For All Mankind Season 2
Overview
Nearly a decade has passed when season two opens, and the Moon has changed. Jamestown is no longer a couple of astronauts in a tin can — it's a growing base with dozens of people living on it, and because this is 1983 and the Cold War never cooled off in this timeline, both superpowers are quietly pointing weapons at each other up there. Back on Earth, Ronald Reagan wants a tougher line, Ellen Wilson (Jodi Balfour) is running NASA, and Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger) is slowly losing the eyesight her entire career depends on. The season takes its time — it almost dawdles in the middle episodes — but it's building somewhere. A solar storm, a disputed mining site, and two crews who genuinely like each other being ordered to treat each other as enemies: it all stacks up until the finale delivers the tensest hour the show has ever done. Gordo and Tracy Stevens, the divorced couple working side by side at Jamestown, carry the emotional weight of it. If season one asked what the space race could have been, season two asks what it would have cost — and it doesn't flinch from the answer.
