Will For All Mankind Season 6 Go Full Star Trek? The Showrunner Tells All [Exclusive]
by Rafael Motamayor · /FilmThat's one small step for man, one giant spoiler for the Season 5 finale of "For All Mankind."
It finally happened. After a scary and thrilling journey to Titan that brought back the best part of "For All Mankind," the Apple TV sci-fi show introduced alien life. Are we about to enter "Star Trek" territory?
The quest for life has served as half of the main thrust of Season 5, with the other half devoted to the war of independence on Mars — which culminated this episode after an invasion straight out of "Dune." These are two concepts that feel like the furthest the show has gone into the sci-fi genre and into its alternate timeline, but they were integral to the overall blueprint of "For All Mankind."
/Film had a chance to talk to showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert about the Season 5 finale, the discovery of life, and what it means for Season 6. Nedivi highlighted how long this discovery has been in the mind of the writers.
"We always knew we were going to get here, but we knew this was kind of the final discovery, the final road that we were going to take," Nedivi explained. "It felt like it needed to be earned and this journey to Titan with all the twists and turns and the sacrifices that have had to been made, especially by Kelly herself, by the time this discovery is made, it felt like such an uplifting thing for even us as writers."
"I think we as humans have been talking about and thinking about and telling stories about forever in terms of is there life out there, are we alone," he continued. "I think it's been a question so central, not only to science fiction, but to all of us."
A discovery for all mankind
In the Season 5 finale, after climbing up a mountain to rescue an injured crewmate, Kelly Baldwin (Cynthy Wu) takes some samples that she later identifies as living microorganisms, methane-based life that's unlike anything on Earth. It's a discovery that changes everything for the show, and it only grows from there.
In the final scene, right before a time jump that leaves us with an ominous cliffhanger, we go back to Kelly. She is left alone to die on Titan after she volunteered to save oxygen and allow her two crewmates to return safely to Mars. While overlooking a methane lake, she sees light emanating from it, bioluminescence that reacts as she approaches the lake and starts walking on it.
"As she's stepping into that lake, her steps are triggering these microbes to glow and surround her in a way that people do here on Earth in terms of stepping into the ocean and being surrounded by those microbes," showrunner Matt Wolpert explained. "We think they found this one little sample of microbial life on Titan and what she steps into at the end is there's so much more. It's not just this one little puddle that this moon is teeming with life."
So there's alien life in the "For All Mankind" universe, but don't get ahead of yourself thinking we're about to have first contact.
As showrunner Ben Nedivi told us, the writers were well aware that the further the show goes, the more it would get into sci-fi and deal with "Things that are so theoretical that you don't know if it's going to be."
"We still try as much as possible to ground it in science, we still drive our researchers crazy trying to make sure the physics makes sense," he added.
Is For All Mankind going full Star Trek?
"For All Mankind" has always tried to remain grounded. The first two seasons were mostly based around existing technology or projects that were considered and planned but never made, like the Sea Dragon ship. But now we're at a point where humanity has landed on a moon of Jupiter and found alien life — which tips the show into a "Star Trek" zone.
For Ben Nedivi, even the final scene with Kelly discovering the lake full of life is not meant to be a tease of something larger.
"When it came to this discovery at the end, we did a ton of research to make sure this feels grounded," Nedivi explained. "It's sort of become more science fiction, a little more fantastical, but I still feel in spite of that, we try very hard to keep it as close to sciences as possible at this point."
Next season, however, things could change — a bit. It seems clear that "For All Mankind" won't actually introduce alien civilizations, but the ending of Season 5 seems to tease a sixth season that takes us even further to the stars.
The season ends with a cliffhanger, a scene set in 2020 of a Russian spaceship from the '90s that has drifted off into space and is now orbiting a planet with rings. Stands to reason this is Saturn, but it could also be something outside the Solar System. The scene ends with a cryptic message that seemingly indicates the ship is detecting gravitational wells, a potential key in the next step in navigation and propulsion technology. Season 6 is going to be the end of "For All Mankind," so it stands to reason it will end with a bang, maybe a bang outside our solar system.