Joel Kinnaman on the death of Ed Baldwin

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains major spoilers from “Home,” the third episode of Season 5 of “For All Mankind,” now streaming on Apple TV.

There is a poignant irony that on the same day Artemis II returns to Earth after the first manned mission to orbit the moon in half a century. Apple TV’s “For All Mankind,” the series that spent five seasons dreaming of what might have happened if we had never stopped exploring the cosmos, finally said goodbye to its original space cowboy.

Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), the pioneering astronaut who fought like hell to get America to the moon after it was defeated by the Soviets only to help colonize Mars thirty years later, met his end in the third episode of Season 5, aptly titled “Home.” Apple couldn’t have paid for more perfect timing and goodwill marketing for the Artemis II mission, as the overlapping stories have inspired fans to champion the fictional, hopeful story at the heart of “For All Mankind.”

“I think it’s beautiful,” says Kinnaman Variety. “There’s something about this show that I absolutely revere, and I think others do too, in that it had the courage to have optimism and strive for our better angels.”

That is how Kinnaman views Artemis’s real-life voyage of discovery and the associated hopes for further space missions. But at the same time, he can’t help thinking about his eight years of life among the stars – as created by the revisionist history of Matt Wolpert, Ben Nedivi and Ronald D. Moore – where the space race of the 1960s never ended. At the forefront of their mission has always been Ed, the cocky, dashing and determined leading man who risked his life at every opportunity to give Americans past, present and future the bragging rights that led them to lead the charge to the final frontier.

In the end, it wasn’t being stuck on the moon, or later on Mars, or even the red tape that sent him into a frenzy at least once a season that felled the great Ed Baldwin. It was time, age and his body that planted the white flag. During the first two episodes of the season, his doctor begged him to take it easy after he was diagnosed with an aggressive disease. But did that stop Ed from rallying the Sons and Daughters of Mars to help break their friend Lee Jung-Gil (CS Lee) out of prison after he was framed for the planet’s first murder? No, it didn’t, but the rescue mission took its toll on Ed and his body never fully recovered. After sharing a few moments with his daughter Kelly (Cynthy Wu) and his grandson Alex (Sean Kaufman), including a sweet scene of them throwing back shots while listening to Ed’s wedding song “Love Me Tender,” he dies quietly in his bed at the end of Episode 3.

Kinnaman was one of the first cast on the series, and the creators admit he played a big role in why the series was greenlit as one of Apple TV’s first lineups when the platform launched in 2019. So killing off their protagonist, even if the character was already in their 80s in season 5, was crucial to getting it right.

“Ed, I have to say — as indestructible as he’s been on the show and as a character, and how central he’s been to everything — the hardest ending was to come up with,” says Nedivi. “The more we thought about this season and the new generation coming in with his grandson, it felt like the motivation was there to do this transfer while also informing Alex’s story and everything that comes after. We always approach it from the question of whether there is more story to be told with the character and what’s best for the overall show. This was the first time that answer felt like it was the perfect moment to say goodbye to Ed, as painful as that was for us.”

His final day of filming had an added intensity for Kinnaman, whose final scene was the deathbed memory of his younger years, in the infancy of the space program, where he reunites with his best friend Gordo (Michael Dorman) and his wife Karen (Shantel VanSanten), both of whom died seasons ago but returned for the scene. Due to the nature of the show, Kinnaman has already said goodbye to most of his original co-stars, many of whom died during various space missions and terrorist bombings over the decades. But his final walk as Ed, side by side with Gordo, was emotional.

“I was a total mess,” says Kinnaman. “It was such a chaotic last day of the show. I was shooting with Michael, and I was so moved when I saw him, because he has become such a good friend of mine. The memories all came flooding back, and then I said goodbye and gave a little speech to the crew, and just cried my eyes out. We finished around 1 in the morning and then I drove home just full of this emotion. But at my house I had six friends from Sweden who were championing with my wife, because they were waiting for me to show up. We all piled into three large vehicles to drive up the coast to Burning Man, where my wife and I got married.

Season 5 of ‘For All Mankind’ was filmed in 2024, but Kinnaman says he’s still unpacking the emotional milestones crammed into that weekend — and he’s proud of the story beats they managed to pay off with Ed’s final episode. First up were the episode’s flashbacks to his much-discussed but unprecedented time as a soldier behind enemy lines in Korea. Kinnaman, Nedivi, and Wolpert had talked for years about exploring that part of Ed’s service, which led to him almost being captured and killed. But it was now or never to show those terrifying moments of him fleeing on foot while injured, and they stand in stark contrast to the quieter final moments of 81-year-old Ed finding peace in his final hours.

“I remember saying in the writers’ room that if there was ever a good time, it’s now because it’s appropriate,” Nedivi says. “What happens a lot with our family members and people as they get closer to the end is the memories from the past that come flooding in, so it felt natural. The way you see these flashbacks happening, they’re not just random flashbacks. These are memories that he’s reliving in the moment as he goes through this and that inform him in the present.”

Breaking the dam of his past trauma also brings back the memories of Gordo, Karen and their son Shane, all of whom welcome him into that proverbial light in the episode’s final sequence. Of them all, Wolpert says Shane is the most poignant because Ed introduces him around the same age he tragically died, so he reunites with these perfect versions of those closest to him.

“The amount of loss that Ed has suffered in his life is staggering, so to bring that back into the fold — and not to say this was heaven or that they were waiting or anything — but to give him that memory of them and that first space flight was important,” Wolpert says. “It was like taking his first Gemini spaceflight. It was the beginning of everything for him. For them to witness that, and let him get away from here on a metaphorical level, just felt like the right way to bring everything back to the beginning.”

Although Ed is often regarded as a hero among fans and within the series’ alternate history, he was never an easy character. He reprimanded authority at every turn, risked multiple missions because he thought he knew better, and dodged death on multiple planets. He was a complicated, sometimes moody man, and Kinnaman thinks they captured that crowd at his death.

“I think they end up instilling all those heroic qualities in him, but he’s also a selfish bastard with a huge ego,” he says. “Some of his most heroic moments were definitely just about his own ego. But he was always willing for a moment of self-sacrifice. He will always help a friend. I love that they were really able to capture the whole essence of Ed in his final act.”

Before season 5 premiered, Apple ordered a sixth and final season of the series, which is about to begin production. In that final piece, which will bring the storyline to the present, could the death of the mighty Ed foreshadow a similar fate for the last two remaining original characters – the currently imprisoned Margo (Wrenn Schmidt) and the earthbound retiree Danielle (Krys Marshall)?

“Death cannot be avoided,” Wolpert says. “But I think it was also important for us to establish early on that not everyone has to die to leave the show. So it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll have killed off all the OGs by the end of our run.”

‘We are bloodthirsty, but we are not That bloodthirsty,” Nedivi interjects.

Whatever comes next, Kinnaman doesn’t want to know about it. “I asked not to receive any more scripts after I die. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want any links to the show. I just want to watch it with everyone else because now all I get is a season and a half of being a fan.”

It was in the scripts of “For All Mankind” that Kinnaman always found the real heart of the show. While admittedly biased, he considers the writing to be some of the most underrated on TV. He says he rarely came to the creators with comments about Ed’s choices, and he didn’t even have any definitive requests for his character, but he did advocate for one thing that has yet to make its way into the show.

“I always thought, ‘Where are those damn aliens?’” Kinnaman says. “I kept showing them videos. I was like, ‘This is happening!’ They always said, ‘Oh, we’re too grounded for that.’ But I want some aliens!”