For All Mankind Season 4 Review: Apple TV’s Alternate History Reaches Mars

For All Mankind Season 4 leaps forward to 2003 in its alternate timeline — a world where the Soviet Union never collapsed, the space race never ended, and humanity has established a permanent base on Mars called Happy Valley. This season shifts its focus from the original astronaut characters to the workers and administrators of the Martian colony, and the result is a fascinating blue-collar space drama about labor exploitation, corporate greed, and the eternal human tendency to recreate our worst systems wherever we go.

How We Reviewed: Our assessment is based on analysis of writing, direction, and ensemble performance and viewing all available episodes before publishing. Ratings reflect full-season viewing, critical analysis, and production quality assessment. These recommendations reflect our independent assessment, not paid partnerships.

The Mars Colony

Happy Valley is no utopia. The base is jointly operated by NASA, Roscosmos, and the private corporation Helios, but the reality on the ground is closer to a mining town than a space frontier. Workers are overworked, underpaid relative to the dangers they face, and subject to rules that prioritize mineral extraction over human welfare. When a potentially world-changing asteroid rich in rare elements enters Mars’s orbit, the race to claim its resources intensifies every existing tension.

Joel Kinnaman’s Ed Baldwin, now in his 70s and serving as Happy Valley’s base commander, remains the show’s connective tissue across four decades of alternate history. Kinnaman has aged Ed convincingly — he is stubborn, prideful, and increasingly out of step with the younger generation of Mars inhabitants. His leadership creates friction with both his superiors on Earth and the workers who see him as an obstacle to fair treatment.

The New Blood

Toby Kebbell’s Miles Dale is Season 4’s most important addition — a union-organizing asteroid miner whose blue-collar perspective gives the show a working-class dimension it has never had before. Miles is not an idealist; he is a pragmatist who understands that the only leverage workers have is their willingness to stop working. Kebbell plays him with a grounded intensity that contrasts effectively with the show’s more traditional hero characters.

Wrenn Schmidt returns as Margo Madison, navigating the aftermath of her defection to the Soviet Union in a storyline that explores the personal costs of political idealism. Margo’s genius and her compromises have always been the show’s most complex character thread, and Season 4 gives Schmidt the material to explore both.

Themes of Labor and Power

The show draws explicit parallels between the Martian colony’s labor dynamics and historical patterns of exploitation. The asteroid mining workers face conditions reminiscent of 19th-century mining towns — company housing, company rules, company control over communication with Earth. The show never makes these parallels heavy-handed, instead letting them emerge organically from the situation. A vote on whether to strike carries as much tension as any space walk.

The geopolitical dimensions add another layer. The US-Soviet rivalry extends to Mars, with each superpower maneuvering for advantage over the asteroid’s resources. The show is at its most incisive when it shows how the grand rhetoric of space exploration — exploration for all mankind — masks the same competitive, acquisitive impulses that drive conflict on Earth.

Production Values

The Mars sequences are visually stunning and emotionally evocative. The show depicts the Martian landscape with a mixture of beauty and hostility that captures the frontier experience perfectly. Happy Valley’s corridors and habitats feel lived-in and slightly rundown, communicating through production design that this base has been occupied for years by people who have built routines, relationships, and grievances.

Verdict

For All Mankind Season 4 is one of the most thoughtful science fiction seasons of the year. Its examination of labor, power, and human nature in an extraterrestrial setting feels both timely and timeless. The show continues to be Apple TV Plus’s most underappreciated gem.

Rating: 8/10

For more Apple TV Plus, see the Apple TV Plus Best Shows Guide and the Best Sci-Fi Shows Streaming in 2025.