For All Mankind is coming to an end in the most perfect way imaginable. The fifth season of the show starts this week, and, to mark the occasion, Apple TV announced that a sixth and final season has also been greenlit. Since the fifth season takes place in the 2010s, we now know the series will end in our present, the 2020s. That means, next year, we’ll finally get to see what the here and now looks like on the alternate timeline of the incredible Apple TV show. Everything has come full circle.
“From being one of the first Apple Originals to launch on Apple TV in 2019, For All Mankind has remained an innovative, epic sci-fi series that has enthralled fans season after season,” Matt Cherniss, head of programming for Apple TV, said in a press release. “As one of Apple TV’s most enduring and celebrated series, it has delivered time and again because of the extraordinary artistry of visionary storytellers Ron [Moore], Matt [Wolpert], and Ben [Nedivi], along with our partners at Sony, and we can’t wait for people to experience how this story comes to its exhilarating conclusion when the final season debuts next year.”
Season one of For All Mankind began in 1969, telling an alternate-universe story where the Soviet Union, not the United States, was the first country to reach the moon. That one event changed the course of history, and, season after season, the show has jumped ahead a full decade, exploring how the future changed as a result. Season one continued into the 1970s, season two was in the 1980s, season three was the 1990s, season four was the 2000s, and the brand-new fifth season is set in the 2010s. Series creators Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi often said the north star of the series would be to get back to the present, and now, with a sixth season, they’ll get to do that.
“Getting to explore the For All Mankind universe over six seasons has been an amazing privilege, and we’re thrilled to have the opportunity to finish the story the way we’ve always hoped,” Wolpert and Nedivi said. “We’re incredibly proud of what this series has become, and grateful to Apple TV and Sony Pictures Television for helping us see it through to its final chapter.”
The current season sees the show digging deep into the politics of living on Mars, just as those inhabitants finally try to go even further into the cosmos. Will they be successful? And what might the sixth and final season hold? Could we get a Six Feet Under/Parks and Recreation finale that goes even further into the future? We hope so.
We’ll have more on For All Mankind season five and beyond in the coming weeks. For now, are you glad we’re getting one more season?
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