The best sci-fi show on TV is coming back. Here's what you need to know about season 5

For All Mankind is a sci-fi show on Apple TV+ about an alternate reality where the Soviet Union, not the United States, put the first man on the woman (and the first woman, at least in the series). It not the highest profile sci-fi show on TV — that honor likely goes to Severance or Pluribus, also on Apple TV+ — but it is one of the best, and definitely the most underrated.

But now that it’s coming back for its fifth season, my hope is that it’s been good enough for long enough that more people take notice. Before the March premiere, let’s catch you up with everything you need to know about For All Mankind before it makes its glorious return.

What happened at the end of For All Mankind season 4?

When our heroes stole an asteroid for all mankind

The first season of For All Mankind began in the late 1960s. Each subsequent season skipped forward several years, and we saw how — thanks to governments putting so much money into space exploration — technology had advanced much faster in this world than in ours. The fourth season was set in the early 2000s, when we had fully functional bases on the Moon, a growing colony on Mars called Happy Valley, and the means to mine valuable iridium worth potentially trillions of dollars out of a passing asteroid. And also Al Gore was president for some reason.

That asteroid was crucial to the plot of season 4. The great nations of the world wanted to bring it to Earth so it could be mined close to home. In the end, aging astronaut Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and tech billionaire Dev Ayesa (Edi Gathegi) — both of whom were living on Mars — hatched a plan to keep the asteroid in orbit around the Red Planet. They were aided back on Earth by former NASA head Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt) and engineer Aleida Rosales (Coral Peña), both of whom were working on the mission to bring the asteroid to Earth. The idea was that if the asteroid stayed in orbit around Mars, governments would have to keep funding the expansion of the colony there, which would lead to further scientific discoveries. And that, these characters think, will ultimately be better for all mankind.

The plan works. In the final moments of season 4, we jump ahead to the year 2012 and see that humanity has built a mining colony called Kuznetsov Station on the asteroid. We assume that this is when season 5 will pick up. I wonder who’ll be president. Mitt Romney?

Who’s returning for For All Mankind season 5?

And who isn’t?

Because every season of For All Mankind jumps forward in time, we lose and gain characters along the way. Sometimes characters die, like Ed’s ex-wife Karen (Shantel VanSanten) and sometimes they’re written out, like Ellen Wilson (Jodi Balfour), who became the first female president of the United States in the 1990s.

For season 5, we know that Ed and Dev are returning, both of them still on Mars. Ed is one of the few characters who’s been with the show since the beginning, and the makeup department is really giving it their all to make the 40-something Joel Kinnaman look ancient. Aleida will also be back, probably still at the head of Helios Aerospace, a company Dev founded and handed control of to her when he left for Mars. Also returning is Miles Dale (Toby Kebbell), a blue collar worker who went to Mars on the promise of a good-paying job. We don’t know exactly what he’ll be doing, but odds are he’s still on Mars, helping to build the new community.

One person I’m a bit surprised to see back is Margo Madison, who took full responsibility for sabotaging NASA’s efforts to bring the asteroid to Earth (thus protecting Aleida) and was last seen being taken away by the FBI after the Soviet Union revoked her diplomatic immunity. It’s unclear what she’ll do; she could show up briefly in a prison cell or be released and play a huge role.

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One person I don’t think we’ll see again is Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall), an astronaut who’d been with the show since the beginning. She only reluctantly went to Mars in season 4, where she was shot. Last we saw her, she had returned to Earth and was greeting her new grandchild. I think she wants and I don’t blame her.

Ed Baldwin’s daughter’s Kelly (Cynthy Wu) will return, as will her son Alex, although he’s now gotten older and will be played by Sean Kaufman; that’s him riding a motorcycle over the surface of Mars in the season 5 teaser trailer below.

Finally, there are some brand new cast members we’ll learn more about later, including Mireille Enos, Costa Ronin, Ruby Cruz, and Ines Asserson.

Prepare for…interplanetary war?

According to Apple’s official synopsis, Happy Valley will be bigger than ever in For All Mankind season 5, and include “a base for new missions that will take us even further into the solar system.” However, there’s tension between the people of Earth and the people of Mars now; I’m betting enough time has passed for some proper Martians to be born.

“We can say that, obviously, season 4 ended with an asteroid being stolen, and so there are a lot of people on Earth who are pretty pissed off about that,” creator Matt Wolpert told Collider. “I think that more than anything, I would say the thrust of the season 5 story is how a rift is forming between the people who live on Mars — and more and more people are now living on Mars — and the people who have stayed back on Earth. And so, this show that started with a U.S. versus USSR Cold War is now developing into a Mars versus Earth political schism.”

It sounds a little like the conflicts seen on the sci-fi show The Expanse, which lends fuel to the fan theory that For All Mankind is just one big prequel series. We’ll find out more when season 5 premieres on March 27, 2026.

We’re also getting a For All Mankind spinoff this year

Despite not (yet) becoming a phenomenon, Apple has consistently supported For All Mankind, which I appreciate. If the show is able to get to the end of its story — the creators have said they envision around seven seasons before everything is said and done — I think people will look back on the full series as a towering achievement.

In fact, Apple is investing more in the For All Mankind universe. Sometime this year, the streamer is expected to premiere Star City, a show that tells the story of For All Mankind but from the Russian perspective, going all the way back to when they put the first man on the Moon in season 1. If it’s as good as the original show, it will also be worth checking out.