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For All Mankind Star Joel Kinnaman Reflects on Ed's 5-Season Journey

For All Mankind co-creator Matt Wolpert and star Joel Kinnaman on wrapping up Ed's journey after five seasons and his legacy moving forward.

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Article Summary

  • Joel Kinnaman reflects on Ed Baldwin's emotional five-season arc in For All Mankind on AppleTV.
  • Season five brings Ed’s journey to a close with a terminal cancer diagnosis and touching family moments.
  • Co-creator Matt Wolpert discusses exploring Ed’s Korean War past and his character’s final episode.
  • Key cast returns for Ed’s poignant farewell, passing the torch to a new generation in the series.

If there's been one constant on AppleTV's For All Mankind, it's been Joel Kinnaman, who plays astronaut Ed Baldwin since day one of the Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi. As the series progresses through decades of revisionist history, Ed's seen it all, from trying to make his mark with NASA and the space program, even after the Soviet Union was first doing the spacewalk. With each season, Ed felt less at home on Earth and embraced the life he would build on Mars, culminating in preserving the inhabitants' future through the asteroid heist that secured their financial future. With season five, it seems that even Ed has his limits as the geopolitics between Earth and Mars have finally caught up to him. TV Line spoke with Kinnaman and Wolpert about the shocking developments of the third episode, "Home." The following contains major spoilers.

For All Mankind Star Joel Kinnaman on Reacting to [SPOILER'S] Death
Joel Kinnaman in "For All Mankind". Image courtesy of AppleTV

For All Mankind Star Joel Kinnaman on the Season Five Shocker

At the beginning of season five, we discover that time has finally caught up with Ed physically, given his terminal lung cancer diagnosis, but he remains as stubborn as ever. At the end of the previous episode, "The Hard Six," he was able to pilot political prisoner Jung-Gil (C.S. Lee) on a hopper to freedom after he was arrested by the M6 Peacekeepers. As we discover the ISN grants him asylum, Ed experiences flashbacks of Korea, while refusing treatment for his cancer despite his daughter, Kelly's (Cynthy Wu) wishes. She and his grandson, Alex Poletov Baldwin (Sean Kaufman) remain at his side in his final days.

As far as revealing more of Ed's backstory before becoming an astronaut, "We wanted to make sure it felt emotional and resonant… The show is so much of a passage of time, and it feels like Ed references his past in Korea all the time, almost every season, but it's the one part of his life you haven't really seen," Wolpert said. "And so it felt appropriate, in his last moments, his last episode, as happens to people as they're going in their final breaths, to experience that part of your life that maybe you don't want to revisit. And we felt it's an opportunity, actually, to inform a lot of who Ed is. A lot of the questions people have about this character, he just goes for it, he doesn't seem to care… and you understand why, because to him, his life is this opportunity he never should have gotten."

For All Mankind Star Joel Kinnaman on Reacting to [SPOILER'S] Death
Cynthy Wu, Joel Kinnaman and Sean Kaufman in "For All Mankind". Image courtesy of AppleTV
At the end of "Home," the young Ed is rejoined by Gordo (Michael Dorman), who passed in season two, on his symbolic final journey, and on that path is reunited with his late wife, Karen (Shantel VanSanten), who passed in season three, and little Shane, who passed in season one, before leaving with Gordo to the ominous white light. "We were hopeful that that would happen. I'll be honest, we didn't think it would," Wolpert said of the returns. "But the reaction from all of them, the actors, and their willingness to do this in the middle of everything else they've got going on, I think it's really a testament to their connection to their characters in the show, and also to Joel and Ed Baldwin, the character he's created. I mean, this guy is so central to this show, to the journey he's been on is the journey of the show so far. So it felt an opportunity to really pass the baton on from that generation, that group of characters, to our next in a way that felt emotional but also very fitting."

For All Mankind Star Joel Kinnaman on Reacting to [SPOILER'S] Death
Joel Kinnaman and Michael Dorman in "For All Mankind." Image courtesy of AppleTV
As far as how it felt taking those final steps and if it was a bittersweet conversation, "No, not really. I've mourned. I think watching the episode on Friday is going to be very emotional because I really genuinely love this show, and telling the story has really been such a privilege and honor, and I feel so much gratitude for it," Kinnaman said. "So for this final season, I told them, 'I don't want any scripts past my death, and then I don't want any links or screeners to the episodes. I'm just going to watch it with everyone else.' Because then, the rest of the season, I get to be a fan. I've been part of series that have continued on without me, and I don't think I've ever continued watching something that I'm on. And this one, I'm really looking forward to it."

For more on Kinnaman talking about Ed's aging with each season, exploring his Korean War journey, being reunited with Dorman and VanSanten, and whether there's an opportunity to crossover into the Soviet-focused Star City, you can check out the complete interview. New episodes of For All Mankind stream Fridays on AppleTV.

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Tom ChangAbout Tom Chang

I’ve been following pop culture for over 30 years with eclectic interests in gaming, comics, sci-fi, fantasy, film, and TV reading Starlog, Mad & Fangoria. As a writer for over 15 years, Star Wars was my first franchise love.
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