Feature Story
In an alternate universe, the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union never ends — and neither does “For All Mankind.” After a gripping Season 1 finale and a postcredits hint as to where our astronauts could take us, it’s finally here. Season 2 of “For All Mankind” is set to premiere Friday, Feb. 19, on Apple TV+.
Returning to the screen are Joel Kinnaman (“Suicide Squad,” 2016) and Shantel VanSanten (“Shooter,” 2016) as Edward and Karen Baldwin, respectively, Sarah Jones (“Damnation”) and Michael Dorman (“The Secrets She Keeps”) reprise their roles as another couple, Tracy and Gordo, and Jodi Balfour (“The Crown”) continues her dynamic part as Ellen Waverly. Other familiar names viewers are sure to see again are Wrenn Schmidt (“The Looming Tower”), Krys Marshall (“Supergirl”) and Sonya Walger (“Darkness Falls”). This is the part where we issue a spoiler alert for further information and inform fans of the show that they won’t be seeing much of Chris Bauer’s (“The Deuce”) Deke Slayton since his death in the Season 1 finale. Luckily we’ll have new faces to make up for it.
Cynthy Wu (“Holidate,” 2020) joins the cast as Kelly Baldwin, Ed and Karen’s adopted daughter. Aleida Rosales, formerly played by Olivia Trujillo (“Victor & Valentino”), is now a successful engineer after the interseason time skip, played by Coral Peña (“Chemical Hearts”). And introducing more family into the mix, Casey W. Johnson (“GLOW”) is Danny Stevens, Gordo and Tracy’s son. These new additions to the list of familiar faces are sure to add to the complex roller-coaster of relationships as set up by Season 1 of the series.
The brainchild of “Battlestar Galactica” producer Ronald D. Moore, the show explores what it could have been like had the Cold War-era Space Race never ended. Beginning in 1969, the show places its audience in the middle of a historical event — the Soviets landing a cosmonaut on the moon before the Americans. The achievement throws NASA into a panic from which there is no respite. Season 1 followed NASA as it continuously tried to match and exceed the Soviet Union’s accomplishments, including sending a woman to the moon. Rewriting history is tough, but the facts of the past weren’t the only hurdles the show’s cast had to jump. Each character also has their own problems to deal with.
In Season 1, Ed and Karen lost their son, but Ed’s mourning was interrupted by the capture of a Soviet cosmonaut named Ivan, who tells him that the moon belongs to everyone. At the season’s start, Tracy was about to divorce her husband, Gordo, for sleeping with another woman while on a mission, however Karen convinced her otherwise. Meanwhile, Deke eventually recruited Tracy to undergo the rigorous space training program, leading Gordo to have an incredibly difficult time dealing with her success as a fellow astronaut.
As progressive as he is, Deke cannot fully accept Ellen’s secret that she is a lesbian, and even in his dying moments, he can neither convey sympathy nor acceptance towards Ellen regarding her sexuality. Deke even goes so far as to express his worry that her secret would undo all the progress the team has made.