For All Mankind - Season 3 - Apple TV+

Recap

You will be warned, there might be little spoilers ahead.

At the end of season 2 of For All Mankind, we were left with a teaser in the after-credit scene: someone in a spacesuit on Mars. We don’t know which country had landed first, but we knew that season 3 would be set on Mars.

As is becoming a tradition, season 3 begins with a montage of headlines and news clippings, covering the decade between the two seasons in the For All Mankind timeline. Margaret Thatcher is assassinated by an IRA bombing, and Michael Jordan is drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers.

This time, the montage also includes updates on For All Mankind characters, products, and storylines. The Outpost has become a global franchise brand, Ellen Wilson begins her political career, which eventually leads her into a presidential race against Bill Clinton. A Moon treaty is signed, dividing the Moon territory between the USA and USSR, the Rogers Commission is formed to investigate the nuclear incident at Jamestown (not the Challenger disaster), and the USA officially declares its goal to reach Mars.

The season opens on Polaris, a luxury orbiting space hotel built by Karen Baldwin and Sam Cleveland to serve wealthy space tourists. The wedding of Danny Stevens serves as a soft opening for the hotel. Disaster strikes when space debris cripples the station, killing several people — including Sam.

The Polaris incident brings two things: it sparks debate about oversight of private space travel by NASA and sets the stage for Helios’ entry into the Mars race. They were already testing a powerful nuclear fusion-powered engine but lacked a ship. In episode 2, Helios purchases the Polaris hotel with the intention of retrofitting their engine onto it to be ready to leave for Mars in the next launch window.

The race to be the first on Mars becomes the centre point of the first half of the season.

When Helios announces they will launch in the next Mars window, NASA and the USSR are forced to accelerate their own programs and both announce their own launch in the next window. Margo once again provides crucial help to the Soviets, but unlike in the past, this time her actions will not remain above suspicion - this will stay as a storyline for the rest of the season.

In the NASA offices, there is some disagreement on who will be commander of the mission to Mars. Molly Cobb names, against the will of Margo, Ed Baldwin as commander. In a showdown, Margo overrules the decision and fires Molly; the space assignments at NASA will now be granted by committee. NASA ends up naming Danielle Poole as the commander for the big mission. Ed Baldwin fans, don’t worry, he was named as the commander of the Helios mission.

Starting early in the season, we notice that Jimmy Stevens gets slowly disconnected from his family legacy. Feeling abandoned following his parents’ heroic death and blaming the space program for it, he becomes vulnerable to outside anti-NASA influence. By the mid-season, he has fully fallen within a conspiracist group who believes that NASA is hiding what really happened with the disaster on the moon. Keep this in mind as this will become an important side storyline.

In episode 6, during an interview about daily life on Mars, an astronaut, Will Tyler, comes out as gay. This causes a big shockwave all the way to Earth. President Ellen puts in place the show’s version of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell doctrine in the US military. This will also kickstart her own dilemma about coming out and what she gave up. Keep track of that side storyline for the rest of the season.

In the second half of the season, we will follow the lives, alliances, and troubles of living on Mars. We will see how Danny Stevens continues his destructive path and how it will impact the rest of the season.

For All Mankind season 3 official trailer

Highlights / Strengths

Be warned there are major spoilers from now on!

The series continues to uphold its tradition of strong production design and visual effects with season 3. They’ve managed to create a believable Mars set.

The writers still manage to wonderfully expand the alternate history in bold, creative directions— while still echoing that of real history (e.g. sex scandal with an intern, Oval Office tapes, Don’t ask, Don’t tell etc.). It seems that some events may be inevitable despite diverging timelines.

The season’s portrayal of the Mars race between NASA, the USSR, and Helios captures the thrill, danger, and political intrigue of space exploration. Commercial interests finally disrupt the Cold War binary that we’ve had in the first two seasons.

Critique

the season’s execution is uneven, with a few structural and tonal flaws that hold it back from fully realizing its potential.

It seems they can’t get away the Stevens’ kids drama. Sadly, they haven’t forgot about the Danny and Karen story, and Danny’s descent into self-destruction might have been good in concept - echoing his father’s self-destruction on the Moon in season 1- but felt melodramatic and rushed in resolution. As for Jimmy Stevens’ radicalization and the anti-NASA conspiracy subplot feel underdeveloped until the very end, making its inclusion seem more like setup than payoff.

Ellen Wilson’s political and personal storyline is compelling enough by itself, but it could have been developed some more, maybe merging it with Will Tyler’s coming-out moment as one big side storyline.

All the acting is on point, but I will give the first star to Krys Marshall, who plays Danielle Poole. It does help that her character is to me one of the stronger one. With the second star to Joel Kinnaman (Ed Baldwin) and a third star to Shantel VanSanten (Karen Baldwin)

Final Thoughts

Season 3 of For All Mankind delivers a captivating chapter in the series, but its emotional and structural unevenness leaves it just shy of the heights reached in the first two seasons. Season 1 remains the best of the show, as it’s the original.  The slower and weaker “living on Mars” part of the season 3 leaves, what could have otherwise been the best season yet, behind season 2 in my ranking.