‘For All Mankind’ Season 2 Finale: Joel Kinnaman Explains Ed Baldwin’s High Stakes Choice

Apple TV+‘s For All Mankind Season 2 ends with an explosive finale that hurls our heroes to the brink of World War III. While tensions on the Moon have reached a crescendo, with the USSR invading the USA’s Jamestown base as retribution for an unprompted attack, Astronaut Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) is commanding the first nuclear powered shuttle, Pathfinder, on a dire mission. Pathfinder is meant to escort an unmanned shipment of supplies — including nukes — past a USSR blockade to the lunar surface. It’s a heady mission that would weigh on any normal person’s psyche, but Ed Baldwin has just learned that his wife Karen (Shantel VanSanten) cheated on him and may want a divorce.

Of course this isn’t the first time that a season finale of For All Mankind has asked an emotionally distraught Ed to play the all-American hero. In Season 1, Ed’s solitary watch on the earliest incarnation of Jamestown was threatened when he learned his young son had died. The news sent the otherwise calm and controlled astronaut spiraling. So what is Ed Baldwin going to do in the For All Mankind Season 2 finale when the fate of the world might rest on his trigger finger?

Decider caught up with For All Mankind star Joel Kinnaman last week and talked about Ed’s mental state in the finale, that incredible stand off between Ed and Sally Ride (Ellen Wroe), and the coincidence that a lot of his best work is opposite strong actresses…

**SPOILERS FOR THE FOR ALL MANKIND SEASON 2 FINALE AHEAD**

Decider: I feel like there’s a pattern now that like, every season, it seems in Episode 9, you get some really shitty news about your personal life. In Episode 10, you have to somehow compartmentalize and do the heroic thing. Is that something that you enjoy about the character? And do you think that Ed has grown from the first season at all in terms of how he handles the news from Karen?

Joel Kinnaman: Yeah, the ground kind of crumbles underneath Ed’s feet, right before he’s going on this incredibly dangerous and highly important mission where he ends up basically having the fate of the world on his shoulders. And it’s just a bizarre amount of responsibility for one person. You really don’t want that person to be in a place where they say, “Fuck it,” you know? That’s a bad place for the world to be. But, it becomes very interesting to play and very good drama. So that was very well-crafted.

I love this scene, though, on Pathfinder between your character and Sally Ride. First of all, because Sally Ride is such a heroine in US history, but also, what was that like to film? Where do you think Ed gets the idea to not shoot down the Russians, but in fact save the world by destroying the payload?

(laughing) Do you want to know how many times I would be singing “Ride, Sally, Ride?” That was like the anthem. [Ellen Wroe was like,] “Okay, I got it. I got it.” I was like, “Sorry, it’s gonna be this before every take.”

Ed is sent up there as an astronaut, but you know, he is also military. He is Navy and he has been at war with the Soviets before so in his mind, he’s still at war with them. I think he approaches this as a warlike scenario. Of course, the repercussions of that is not lost on him and I think for a lot of people making these crazy decisions, you know, they are thinking they’re trying to also prevent their families and their country becoming annihilated because those were the stakes. That’s what they were afraid of, and it’s crazy. That is what they were afraid of, and in the mindset of “better them than us.”

We need to not do that again, as as a human society. Yeah, we need to not do that, the Cold War was really, really bad.  The only way that they didn’t attack each other was because we knew that if one attacked the other, we would both annihilate each other. So those are not great stakes. You know?

One thing I noticed about the show and I guess your career in general is that you work with a lot of strong female characters and great actresses. It’s kind of part of Ed’s storyline, nurturing these astronauts. But there’s also like a pattern I’ve been noticing in your career where you seem to be at your best when you are going at it with a great female scene partner. Is that something that you’re aware of? As an actor? Do you pursue roles where you get to work with these strong female characters and actors?

I think that that’s just a coincidence. I mean, I grew up with five sisters and a very strong mother. I remember coming to the States and thinking that the gender roles here were so archaic and it was very stereotypical in the way that men and women behave towards each other. So I think, for me, I thought much less of that, I think, then, what I realized that other people were doing now it’s like, changing rapidly, and kind of swung crazy in the other way. I guess that’s how things work in this country.

Growing up in a country like Sweden, where we’ve been talking about these things for a much longer time and our parliament has been, you know, around 50% women for a much longer time. I think that plays into it, but I definitely don’t think about it. I think I’m just as comfortable around women as I am around men and I enjoy playing with them as much as I do men either.

I know that the third season of For All Mankind is in production right now, are you working on it? Are you still around? At what point do you say, “I might be too young and hot to play 60-something Ed Baldwin?”

I’m actually done with Episode 1, in the middle of shooting Episode 2 of the third season right now. It’s a bit of a bitch with the makeup and it’s a little earlier mornings, with wearing prosthetics and all that stuff. But I have to say that when the age becomes more and more a factor, it becomes a more and more intriguing aspect of playing the character. To me, it’s one of those kind of, like, acting things about playing age that it starts to become really interesting. So don’t be surprised if I hang around for a bit…

The For All Mankind Season 2 finale premieres today on Apple TV+

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