Caemeron Crain
The following recap contains spoilers for For All Mankind S5E9, “Sons and Daughters” (written by David Weddle & Bradley Thompson and directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan)
When last week’s episode of For All Mankind ended with Avery (Ines Høysæter Asserson) adrift in space, I wondered if S5E9 would spend an inordinate amount of time focused on her rescue. Instead, “Sons and Daughters” opens with Alex (Sean Kaufman) and Lily (Ruby Cruz) seeing M-6 ships descend on Mars, with Avery among the marines ready to invade Happy Valley.
It’s easy enough to fill in the gap: We have only to imagine that Avery was able to communicate with the M-6 troops, and they picked her up. Further, the events on the Goldilocks asteroid have clearly had an impact on the disposition of the marines. Gone are any stipulations to use non-lethal force, though I suppose those might have only been for the asteroid reconnaissance mission. Regardless, the marines attack Happy Valley with brutality.
Alex and Lily have joined Silvio (Jonathan Medina) and others to attempt to hold a position within the base. Silvio encourages Lily to film what is about to occur, so presumably there is footage of what happens when the marines arrive. Silvio raises a hand in the air and says, “Hold your fire,” but the marines shoot him dead before he can even finish the phrase.
A firefight breaks out, but, unless I missed it, I don’t think our Marsie friends manage to hit a single marine. They’re gravely outmatched as Boyd (Mireille Enos) arrives to help the group retreat.
Alex is left behind but manages to hide until the marines move on. He discovers Ronnie (Tess Lina), who is seriously wounded, and helps her with his medic training before getting her to the medbay, where Dima (Goran Ivanovski) tells Alex he’s saved Ronnie’s life. Unfortunately, the medbay is running low on medical supplies due to the embargo and the way that the MDK, headed by Palmer (Myk Watford), has been stealing them.
Alex heads towards Helios to get medical supplies, but he has to hide along the way when the MDK approaches. At this point, they have Boyd, Lily, and others in custody, but Fred (Tyler Labine) attempts to get some redemption by letting the group go while Palmer et al. are distracted investigating a noise Alex made.
The marines arrive and shoot the MDK dead before Palmer can explain they’re on the same side. They notice afterward, and briefly lament the fact that they killed friendlies, but it’s clear they don’t really care. In all likelihood, they intend to blame the deaths on the Marsies, so it’s an interesting wrinkle when Alex finds Lily’s camcorder on the floor after the troops leave. I have to imagine this was all caught on videotape.
It’s worth noting that the SDM doesn’t seem to kill a single marine over the course of S5E9. I was briefly tempted to think that this was by design, but that wouldn’t really make sense unless Miles (Toby Kebbell) and Ger (Salvador Chacon) loaded their rifles with blanks and sent them to die, which I doubt.
However, when we see Ger in S5E9, it is in the midst of being peacefully captured, along with Lenya (Costa Ronin) and others. Lenya proclaims that he is Governor of Mars (which is true), that he has been held hostage (which is sort of true), and asks to be taken to command so that he can help the M-6 troops (which I don’t buy at all, given his actions in “Brave New World”). Could there be some kind of plan for Lenya to undermine the M-6 forces?
The only shot the Marsies definitively land on the invading marines is fired by Alex, who shoots his old friend Marcus Haskell (Barrett Carnahan). Marcus doesn’t die, but he is seriously wounded. As soon as he realizes who he has shot, Alex goes into medic mode, and Avery, who can see that Alex cares about Marcus, joins him.
It’s the first time in For All Mankind Season 5 that I’ve felt positively about Avery, as her bluster falls and she gives in to compassion. The moment also resonates outward to make us think about how all of the people we’ve been watching fight and die are human beings with intrinsic worth, who love and are loved, and who just happen to find themselves firing guns at each other.
This is the stuff. Now give me Avery and Alex talking about how their grandpas were on the Moon together for some reason.
They manage to get Haskell to Helios, where Alex demands that Dev (Edi Gathegi) let them in, and that’s where we leave things as S5E9 comes to close. But, surely Dev will acquiesce, right? I’ve come to view his character rather negatively, but we know he cares about Alex.
Meanwhile, on Titan, Kelly (Cynthy Wu), Walt (Christopher Denham), and Elena (Kristina Klebe) reach the Seeker that had indicated signs of life and collect the sample from it. The Seeker itself has been damaged, and they don’t quite understand why. Tholins shouldn’t have done this.
When the sample remains inconclusive, Kelly decides that the team will explore further in their search for life, which leads Elena to climb an icy bluff. She struggles, and (just after she’s seen some kind of glowing liquid) accidentally punctures her suit with a pickax. Ouch!
Kelly climbs up to help Elena, and it appears that Elena will survive, but Kelly also sees the glowing thing and will surely go after it. I hope that goes well!
I have seen numerous people quip that For All Mankind has turned into a prequel for The Expanse, and it’s easy enough to see why, given what’s been happening on Mars. If Kelly is about to find something like the protomolecule on Titan, that would be hilarious.
Regardless, Titan feels wonderfully alien in this episode in a way I really appreciated. Perhaps the sheer amount of sci-fi that has been set on Mars has made the setting feel more mundane than it should, but Titan? One of the moons of Saturn? The planet with the cool rings?
This is the stuff again.
We don’t see Miles or Aleida (Coral Peña) in S5E9, as they are surely holed up in MOCC, which the M-6 troops have yet to breach. We do know that the Sojourner has lost contact with Mars, presumably because the marines messed with the comms at Happy Valley, and that all of this will come to a head in some way in next week’s season finale.
I’m looking forward to seeing how, and am equally excited for the time jump that is sure to conclude S5E10. That should take us into the 2020s.
See you then.
