The race for Mars is on in Season 3 of For All Mankind – Boston Herald

In the Season 2 finale of For All Mankind, astronauts Gordo and Tracy had managed to prevent the reactor at Jamestown moonbase from melting down but couldnt save themselves, succumbing to the vacuum of space when their makeshift duct tape spacesuits proved inadequate.

That sad scene is apparently ancient history as the storyline jumps ahead to the early 1990s for Season 3 of the Apple TV+ alt-history space race drama.

Premiering Friday, the 10-episode season finds tensions having eased between the United States and Soviet Union but the space race is as hot as ever, only now there is a new frontier, Mars, and also a third player in the mix, an entrant from the private sector with a lot to prove and even more at stake.

Much of the cast from the first two seasons returns, including Joel Kinnaman as astronaut Ed Baldwin, Shantel VanSanten as his wife Karen, Jodi Balfour as astronaut Ellen Wilson, Wrenn Schmidt as NASA engineer Margo Madison, Sonya Walger as astronaut Molly Cobb and Krys Marshall as astronaut Danielle Poole.

New to the cast is Edi Gathegi (StartUp) as Dev Ayesa, a character Apple publicity describes as a charismatic visionary with his sights set on the stars. For his part, Gathegi couldnt elaborate much beyond that lest he give away spoilers, except to say that he thinks hes a very cool addition to the show.

He admits he hadnt watched FAM until he auditioned for the role but he soon found himself drawn in by the shows intelligent writing and a freedom to explore his character in depth.

It felt very much like an actors playground, he said. I felt the creators provided a landscape for the artist to be able to breathe within their performances, which is an actors dream, is not to feel the pressure of rushing through moments but to breathe and live through experiences. So I was excited to be able to do that kind of work with a lot of just great actors that I saw.

And it didnt hurt that the show just felt very, very well produced, he added. You know, it was written big in scope. Its a show about space, for God sakes. And they do it right.

Gathegi says he was also intrigued by the shows alt-history storyline and the Easter eggs that it leaves for viewers, such as the presence of electric cars in the 80s.

Watching (that) and go(ing), Hey, yeah. Technology, in our world, was expanding at a much more rapid rate because the arms race never ended, so what other innovations happened at a faster rate ? Thats cool, is all these Easter eggs that you can watch. And I think this season, Season 3, is going to have even more.

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The race for Mars is on in Season 3 of For All Mankind - Boston Herald