Casey W. Johnson (Danny Stevens) will not return in For All Mankind season 4

The fourth season of For All Mankind if off and running on Apple TV+. Another decade has passed in this alternate history of the world where the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union never stopped. How have things changed while we’ve been away?

Well, for one thing, apparently something happened to Danny Stevens, the trouble young astronaut played by Casey W. Johnson in season 3. He wasn’t at his daughter’s birthday party in the premiere, and Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) hinted that something had happened to him while the two of them were on Mars in season 3. “Heading back up there again after everything that happened with Danny in the end… I don’t know if I could,” she said, cryptically.

Last we left Danny, the rest of the Mars team had exiled him to spend months alone in a lone probe after he confessed to causing an accident that killed members of the team. There’s no court of law on Mars, so this was effectively them putting him in jail for his crime. It sounds like he didn’t last. Speaking to TV Line, co-showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi promised that we would learn the full story in time. “What’s interesting, too, [is] it’s not like his story is over,” Nedivi said. “Not to give away any spoilers, but in a way, the mystery of what happened to him is something that does play this season, and I think that was really intriguing to us as a way to help other storylines and character arcs.”

Why did For All Mankind cut Danny Stevens from season 4?

We’re kind of dancing around the implication here: by the sound of it, Danny Stevens will not appear in For All Mankind season 4. According to Wolport, Johnson took the news that his character was being cut well. “He’s a professional, so he understood, and he got the story that we were trying to tell,” Wolport said. “Obviously, it’s never easy for any of us. You grow close to these people, working with them, and they’re not just characters on a screen, they’re human beings that you go to see at work every day. So it was bittersweet, but I think, like any good professional, [he understood] the story [was] what was most important, and so he was on board fully.”

So why did the showrunners choose to write Danny off the show? He was definitely alive at the end of season 3, and I expected him to show up in season 4. “Well, I think with a lot of different characters in the show, there are times where the story feels like it’s run its course, and the nature of our show is that it has to keep evolving,” Wolport said. “So I think it felt like the right time for Danny to fade into the background, to put it one way. But I also think, this is a generational story, right? We told the story of his parents, and we’re telling the story of their children, and he has a daughter now. So in the evolution of the show, there’s something about telling the story of these families that is really intriguing to us.”

That all sounds reasonable. However, it’s no secret that fans did not like Danny’s character in season 3, and TV Line wondered if maybe that had something to do with the decision not to include him in season 4. Nedivi straight-up denied this. “If anything it probably pushed back against it,” he laughed. “Because honestly, I think if you start reacting too much to what fans are saying, you kind of are chasing your own tail. It’s a slippery slope. We felt the actor did a fantastic job conveying that character. I think the hatred for him was partially because of the job he did conveying that character. And like Matt said, many characters, their arcs are shorter on this show, and some are longer. The nature of the show, really, from the beginning, we kind of had to do a deal with the devil that some characters are going to have to go in order to bring in new characters. So I think this season was a big pivot point in terms of bringing in someone like Toby Kebbell, someone like Tyner [Rushing] and Daniel Stern. So in order to do that and give those characters the room they need, you need to also move on from other characters.”

"And really, honestly, like what guides the decision of whether a character comes back or how they come back, a lot of times, it really comes down to the story potential. Like, do we feel like we’ve covered enough ground in their story? Have we completed their arc? Or is there more story to tell with that character? That’s usually the guiding light for us in the room. And with Danny, originally, I think we wanted to bring him [back], but we saw the bigger scope of where the story was going this season and it didn’t really make sense. But again, the actor did a fantastic job, and we would definitely work with him again."

New episodes of For All Mankind drop Fridays on Apple TV+.

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