For All Mankind Season 5 Finale Makes a Strong Case for Checking Into Season 6

Critic’s Rating: 4.7 / 5.0

4.7

This season of For All Mankind has been rough.

The show has been undergoing a generational transition while still trying to deliver an entertaining space tale.

For its first six episodes, Season 5 committed the ultimate sci-fi sin: it chose the tedious rot of bureaucratic politics over the awe of cosmic discovery. It treated a generational transition like a network soap opera rather than an interplanetary epic. 

But towards the end, it course-corrects by anchoring Sojourner as the reference point, while Mars’ independence is another thread of tension.

For All Mankind Season 5 Episode 10, “This Is Our Land,” lands this ship in a way I couldn’t have predicted a few weeks ago.

Humanity’s Greatest Discovery

The show continues to feel like the For All Mankind we know, as Kelly and the Sojourner crew finally find what they’ve been after all these years.

Is it what they were looking for? Yes and no. It’s life, but with even better answers. Since this is For All Mankind, answers don’t come without a huge price.

Sometimes it’s the destruction of relationships; other times, it’s the loss of valuable human lives. The three-person crew finds themselves at a crossroads when they gather evidence of what is the biggest discovery in scientific history, but their resources run out.

When the crew’s resources run out on Titan, Kelly resorts to the exact brand of reckless insubordination that defined Ed Baldwin. 

It’s a beautifully frustrating full-circle moment — one that almost makes up for the show wasting an entire midseason episode on Ed’s isolated death rather than weaving his passing into Kelly’s active arc.

No one will ever find out what they discovered if they don’t leave Titan soon. We get that For All Mankind heartbreak, where you know what needs to happen but can’t bring yourself to make a choice.

Who is to be left behind so that the rest of the crew — and their work — survives?

I wouldn’t like to be in that situation because I’m too selfish. But then I’ve never made a momentous discovery, so maybe I would sacrifice my life for it. Would you?

Kelly being left behind sets up a massive cliffhanger for next season, leaving her fate in the air.

What happens to her when she enters that pool? Does she find oxygen? Maybe remains preserved in stasis? Even an outrageous theory like her biology changing is possible in theory.

For All Mankind Season 6 has one non-negotiable question for the season premiere.

This Is Our Land

Mars learns of Kelly’s sacrifice in her goodbye video to Alex, but they’ve also been engaged in a battle of a lifetime.

Earth’s invasion leaves them no other choice but to make a tough decision.

Freedom doesn’t come easy. All the people who have been colonized and exploited can attest that sometimes you even have to sacrifice your own people for the greater good.

So when Miles burns the Marine command alive, I feel uncomfortable because death by burning must be painful, but it’s not like the Marines are here to hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

They have killed and would have continued to kill until no one on that base had a heartbeat.

Freedom doesn’t come easy, and the Marsies pay for theirs in blood.

The Weak Points

Mars’ independence reaches a satisfying conclusion, and part of me hopes we’re done with it forever, but it also feels too neat.

The hour paints everyone as a hero, even characters like Dev, who have been looking down on everyone else, literally and figuratively.

Miles presses the button that changes everything, and even Alex gets his moment to shine.

It’s sweet, but the fallout should have been much larger. The idea that everyone would suddenly settle into peaceful farming communities after a divisive fight for freedom feels wildly optimistic.

But if a neat ending propels us to the next stage of this story, I’m all for it because now we’re so back.

Welcome to the 2020s

The hour reveals that the next stage of this saga will take place this decade, using one of the best reveals I’ve seen in a long time.

The future ties to the present as we find the Soviet-Chinese space ship from 1994 floating in space after the tragedy in For All Mankind Season 3.

The ship might have become a human hazard, but Sergei Nikolov’s genius lives in it. 

He had programmed his computer to detect significant Gravitational Waves, and over the two decades MAPC94 has been floating in space, that sensor has remained functional.

It would seem that For All Mankind Season 6 is tackling the final boss of space: distance.

While the hard physics of Sergei’s computer detection are well above my pay grade, the narrative implications are massive. 

Whether Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi are teasing wormholes or a cosmic death sentence, they’ve successfully manufactured a cliffhanger that demands our attention for Season 6.

Gut Check

“This Is Our Land” brings the season to a satisfying conclusion despite a rough first half. That’s why I will tune in to Season 6. Not just because I’m a completionist, but because it’s exciting.

Intrusive Thoughts

• “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd? Someone on this team has a taste for music because that song builds excitement simply by its arrangement.

• Speaking of, the score this hour elevates everything.

Autopsy

Now that the season has ended, here’s how it could have been better, and these are points I’ve explored repeatedly in For All Mankind Season 5 reviews.

Politics is great, but they are slow and frustrating. There is almost always no forward momentum, so when the show focused on them, it did a disservice to the story.

Everything should have been about the mission and nothing but the mission.

The new generation also bogged down the narrative, so their introduction should have been staggered or presented in a single episode.

Instead, we watched too much teen yearning and angst.

But overall, solid season that beat the odds and bounced back.

Over to you, For All Mankind fanatics. Will you be back for the final mission? What do you think Sergei’s computer detected? A wormhole? A cosmic death? Aliens in the Milky Way?

Let’s keep the conversation going — it’s the only way the good stuff survives.

Say something in the comments, share if you’re moved to, and keep reading. Independent voices need readers like you.