For All Mankind Season 5 Episode 4 Review: Open Source

Maybe there’s a more fitting way to end the first episode of For All Mankind without Ed Baldwin than the lift-off of the ship that will take humanity on its next steps into the stars, but it’s hard to imagine what that might be.

But the Sojourner’s departure for Titan is not even close to the biggest change that For All Mankind Season 5 Episode 4, “Open Source,” introduces, in an hour that promises to shake up everything we know about life in Happy Valley — and maybe even back on Earth.

There’s a lot to unpack this week, from the introduction of a surprising (and surprisingly important) new legacy character whose presence on the canvas will almost certainly have a far-reaching impact, to the news that Helios and Soviet space conglomerate, Kuragin, have been secretly working together to automate iridium mining, so much so that it will inevitably reduce the need for almost all the human workers on Mars.

This is a betrayal on so many levels, and one that it’s hard to see Dev’s logic in. Sure, Helios has been struggling a bit, and Dev’s obsession with building his self-sustaining Martian city isn’t doing the company or Aleida — now on Mars herself — any favors from a public relations standpoint. But the idea that his unrealized dream of Meru is worth sacrificing so much of what they’ve already achieved is…well, it’s a lot to swallow. 

That it’s Alex who discovers the secret feels fitting. His grandfather became such a fighter for Mars and the rights of those who made their home there that it’s deeply satisfying to see Alex purposefully get into the sort of good trouble that Ed would have approved of.

(Heck, Ed would already have a plan to sabotage the space mining elevator Kuragin’s busy building, and we all know it.) 

It’s also an easy way to bring Dale’s daughter, Lily, more fully into the story on her own terms. She’s studying to be a journalist and has already gotten into trouble protesting for Martian rights. (Yes, yes, it doesn’t hurt that the two crazy kids are also adorable together.)

Back on Earth, we’re introduced to a new character, a female soldier who’s desperate to join OPEF and become part of the team assigned to the moon. But she’s more familiar than she initially seems — Avery Jarrett may use her stepfather’s name, but her real father’s surname was Stevens.

Yes, she’s Danny Stevens’s daughter, all grown up and apparently determined to follow in her father’s footsteps. (Into space, at least.) Her identity, somewhat understandably, makes almost everyone in her unit nervous, and she’s forced to undergo multiple polygraphs and intensive questioning from higher-ups about everything from her mental health and existing memories of her father to how she feels about his death. 

Is it fair? Probably not. But the Stevens family looms large over NASA’s legacy — for both good and ill — so, again, it makes sense that the folks in charge are worried about tempting fate with Avery in the same way.

That she makes it through the selection process anyway — after a pep talk from Dani, in a very welcome cameo from Krys Marshall — may leave some viewers nervous that she’s also headed for some sort of similar tragedy, if only because at the moment it’s difficult to see where she fits in the larger canvas of the show.

To put it another way: We haven’t been to the moon on For All Mankind in years. Seems strange that they’d consider doing it now.

Sean Kaufman and Cynthy Wu in “For All Mankind” Season 5 Episode 4 (Photo: Apple TV)

There’s something triumphant about Sonourner’s lift-off. For a while, it has seemed as though Mars is an endpoint, and that the culmination of man’s journey into the stars was somehow just about generating another kind of corporate profit.

That the show is getting back to the spirit of exploration that helped initially define it feels right as it rounds into its finale act, even as it deals with the consequences of that aforementioned corporate greed.

That it is Ed Baldwin’s daughter who has pushed so hard for humanity’s next step is incredibly fitting, and there’s some nice symmetry in the way that another space race is shaping up, this time between Helios and Kuragin as their competing vessels race for Saturn’s moon, Titan, and the promise of finding extraterrestrial life in the universe. 

How For All Mankind will reconcile these two halves of itself —  the hopeful exploration of the Titan mission with the very real questions about what Mars’s future will look like that Dev’s automation scheme will surely raise — is a question that only the rest of the season can answer. 

But in an episode that needed to help define what this series was going to look like in an era without its most familiar face, “Open Source” is a pretty great start.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• The little memorial that the regular folks of Mars built for Ed really got me, especially whoever left the bottom of Admiral Baldwin’s liquor from Ila’s bar. Ed’s life wasn’t an easy one, but what a legacy he’s left behind. Ugh, getting emotional again. 
• Dani still having a photo of Ed on her mantle!! My heart!! 
• This is possibly a grim stray thought, but at least Ed didn’t live long enough to see Dev betray Happy Valley like this.
• Aleida and Kelly’s friendship is so important to me. 
• How does shipping the bulk of the Mars workers back to Earth help Dev realize his dream of a self-sufficient colony city?

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New episodes of For All Mankind stream Fridays on Apple TV.

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