone who remembers real attacks like 9/11. Was there a conscious effort to draw parallels with moments in history?
Matt Walbert: There have been a lot of discussions about that. 9/11 was clearly a formative event for many people, and the Oklahoma City bombing was another reference point in history for us. There are moments of tragic destruction and violence, and seeing how heroism emerges in the people left to deal with its aftermath was something we wanted to highlight.
It is part of our history, those tragic moments that come from people who are angry and disenfranchised and choose terrible ways to express their frustration. I pretty much felt that a lot of those social dynamics that led to the bombing of Oklahoma City, in particular, would still be present in our world but may have shifted their focus. NASA, as the focal point of the US government in our alternate history, felt like where it would go.
How does this frustration with NASA, which we see at the extreme level and in the decline in government funding, affect the progress of the show?
Nedevi: In real life, there was opposition to the space program from the beginning, right up to the Apollo program. There were protests, similar to what we showed in Season 3, that said it was better to spend money on the ground. With the events of this season, they define how we progress into Season 4 where it is no longer a blank check to go up and do whatever we need to do to keep exploring. There have been huge accidents abroad and here it will play a role in the future. Now, as with everything on the show, our overarching goal is to continue exploring space. But this season, we also wanted to capture this idea that moving forward isn’t just a utopia and milk and honey.
Three – Continuing four seasons in your alternate timeline, how do you handle being different from real history in a way that’s loyal to the show but isn’t too drastic?
Wolbert: At the start of every season, we dive deep into that decade, thinking about the things that define that era and what would have changed and what would have stayed the same. From now on, the butterfly effect will have an exponential effect. The more you progress, the more different the world becomes. But it was important for us to ground things as much as possible and remind people of the era we live in, even if only in the way we use music and wardrobe. Those things that take you back to that era. Seeing things like this combined with a growing base on Mars and these incredible seemingly futuristic technological breakthroughs is kind of the most unique aspect of our show. The future and the past together.
You say humans may have gotten to Mars in the ’90s, but hairstyles are still bad.
Wolbert: exactly!
Perhaps no character is more important this season than Karen. In many ways, it puts the pieces in place for how many characters end up on Mars. Given how transformative this season has been for her, why was the time to end her story?
Nedevi: Her arc is perhaps one of the greatest examples of what is possible in a show like this. She started out as an astronaut, but even in the first scene you’re in, you can tell Karen she’s the boss. You knew the CEO potential was there, and I feel that because of the time she’s living in and the expectations on her, she’s never had that chance. It’s one of the gifts of alternate history telling, to show her growth throughout the seasons even when everything wasn’t pretty. But having that ability to grow and fail and succeed, and in this season to rise to the occasion in such a big way, it’s a crazy arc.
In terms of who keeps on showing and who doesn’t, we have a loose framework. To us, it comes down to what seems to be the right ending to a person’s story. We’re not only madly hooked on Karen Baldwin’s character, but we’re in awe of actress Chantelle Van Santen. This decision was not taken seriously, and we were struggling with it. But there had to be death on Earth that felt powerful enough that it even resonated all the way to Mars. Seeing her as a victim of this bombing makes the bombing seem all the more real and impactful.
Is that why Molly was also among the victims?
Wolbert: We’ve said before in the writers room, we’ve come up with a few different ways we can kill Molly Cobb throughout the run of the show, and we’ve never been able to bring ourselves to do that because she’s such an amazing character and Sonya Walger is such an amazing presence. But that seemed like the right way to end her story, in that heroic way because that’s what Molly does. You return to the battle to save someone else. We saw her do it with Wubbo at the beginning of Season 2 and felt that fit perfectly with her identity. To see someone not only overcome post-bomb conditions, but to do so by overcoming their limitations by seeing her, really felt like a beautiful calming of her story.
As the son of two heroic astronauts, Danny could have been the leader of the next generation that would inevitably have to take charge of space exploration. But the season ends in enforced isolation on Mars after his actions and addiction cost lives. Perhaps the only criticism of season two was Karen and Danny’s ill-advised relationship, which could have left her in the past with a time-jump. But you doubled his fall this year. why?
Wolbert: Danny is a wonderful person to us. We were aware of the audience’s reaction to some of the choices he made, whether in season two or three. For us, passion is a great thing, whether it’s positive or negative. You don’t have to love every choice a character makes. In fact, some of the greatest characters in television are characters that people hate. For us, the story of Danny and [his brother] Jimmy is the story of their parents. It was very important for us to tell the story of the cost of the championship and the negative effects of the sacrifice that Gordo and Tracy made at the end of Season 2 on their children. We talked a lot in the writers room about the book “100 Years of Solitude,” which tells the story of family generation to generation and how not every generation in the family represents a step forward. Over the course of the long show, it gives you a chance to redeem that family. So we definitely went to Danny’s story with our eyes open about our goals.
In the final moments of the finale, it is revealed that Margo (Wrenn Schmidt) is living in Russia in 2003, having died in the explosion as the world believed. She successfully evaded the treason charge, but as someone who gave her life for the space program, would she be able to stay away?
Nedevi: A very good question that I will not answer. The more we thought about this ending, the more we felt she was right. Margot has two options – either to go to prison or to Russia. On some level in her mind, she probably thinks there is something she still has to offer to the world. Maybe she can do some good to make up for what happened. But this would be the biggest experience of her life. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s definitely one of the most exciting episodes of Season 4. It is a real breakthrough for the show.
Margo is the only one we see in the flash forward. What does the leap into the twenty-first century look like in the alternate timeline of “for all mankind?”
Wolbert: Without getting into too much, because we’re in the middle of the writers room now understanding all of that, it’s really about expanding on what the Martian astronauts built in Season 3. We’ve talked a lot this season about the journey of the Pilgrims, the first migrants to come across the Atlantic. Going back to our story in the 2000s and seeing the community they built there and how it evolved in ways that people might not have expected, there’s a lot of fun in season 4.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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