A Decade-by-Decade For All Mankind Catch-Up Guide
Ahead of the season-four premiere, refresh your memory of the Apple TV+ show’s alternate timeline.
Houston, we have a problem: It’s been over a year since the last installment of For All Mankind, and life has been a whole lot less fun without our favorite space explorers. Luckily, the new season of the Apple TV+ series returns on November 10, taking place eight years after season three’s events and promising a new decade’s worth of drama, romance, and World’s Slowest Ager Joel Kinnaman.
But while the view out of NASA’s rocket windows may be crystal clear, your memory of the last three seasons’ events might be a bit foggy. After all, For All Mankind is the kind of show where a lot happens, all of the time; in the season-three finale alone, there was an FBI investigation, a life-threatening spacewalk, a North Korean battle, and a bombing that killed two of our beloved main characters (R.I.P., Karen and Molly!). To help you catch up before the new episodes premiere, we’ve recapped all the biggest moments from each decade For All Mankind has covered thus far.
1960s
1969: Alexei Leonov, a Soviet cosmonaut, lands on the moon, beating America and changing the space race forever. A month later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin achieve their own landing (with the help of a bitter Ed Baldwin, reassigned to flight duty after criticizing NASA’s loss). Not long after that, the Soviets land a woman on the moon, leaving NASA further in the dust.
1970s
1971: Apollo 15 heads to the moon, bringing the cocky, talented Molly Cobb with it. On the moon, the team discovers ice.
1973: NASA establishes its first moon base, Jamestown. Meanwhile, president Ted Kennedy (who, in this universe, beat out Nixon) announces that the U.S. will beat the Soviets to Mars, beginning a new space race that’ll color the next several decades.
1974: Ed, his pal Gordo Stevens, and new recruit Danielle Poole begin living and working on the Jamestown base. The isolation and monotony take a psychological toll on Gordo, who ends up leaving the mission early with Danielle. Back on Earth, a whole lot happens: Apollo 23 explodes on the launchpad and kills 12 people, NASA engineer Margo Madison blackmails her way into being made flight director, closeted lesbian astronaut Ellen Wilson gets married to avoid being outed, and Ed and Karen Baldwin’s young son, Shane, dies in an accident. But that’s not all! On the moon, an angry, grieving Ed captures a Soviet cosmonaut before eventually returning home alone, while Apollo 25 crew member Molly gets lost in space (then rescued) and Apollo 24’s Deke Slayton gets hurt and dies. It’s quite a year for our astronauts.
1975: NASA lands an unmanned rocket on the moon.
1980s
1983: Thought ’79 was busy? Just wait until you hear about ’83. Early in the year, Molly, working on Jamestown, gets exposed to a whole lot of radiation during a solar storm and begins going blind. Gordo’s astronaut ex Tracy remarries and preps for a space trip of her own. Ed (after adopting a Vietnamese daughter with Karen) returns to space as well, promoting Molly to chief of the Astronaut Office and giving Danielle the role of mission commander. As tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union rise, Margo plans a joint NASA-Soviet mission. Yet when a Korean plane carrying NASA’s administrator is shot down by the Soviets (leading a still-closeted Ellen to take on the role instead), things escalate quickly; on the moon, U.S. Marines kill some cosmonauts in a standoff, and the Soviets attack Jamestown in retaliation, damaging the nuclear-reactor cooling system. Gordo and Tracy heroically sacrifice themselves to fix the problem, while Danielle shakes the hand of a cosmonaut to defuse the hostilities. Oh, and Reagan’s president now!
1984: The moon is divided into U.S. and Soviet territories, easing tensions … for now.
1986: Ellen runs for the U.S. Senate, setting the stage for her political career. Karen and Tracy’s husband, Sam, found Polaris, a space-tourism company.
1987: China launches a lunar base, adding a new major player to the space race.
1990s
1990: Tracy and Gordo’s son Danny, following in his parents’ footsteps, arrives at Jamestown. NASA begins planning its first Mars mission, scheduled for 1996.
1992: During Danny’s wedding at Polaris’s space hotel, debris from an exploded North Korean rocket hits the spaceship and kills Sam, among others. After the disaster, the private space company Helios, led by the brilliant and cocksure Dev Ayesa, buys Polaris and poaches Ed to lead its own Mars mission — scheduled for 1994, causing NASA and the Soviets to speed up their timelines. Danielle is named commander of the NASA Mars mission, bringing Ed and Karen’s daughter Kelly on as crew biologist. Margo is blackmailed by the KGB to share NASA’s engine designs, while her protege, Aleida, becomes NASA’s flight director. And Ellen becomes president!
1994: NASA, Helios, and the Soviets head off to Mars — not knowing that North Korea has launched a mission of its own. When the Soviet ship encounters trouble, NASA mounts a rescue but some astronauts are killed.
1995: So. Much. Happens! The North Korea capsule crash lands, leaving a sole survivor as the first person on Mars — but with no way to communicate with Earth. NASA beats Helios to Mars but ties with the Soviets who were on board NASA’s spacecraft following the rescue. Danielle and the Soviet commander, Grigory Kuznetsov, (seemingly) jointly become the first people to land on Mars. They share a base, while Helios creates its own. When the Soviets discover water, they keep it secret from NASA, but Margo’s Soviet contact Sergei fills her in. Danny (hurt and angry over Karen and Ed reconnecting — it’s a whole thing) causes an accident during a drilling excursion, killing several astronauts and badly injuring Ed. Danny and Ed are left stranded but eventually rescued. Meanwhile, Kelly becomes pregnant (by a cosmonaut, who later dies), and a NASA astronaut reveals he’s gay, causing a panic.
Five months later, Danielle and Kuznetsov finally discover the North Korean astronaut and take him captive. Due to the explosion Danny let happen, the astronauts and cosmonauts on Mars are stuck on the surface with no way to get back to the Helios ship in orbit, but they band together to use what limited resources they have to get the heavily pregnant Kelly back safely into orbit and resolve to hold out on Mars for the many, many months it will take for a new mission to reach the planet and rescue them. Danny, however, is exiled to the North Korean module for the duration as punishment for causing the disaster that caused all this.
Back on Earth, Karen starts working for Helios alongside Dev and eventually becomes its CEO. President Ellen, facing impeachment, reveals to the public that she’s gay. Margo’s problems with the Soviets get worse as Aleida begins to suspect that her mentor has been sharing secrets with the Soviets. She’s been reported as a traitor to the FBI. BUT THEN Gordo and Tracy’s younger son Jimmy’s friends, who have been radicalized against the space program because NASA’s discoveries have made oil irrelevant and put thousands out of work, bomb Johnson Space Center, killing dozens including Karen and Molly. Margo is presumed dead in the blast. It’s all very tragic, but on the upside, Kelly gives birth and Sergei was able to defect to Germany with Margo’s help.
2000s
2003: Margo’s living in Moscow — as for how she got there and what’s going on back at home, we won’t know until season four’s premiere. To be continued!
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