For All Mankind bosses tease which characters could return for season 5

The fourth season of Apple TV+'s alternate universe sci-fi show For All Mankind wrapped up this past Friday, ending once again with a time jump into the future. If the show gets a fifth season, which isn't official yet, we'll pick things up in 2012, when many of our characters are living on an expanded Martian colony.

According to showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, that will include Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), who it sounds like may be the last original cast member to survive into season 5. Remember: the first season of this show was set in 1969, so Ed is getting on in years. I didn't expect him to survive season 4, but apparently Nedivi and Wolpert have plans for him. "[P]retty early on, we felt like this is not the season where Ed will [die] because, one, we have more story to tell," Nedivi told TV Line.

"At this point, we don’t want to say anything, honestly. Until a Season 5 [is ordered], until we’re able to sit in a room and really discuss what we want to do with a Season 5, we don’t like to commit to anything at this stage. So I would leave that open. … In general, the rule has been, for Matt and I at least, if we feel there’s no more story to tell with [a] character, and by story, I mean good, meaty story, then that’s usually the sign that it’s time to move on."

That was the case with a couple of legacy characters in season 4, including Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall), who got shot during a fracas on Mars in the season finale. Once again, I thought she was a goner, but the stinger at the end of the finale shows her returning to Earth, hurt but healing, to greet her new grandchild. So Danielle is alive, but Nedivi thinks it's "pretty safe to say" that she won't be back for season 5. Her story is over.

"[I]n our conversations with Krys [Marshall], we definitely told her like, 'This is the end. Most likely, you won’t make it out of this season,'" Nedivi remembered. "I’ll never forget her reaction to reading the script. She’s like, 'Wait, I’m alive?!' [Laughs] She was almost disappointed. She didn’t have the tragic, heroic death I think she was expecting."

"But as she saw the episode, more and more to her and to us, it really made sense for that to be the ending. We don’t want it to be that the only way you leave the show is by dying or being killed. Like we did with Ellen earlier this season, we felt like it’s more realistic that some people leave the show, yes, because they died, but others leave maybe because their story arc is done, or their time in this job no longer makes sense, or they move on to other adventures. … We’re always also thinking about [how] for this show to work, you have to evolve the cast. You have to say goodbye to some of the characters and actors we love the most, and introduce new characters as we go, and that’s something that we’ve done with intention since Season 2."

The last legacy character still hanging around is one-time NASA flight director Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt). She had a crazy journey in season 4, and ended it in handcuffs after getting arrested by the U.S. government for treason. In season 3, she passed government secrets to the Soviet Union and this time she helped steal an asteroid stuffed with valuable minerals. She does indeed have a lot to answer for.

Still, she's not dead, so it's possible for her to come back. If any character on this show is indomitable, it's Margo. "There’s definitely an element of seeing her being arrested and let out of [the space center] for the last time that has a nice closure to it, and a lot of the beginnings of Margo’s story in the first season, you can see the echoes of those in the end of Season 4," Wolpert said. "But who knows what the future might hold for prison-bound Margo Madison. You can never count her out."

But right now, it sounds like the only character who's guaranteed to show up in a potential season 5 is Ed. Although given his role in stealing the asteroid, I have to wonder if the governments of Earth won't send someone to Mars to arrest him? We'll cross that space bridge when we come to it.

Or Ed could be living in the city built on the asteroid itself, which we saw in the final shot of the season. Or maybe he'll flee even deeper into the solar system! "For us, that image at the end says two things," Nedivi said, "One, that this insane heist actually worked. It paid off. They are investing in Mars and investing in the asteroid, which, if that’s the case, you have to imagine that the impact of that on Mars would be huge, as well. So for us, what’s always exciting in pushing forward with the show is imagining where we can go. So that means not only with the asteroid and the impact that has on Mars, and possibly going to a colony now that is much bigger than the one you see in Season 4, but even the potential now of going further than Mars. That’s always been in the back of our minds, that roadmap of the show, and the further we can go with it, the further we can take space travel, as well."

If For All Mankind gets renewed for season 5, I'll be watching.

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