When For All Mankind launched in 2019, the show had a great, if somewhat misleading hook: What if the USSR landed on the Moon in 1969, effectively winning the space race? This might make you think For All Mankind is a Soviet vs. US type of show, with tons of intrigue about the Berlin Wall and space secrets. And while the upcoming spinoff series Star City may prove to be exactly that, the entirety of For All Mankind has evolved into something much bigger. Season 1 gave us a Moonbase in the 1970s, and Season 2 introduced an incredible souped-up space shuttle and a better-than-real-life 1980s. Then, Season 3 put boots on Mars in the 1990s, and Season 4 told the story of a massive asteroid heist, pushing a huge wedge between the people of Earth and Mars. Along the way, FamK created the most diverse and dynamic team of space heroes, broke our hearts, gave us hope, and demonstrated that high-stakes sci-fi doesn’t need to rely on mystery boxes or unrealistic speculative ideas.But For All Mankind’s boldest gamble has never been one about a kooky alternate timeline, or even its propulsive and realistic spaceflight storylines. Instead, as has been the case since the end of Season 1, For All Mankind’s intergenerational scope, in which every season jumps ahead a decade, has always been the bravest and riskiest thing about the show. And, now, with Season 5, the series faces its hardest question: Can the show really work now that most of the original cast is gone? Will the next generation of these characters carry the series forward?Luckily, the answer to that question is yes, the show can survive nostalgia for its own past, but it also doesn’t shrug off the weight of the four decades of fictional history that have come before, either. Showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi have often referred to the series as a kind of riff on One Hundred Years of Solitude insofar as the show tells the story of several generations, which includes the literal descendants of characters we met in the beginning. And more than any previous season, Season 5 makes us live in that reality. Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) does appear at some point this season, but not the way you’d think. Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) is back, but Ed is straight-up elderly now, a fact which the show doesn’t shy away from at all, and treats realistically. Meanwhile, characters we might still think of as the new kids, like Kelly Baldwin (Cynthy Wu) or Aleida Rosales (Coral Peña, are straight-up middle-aged, sneakily making those women the old-guard of the series, and, in many ways, serving the roles that Ed and Margo (Wrenn Schmidt) played in previous seasons. If Season 4 was a reset, pushing For All Mankind into the early 21st Century, Season 5 is the moment where that novelty simply becomes a reality.The season starts in the alternate 2012, and the Happy Valley Mars base is now a home for countless families and workers. Tech mogul Dev Ayesa’s (Edi Gathegi) dreams of making Mars independent are maybe coming to fruition, but not without a fight. As the trailers have teased, For All Mankind Season 5 is very much about Mars struggling to move away from Earth, and the blood, sweat, and tears that serve as the cost for that independence. If you thought the theft of the Goldilocks asteroid at the end of Season 4 would give Mars a permanent bargaining chip to keep Earth in check, think again. As with previous seasons of For All Mankind, the surprising plot turns have less to do with the weight of the show’s alternate history and more about unique and unpredictable choices made by specific characters. Aesthetically and tonally, this is the first season of the show that barely feels like a period piece, giving the drama a more timeless feeling than ever before. In a sense, if you’ve never watched the previous four seasons, you might be a little confused, but you wouldn’t be lost. The topsy-turvy historical foundation upon which all these storylines rest feels very close to home and very close to real history. In the fight for Mars, For All Mankind continues to explore questions about human resilience in extreme circumstances, but also pushes forward more explosive questions of the concept of citizenship and the basis for loyalty.Mars boys: Edi Gathegi as Dev Ayesa and Joel Kinnaman as Ed Baldwin in For All Mankind Season 5. | Apple TVCentral to all of this is the show’s smartest move: centering young Alex Baldwin (Sean Kaufman), a guy who was born in Mars orbit at the end of Season 3, and was a child living on Mars in Season 4. This is Ed’s grandson, who, in some ways, serves a similar role that Jack Crusher did in Picard Season 3, insofar as there’s a lot riding on whether or not the audience accepts that Alex is the new hot-headed Baldwin, the cipher for the best and worst of mankind’s hopes, fears, and bravery. Kauffman, best known now for The Summer I Turned Pretty, proves he’s more than up to the challenge, taking on a thankless and complex role by playing it with complete realism. If For All Mankind has let us down with some of the younger male characters in previous seasons (like the Stevens brothers), Alex Baldwin is the antidote; a guy you can root for who, like all the best FamK characters, doesn’t seem like a plot trope. This isn’t to say Alex has a clear-cut path, or that he’s somehow exactly like his mom or grandfather. Instead, he’s a new kind of character, FamK’s Gen-Z stand-in, who, along with Lily Dale (Ruby Cruz) and Avery Jarrett (Ines Asserson), comprise the true next generation of For All Mankind. (Clever fans will also have probably already worked out Avery’s connection to the legacy of the previous seasons. Yes, her first name should be very familiar to you.)But Mars is not the only source of interest and action in For All Mankind Season 5. As the show has always done, in the background, the push to move out further into the solar system is also a key part of the larger story. And, the way that works out won’t be what fans expect at all. We get some new spacecraft and new tech this season, but there’s also a smart meditation on why old technology properly maintained can also be the key to the future. Despite the advanced tech jumps we’ve seen throughout five seasons of For All Mankind, this series isn’t specifically about innovation; it’s about perseverance and ingenuity.Alex Baldwin (Sean Kaufman) is the face of the next generation of heroes in For All Mankind Season 5. | Apple TVBecause this is a show that initially came from an idea from Ronald D. Moore, it's tempting to compare it to Deep Space Nine or Battlestar Galactica. And more than any previous season, For All Mankind feels very much like Battlestar Galactica; there are struggles on the surface of another planet, there are struggles in space, and your ideas of who is the good guy and who is the bad guy are constantly inverted.And yet, through it all, For All Mankind is still very much an upbeat, optimistic series. Season 5 confronts us with some ugly truths about how hard social change can be, and also doesn’t always give us everything we want when it comes to the kind of sci-fi slam-dunks certain viewers might expect. But the show delivers what it’s best at: Unflinching realism in a sci-fi setting that seems more real than any sci-fi show ever created.For All Mankind Season 5 debuts on Apple TV on March 27.