This review contains FULL SPOILERS for For All Mankind season 5 Episode 3, "Home."
After lulling me into a false sense of security, For All Mankind season 5 Episode 3, "Home," tore my heart out and gifted it back to me. Okay, I'm being dramatic, but not by all that much. "Home" was the Ed Baldwin-heavy episode that was strongly implied by Episode 2's high-octane ending, but it still caught me off guard. Episode 3 immediately heads up to join the show's finest efforts, and it's not all because of how it handled Joel Kinnaman's beloved character. (Although mostly it is.)
As one of the only remaining members of the original cast, Joel Kinnaman's character began season 5 already primed for an emotional exit. Secretly living with advanced cancer in his early eighties, it was only a matter of time before something got the better of him. "Home" turned out to be the episode that dealt with this dreaded development, and while it could be seen as anti-climactic through certain eyes, it's far from it.
Ed's death in "Home" was about as perfect as it could have been
Ed's extensively covered For All Mankind timeline has been one of the most ambitious and emotional in sci-fi history, constantly cementing him as immensely determined and loyal to those lucky enough to ever be in his inner circle. At a certain point, he became such an iconic protagonist that it seemed impossible to come up with a way to give him a suitable exit when the time came. Thankfully, "Home" proved the show was up to the task, and I'm struggling to think of a more beautiful way that a TV character walked into the light.
Ed literally heroed himself to death. After flying Lee Jung-Gil (C.S Lee) to safety in Episode 2, the physical and mental strain taken on by Kinnaman's character gave the spacefaring legend just enough time to carry out a farewell tour. He got to have a drink with his remaining family members and go out on his own terms, in his own bed. The added flair of flashing back to the youngest we've ever seen Ed — during his time fighting in the Korean War — was a perfect way of foreshadowing and highlighting what was coming for him at the end of "Home."
I love how For All Mankind intentionally slowed its other subplots for Ed's benefit
Other storylines were still going on in "Home," and they were all really good. Aleida's (Coral Peña) decision to go to Mars felt like it had been a long time coming. The ever-burgeoning rebellion on the Red Planet also inched tastefully forward, as did Kelly's (Cynthy Wu) imminent mission to Titan — the latter even found a way to weave itself into Ed's passing. Even the compelling murder mystery storyline was reduced to just a few minutes of screen time, but it still found time to deepen the intrigue.
While bringing all these storylines to a functional halt would seem like a wildly frustrating decision in any other episode of For All Mankind, it makes perfect sense for "Home." Having Ed linger for multiple installments would have only slowed the inevitable. It would also have gone against his core trait of boxing things off and moving on. It just so happened that what Ed was moving onto was the end of his life. Giving his final hours so much attention was non-negotiable, and I'm thrilled that this is the avenue that For All Mankind chose. There is still plenty of time in season 5 for the other arcs to surge onward, but Ed deserved this final moment in the spotlight.
The final scene in "Home" was fantastically uncharacteristic for For All Mankind
As well as once more being in awe of how convincing Kinnaman plays a man in his eighties — it's not even just the prosthetics — "Home" blew my mind with its trippy closing sequence. Despite the fact that humanity is living comfortably on Mars in the show's version of the early 21st century, For All Mankind has always felt like a surprisingly grounded show. Things like dream sequences just aren't traditionally part of its formula. But if an exception was going to be made, it was always going to be for Ed Baldwin.
Watching Ed walk down that corridor, seemingly to a shuttle launch (but really to the afterlife), accompanied by his late best friend, dearly departed ex-wife, and the son he lost at a tragically young age, felt like some kind of hybrid approach to the show's relentless, focused space opera and some kind of tearjerking fantasy epic. On paper, it sounds like it shouldn't work in something like For All Mankind, but it'll undoubtedly go down as one of the show's most memorable and well-executed moments — the brief returns of Gordo (Michael Dorman) and Karen (Shantel VanSanten) make that even more of a certainty.
Episode Rating: A+
For All Mankind is streaming now on Apple TV. New episodes drop on Fridays.