******TITAN-SIZED SPOILERS!******

Apple TV’s “For All Mankind” nearly lost me with its surprisingly reactionary 4th season, which saw the demotion and humiliation of its stronger women characters, such as Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt), who is brutally imprisoned, while astronaut Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) was shot, and exiled from Mars after a revolt at the end of the season. That revolt saw powerful Elon Musk stand-in Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi) teaming with grumpy old astronaut Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) to ‘free’ Mars, but in a very pro-capitalist way, as they capture a mineral-rich “Goldilocks” asteroid bound for Earth.

Taking part in this greed-inspired coup was Mars newcomer Miles Dale (Toby Krebbell), a down on his luck air-conditioning technician who immigrates to Mars with his wife and kids, but soon finds reality (and his paychecks) not exactly living up to the Martian sales pitch. Miles goes to work for and eventually supplants the local black market, which help grow his wealth and influence, Godfather-style. This was not quite the future I imagined for pioneering Martian colonists in my idealistic youth, and I began to sour on this once-favorite show of mine. The recently ended 5th season–despite online criticism–really brought it back for me.

Cancer-stricken Ed finally passes on, with a tribute fitting for the colorful, ill-tempered space cowboy (“Svoboda”). Ed’s passing cleared the way for his astronaut-scientist daughter Kelly (Cynthy Wu), whom he adopted as a baby from Vietnam, to fly out to the Saturnian moon of Titan in search of extraterrestrial life. Meanwhile, Kelly’s son Alex (Sean Kaufman), a gangly teenager and recent graduate, becomes a new audience surrogate as he grows from a relatively sheltered adolescence into a brave new adulthood on Mars.

With the ambitious manned mission to Titan launched amid the imminent threat of a second Martian uprising, “For All Mankind” season 5 takes a deeper dive into life on Mars, with some of that much-needed headiness and optimism of exploration from earlier seasons returning as well.

For All Mankind, S5E10: “This Land is Our Land”

Written by Matt Wolpert, Ben Nedivi, & Kira Snyder and directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, “This Land is Our Land” carries a synopsis from Apple TV that simply states, “The resilience of Mars is put to the test,” which is a dramatic understatement.

Note: I first welcomed the seemingly humble character of AC repairman Miles Dale as an ‘everyman goes to Mars’ in season 4’s “Have a Nice Sol,” but I hated when he became a greedy black marketeer and lost his humility. Nevertheless, British actor Toby Kebbell (“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”) retains the ability to make the character likable, even when he has no right to be.

Note: Seeing Coral Peña in person at WonderCon 2026 in Anaheim gave me a bit of shock when I realized how truly young many of the show’s long-running cast members really are, without the decades-jumping age makeup they are required to wear each season. Aleida Rosales also gets one of the episode’s best lines after Dev asks to confirm her identity before allowing her into his sanctuary, and she replies flatly, “I’m the f**king CEO.”

Note: The smarmy, often two-faced Mars governor/president Leonid Polivanov (Costa Ronin) is another character who seemed utterly irredeemable until he threw in his lot with the Martians this season; by coercion at first, but later on his own volition, especially in the scene where he levels the odds by doing his part to blow up the Marine command post. Russian/Australian actor Costa Ronin also appeared as a space station cosmonaut in “I.S.S.” (2023).

Note: Dev Ayesha is another character whose previous actions make him nearly irredeemable, though actor Edi Gathegi (“Superman”) manages to inject a bit of humanity back into his portrayal of the series’ cold, greedy, too on-the-nose Elon Musk surrogate. Earlier this season, Dev is beaten within an inch of his life (“No Sudden Moves”) by angry colonists who feel betrayed by the billionaire’s plans to automate the Martian workforce and deport them all back to Earth. That vicious beating was the impetus for Dev’s deadly acts of sabotage against the base’s food supply (“Lock the doors”). It’s through deft writing and the actor’s skill that I found myself hoping Dev really came around at the end of “This Land is Our Land.”

Note: A reminder to those who may have forgotten that Margo was forced to help the KGB and betray her country by giving US space secrets to the Soviets to save the life of her Russian lover. Nevertheless, I love her character–if only for her dignity, and her ability to cut through bullshit and solve problems. Wrenn Schmidt (“Star Trek: Khan”) is one of the best performers on the show, and I hope to see Margo return as an octogenarian in season 6. When I see Margo struggling to retain her dignity in prison, I can practically feel her arthritis pains… until I remind myself the actress is only 43 years old!

Note: Cynthy Wu is another actress who gets her brightest spotlight on the series to date by fulfilling the age-long promise of the space program by finding native, methane-based life on the Saturnian moon of Titan. Like Coral Peña and Wrenn Schmidt, Wu is far younger than she appears on the series (she was born in 1998–the year my wife and I were engaged), yet I have no trouble believing she is a middle-aged mother to teenaged Alex (the actors are only two years apart in age), and a veteran space explorer.

Note: When I first saw soft-spoken actor Sean Kaufman at WonderCon earlier this year, I wondered about his acting chops, but over the course of season 5 we see his character Alex go from aimless graduate to budding medic to successful Martian revolutionary. Alex’s height and gangly frame are well-suited to a child of lower Mars gravity (roughly a third of Earth’s). A pacifist at heart, the violence he’s forced to commit against Marcus wounds him nearly as much as the Marine. Alex later gets a heroic ride on his EV motorcycle at the story’s climax, as he races to spread word about the ceasefire to the combatants in the Happy Valley promenade.

Note: Norwegian actress Ines Høysæter Asserson comes on strong as the hotheaded Marine Avery “A.J” Jarrett, who is the secret daughter of disgraced, mentally unstable astronaut Danny Stevens (Casey W. Johnson), who died on Mars in season 3 (“Goldilocks”). We see greater dimension to Jarrett (who took her mother’s name to retain her anonymity) after she’s nearly killed during sabotage of the Goldilocks asteroid’s landing platform (“Brave New World”), which only fuels her rage against the rebellious “Marsies.” The once-inflexible Jarrett is later softened by her experiences, and she even visits her father’s ‘tomb’ at the end of the episode.

Note: Next to proving the existence of an afterlife, Kelly makes the discovery of all discoveries, yet she volunteers to remain behind and die in order to ensure her comrades’ return to Sojourner. Like Marie Curie, her momentous discovery costs her life.

Note: Lily Dale (Ruby Cruz) is perhaps the most ordinary character of the series, coming to Mars as a little girl, she later had aspirations of being a journalist, not a scientist, astronaut or engineer. Yet by episode’s end, she’s a full-on revolutionary documentarian, Alex’s girlfriend, and First Daughter to newly sworn-in president of Mars, Miles Dale. Actress Ruby Cruz also appeared in Netflix’s recent “Willow” TV series.

Note: Another new character for this year, hopper pilot and Mars Peacekeeper Force officer Celia Boyd (Mireille Enos) goes from an orders-following cop to saboteur and Martian revolutionary. Despite being forced to carry out missions of fatal sabotage, the character never loses her soft spot and inner humanity. Celia represents the heart beneath the badge. Actress Mireille Enos also costarred in AMC’s “The Killing,” which featured Joel Kinnaman.

Note: Personally, I don’t think billionaires can so easily switch from greed to altruism, otherwise they wouldn’t have become billionaires. Those sweet government tax breaks they siphon for their personal benefit from the working poor leave a lot of misery in their wake. Dev was willing to automate his entire work force just to make Mars a crystal palace for his fellow elites, yet now we’re supposed to accept he’s become one with the working-class Marsies? It’s the same con job Trump uses in our own timeline to appeal to working class voters (whom he routinely screws over). Nevertheless, the inner-optimist in me truly wants to believe Dev is turning over a new leaf, if only for story’s sake.

Note: I appreciated that Kelly’s final moments on Titan were filled with joy, not dread.

Note: The meaning of that final message, beyond being a simple course correction from Sergei Nikulov, is the subject for some speculation; some say it stands for detection of “gravity waves,” but if this proves to be a prelude for some kind of warp drive, I’ll be disappointed.

The End.

Summing It Up

The producers/writers/creatives behind the show, Ron Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi, turned things around this year by focusing more on certain ensemble cast members who’ve been with the series for awhile, but haven’t gotten the spotlights they deserve, particularly Cynthy Wu and Coral Peña, whose respective characters of Kelly and Aleida often drove the action, while departing Joel Kinnaman’s cranky, geriatric space cowboy Ed Baldwin was given a graceful exit from the show.

While a secondary Martian revolution does seem like a bit of a rehash of last year’s climax (“Perestroika”), the goals for this revolution are about preserving human autonomy and labor, rather than simply capturing a valuable asteroid for profit and gain. Even the filthy rich Elon Musk stand-in Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi) finds his lost humanity when he realizes the laborers on Mars were always the ‘right people’ for the fully-automated, Walt Disney-style utopian colony he’d planned. As our own timeline grapples with replacing human labor with AI, too many billionaires ignore that other valuable reason for going into business–providing the necessary human jobs to drive their dream economies. Automation doesn’t buy products, nor does it drive tourism. While Dev arrives at this conclusion a bit late to fully redeem the rotten things he’s done, it’s hopeful he might remain an ally to the Martian colonists, instead of a morally vacant recluse living on a hill.

I also welcomed new cast members Sean Kaufman (“Alex”) and Ruby Cruz (“Lily”), who play older versions of Alex Poletov-Baldwin and Lily Dale–the children of Kelly and Dale who appeared last season as little more than toddlers. Now these kids are falling in love, and fighting to defend the once-alien world they now call home. They grow up so fast. While I will miss Cynthy Wu’s Kelly Baldwin, I expect her role will be ably filled by her son Alex in season 6, the final season of the series. Turns out, the kids really are alright.

After dreading the pro-piracy, suffocatingly capitalist direction of season 4, season 5 recaptured the series’ original promise of a brighter alternate reality than the one we’ve been dealt. The return of hope and optimism in “This Land is Our Land” reaffirmed why I fell in love with “For All Mankind” in the first place.

Note: The side-quel spinoff, “Star City” (which chronicles the events of FAM from the Soviet perspective) also debuted this week. However, after watching the opening teaser act, I stopped it in order to finish this review without harshing my buzz for FAM. I intend to publish my column on “Star City” the same day as this one. I just wish Apple TV had given viewers a week off between series to better process each of them. As is, it’s like sitting down for dinner after polishing off the last crumbs of lunch.

Where to Watch

“For All Mankind” and its new side-quel spinoff, “Star City” are streaming exclusively on Apple TV.