For All Mankind is on the verge of returning for viewers with an Apple TV+ subscription soon in the 2026 TV schedule, but the streamer already had some good news and some bad news just days before the Season 5 premiere. The sci-fi series has been renewed early for a sixth season... which will also be the last. The news reminded me of what co-showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert told me about the challenges of moving forward with the time jumps and coming "to terms."
Time jumps have of course been a regular part of For All Mankind going back to the launch in 2019, after which it would become one of the best Apple TV+ shows to watch. The drama started out in the late ‘60s to set it up as an alternate history show centered on the space race going in a different direction with the Russians beating the Americans to landing on the moon.
After Season 1 in the ‘60s, Season 2 moved on to the ‘80s, Season 3 progressed to the ‘90s, with Season 4 in the early 2000s, and Season 5 bringing the action to the 2010s. The renewal for a sixth and final season presumably means that the show will have caught up (or nearly caught up) with real time by the end. While executive producers had previously pitched a “ten-year plan” and possibly going “beyond” present day, the show will wrap after just six seasons.
That hadn’t yet been established when I spoke with the showrunners at SCAD TVfest in Atlanta, at which point only the fifth season jumping to 2012 had been confirmed. Still, with the alternate history technology changing over the years and Joel Kinnaman leading the actors in progressively heavier old age makeup, some things just have had to change. When asked what have been the hardest to leave behind while moving forward with each time jump, Ben Nedivi explained:
To me, it's some of the characters. I think that's always been the tough compromise we had to make early on with the show. We couldn't keep the cast the same from Season 1 to the end of the road, because we're jumping into a new decade. And every time we've had to lose someone, quote, unquote, it's been painful. One, because I think Matt and I get very attached to these characters, but even more so, we get attached to the people playing those characters. So I think that's been hard.
While there have certainly been some deaths for characters over the years of the show (and there could well be more out of the upcoming Apple TV+ show release of Season 5), many have just exited the show due to the passage of time. Ellen Wilson couldn’t stay the President of the United States forever, for example, and Ed just physically can’t do what he used to as a young astronaut in the ‘60s.
No matter how attached the showrunners get to the actors and the characters, time jumps of 10+ years mean inevitable exits. Nedivi acknowledged this, as he went on:
But I think in order to capture the breadth of the show and what you're trying to say and do, you have to evolve. So it's just something we've had to come to terms with as painful as it is.
There’s a lot to love about the kinds of time jumps that other shows might not dare do to risk shaking up the status quo (and I still love how Season 3 used Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” for one such leap ahead), and Nedivi’s fellow showrunner shared what he loves and what he misses when For All Mankind does have to readjust to new times.
Matt Wolpert agreed with his co-showrunner, then went on to address the production design shifts over the years of For All Mankind. He explained:
I would just add to that, I think another thing that is really interesting is, as we get more futuristic, just the aesthetic of the show changes, and the way the spaceships look and the way the base looks. I love those switches and the old school, kind of science-based stuff, and the more sleek and high tech it gets I do miss that retro future tech.
With Season 5 taking fans closer than ever to present day, it should be interesting to see how familiar the technology is to what people were using in real-life within the last decade. Given that the space race hasn’t continued to the point of establishing a base on Mars, there are bound to be big differences in For All Mankind's version of 2012 vs. what we all experienced at that time in the real world. Check out the trailer below:
The fifth season of For All Mankind premieres on Friday, March 27 on Apple TV+, with new episodes continuing to release weekly on Fridays until the finale on May 29. That won’t be the end of the action before the hiatus starts, however, as Star City will then launch as a spinoff on May 29. A big question heading into the season now is how relevant some of the old-timers will be… and whether their stories will end in the 2010s rather than continuing into the 2020s for the sixth and final season.
