Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for For All Mankind S5E1, “First Light” (written by Matt Wolpert & Ben Nedivi and directed by Sarah Boyd)
In line with the structure of previous season premieres, For All Mankind S5E1 begins with a barrage of news clips filling us in on what’s happened historically over the course of the time jump that occurred at the end of Season 4. Some things are in line with the world as we know it—Ted Kennedy dies, Breaking Bad airs on TV, etc.—while others are not. In the alternate timeline of For All Mankind, Hurricane Katrina ends up being mild, for example, and, of course, John Lennon continues to be alive. So does John F. Kennedy, Jr., who people think might run for President in 2012.
Closer to our story, Al Gore loses his reelection campaign for President in 2004 to the fictional James Bragg (Randy Oglesby). You’ll recall that Bragg served as Vice President to Ellen Wilson (Jodi Balfour) during her first term, and was coded as a Conservative Christian even if the show didn’t dig into it that much. Now, his primary political issue seems to be bringing Mars to heel, and we’re told he won reelection in a landslide.
Sam (Tyner Rushing) has been sent to federal prison for her role in stealing the Goldilocks asteroid, and it would seem she might not be in this season. Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), on the other hand, persists. He’s still living on Mars, though he has to wear an ankle bracelet that keeps him out of important rooms. He has cancer, which he has, of course, been hiding from Kelly (Cynthy Wu).
Beyond that, Ed is involved in a group called the SDM, along with Miles (Toby Kebbell) and others. They aim to advocate for the interests of those living on Mars, and are frustrated about how little they can do.
The colony has expanded significantly since Season 4, and many on Mars have brought their families to live with them. The legality of this isn’t made entirely clear in S5E1. Some (referred to as Craters) arrive in shipping crates, which doesn’t seem like how you would do things if everything was above board. But, at the same time, there doesn’t seem to be any active effort to detain or deport anyone. Perhaps this will be explored more later in the season.
“First Light” does introduce us to Celia Boyd (Mireille Enos), who works security on the colony. She chases someone who’s spray-painted “Free Mars” on a wall towards the beginning of the episode, and it turns out that this person is Lily (Ruby Cruz), Miles’s daughter (though no one within the story of For All Mankind knows that yet).
More significantly, Boyd questions the official narrative of suicide after Alex (Sean Kaufman) discovers a dead body on the surface of Mars. Apparently there have been enough people who have decided to run out on the surface of Mars without a suit for the slang term “pulling a Gordo” to have developed. I’m offended on Gordo’s (Michael Dorman) behalf, but have also begun to wonder whether these were all suicides. The most recent case is discovered to have been a murder, first from Boyd’s distance-based suspicions, and then from the fact that the man’s eardrums were intact.
The dead man isn’t a character we’d previously met, but S5E1 provides enough to make clear that it is the Korean Crater that Lee Jung-gil (C.S. Lee) told Ed he was feeling jealous about, as the episode ends with Jung-gil being arrested.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think the first man to set foot on Mars did a murder. I suppose it’s possible, but I suspect that For All Mankind has more of a mystery in store for us with this storyline. Or maybe I just like Jung-gil from past seasons.
One way or another, I expect that the “first murder on Mars” is going to factor into a broader story pertaining to the tensions between Mars and Earth.
Speaking of Earth, Aleida (Coral Peña) is struggling to run Helios with Dev (Edi Gathegi)—who is on Mars—announcing projects that have not been approved. He wants to build a lush city called Meru on Mars, which sounds cool, but threatens the funding for more science-based initiatives like getting to Titan and Kelly’s continued search for extraterrestrial life.
That search is not going well, and Kelly is frustrated even before she learns that her funding has been decreased. She’s also struggling to be a mother to a teenager, which we see paralleled in Aleida’s home life on Earth.
Aleida visits Margo (Wrenn Schmidt) in prison, and we get the impression that these visits are a regular thing. Margo gives Aleida some insight into a problem with a drill, and offers the consolation that, while it might be hard to balance the various parts of her life, at least Aleida has something to balance.
It tugged at my heart to see these two interacting again, and I’m not afraid to admit that I watch this show as much for the schmaltz as the sci-fi.
For All Mankind Season 5 seems set to center on tensions between Mars and Earth, but if the structure of previous seasons is any indication, I expect the true stakes of the season will only become clear a few episodes in. In terms of space exploration, that should involve the search for extraterrestrial life, but I’m also hoping for more geopolitics.
See you next week.
