There is a lot of great sci-fi television out there, but it is pretty safe to say that no one is doing it quite like Apple TV. Apple TV has carved out a place for itself as the home genuine masterpieces of genre television with shows like Pluribus, Severance, and Silo. They are all, truly, great. However, there is one Apple TV series that is above them all: For All Mankind. The series, which recently wrapped production on its sixth and final season, is set in an alternate history exploring the question of what would have happened if the Soviet Union had beat the United States to the Moon and the space race had never stopped. With each season taking us a little closer to our very own present day in terms of timeline, it has been fascinating to watch a “what could have been” scenario play out, but as we near the series’ completion, there’s one aspect about For All Mankind that I’ve been obsessed with from the jump and am very afraid they will fumble in the end.
The very first episode of For All Mankind sets the tone for things, making viewers believe they are watching the lead up to the iconic lunar landing only to flip the script and reveal that what we’re watching is not American holding their breath for our own achievement, but to witness the Soviets beat us to it. From there, we’re firmly in a different timeline and reality and one of the things that the series has done a very cool job of is let us know even outside of the events of the episodes just how different — and similar — this reality is thanks to a montage that starts each season. This montage bridges the gaps between the decades in the show and reveals how certain global events that were definitive in our own history are quite different in this one. For example, John Lennon isn’t dead in For All Mankind, but there are some major political assassinations that reshape the global political landscape. For the most part until now, these timelines and montages have gotten close to our own recent past, but the show is headed into the 2020s and, let’s be honest, there have been a lot of things that have happened in our own timeline. How the series handles actual reality in its alternate one might just break the show.
Unless you have somehow been in a bunker for the past six years or just arrived on this planet, then you’re aware that a lot has gone down both in the United States and around the world. There’s the COVID-19 pandemic that had major and lasting impact on just about every aspect of human life as well as politics. There’s also the election of Donald Trump as president not once, but twice now and it is pretty safe to say that the political situation in the United States over the past just over half a decade has been complicated to say the least. These are things that are big enough that it feels like For All Mankind will have to address it in some fashion. The world of the show has certainly deviated from our real world in a lot of major ways, but a lot of things really do stay the same. The question is how they will do it.
If they somehow choose to ignore events like COVID-19 altogether, that will feel a little strange. The series has already set the precedent of the seasonal montages including a lot of nods to real world events so completely eliminating any reference to some of the things that have defined us in recent years would be wildly out of character. However, the opposite is also true. If the montage goes in too hard and makes too big of changes to some of the bigger and more controversial events, that will also feel very out of place and would wreck the brilliance of the montages to begin with. Half of the fun of the montages comes from seeing what gets changed (the other half comes in just marveling about how well thought out these things are and how they frequently integrate into the larger story of the show.) There’s something about the subtle tweaks that simply makes the montages enjoyable and helps to enhance the show overall. The reality of For All Mankind being as flawed as our own is part of what makes the series so great. Our own reality doesn’t need to be sanitized for this alternate universe. The show also doesn’t need to get terribly political about things in the montage by making huge changes either — though the series hasn’t necessarily shied away from that in the past. There’s just a lot to consider.
And that lot to consider is what has me worried. There are so many directions things can go with For All Mankind getting so close to catching up with our own, real-world timeline but it ultimately all boils down to one thing. This Apple TV series is truly one of the greatest sci-fi series ever made and it’s so good that as a fan, I really want it to stick the landing. We’ve spent years investing ourselves in this world that is just off from our own. We want to see how it intersects and we want to see where these stories we’ve gotten so hooked on ultimate go. That final montage needs to approach the 2020s carefully — and if they pull it off, that might just be the biggest masterpiece the series has offered yet.
