‘For All Mankind’ Season 3 Ending Explained: Those Major Deaths And That Surprise Time Jump

Apple TV+‘s For All Mankind is not afraid to kill off some major marquee stars. We first learned this during the For All Mankind Season 2 finale when two of the show’s original leads, Gordo (Michael Dornan) and Tracy Stevens (Sarah Jones) nobly die when they go on a duct-tape-clad suicide run to save Jamestown base from nuclear meltdown on the moon. Well, the For All Mankind Season 3 finale saw that sequence and said, “Hold my beer. We’ve got a heavily pregnant woman dying of pre-eclampsia thrusting herself into space and a terrorist attack on NASA headquarters.” Did people die in the For All Mankind Season 3 finale? Oh yes, people died. Spoilers, but then one person came back from the dead!

For All Mankind Season 3 followed the tense battle between NASA, the USSR, and fictional space exploration company Helios to land on Mars first. Over the course of the season, we watched as these teams of astronauts and cosmonauts started as rivals, only to become teammates collaborating in the hell of space and on the chaotic landscape of Mars to survive. There were rough landings, devastating rock slides, multiple deaths, and one romance that resulted in an unplanned Mars pregnancy.

In the For All Mankind Season 3 finale, the tensions are twofold. On Mars, Kelly is now heavily pregnant, but she develops pre-eclampsia in her eighth month. The only way she and the baby can survive is if the team can somehow get her to Phoenix, which will be crossing into orbit during a narrow window of time. Complicating matters is the fact that when Danielle Poole (Krys Marshall) and USSR leader Grigory Kuznetsov (Lev Gorn) track down a much-needed part at a North Korean satellite crash site, they discover a lone North Korean cosmonaut. That wrinkle aside, the only mathematical way to get Kelly to Phoenix involves everyone sacrificing their ride home and attaching a thruster to Kelly. Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) volunteers to use almost all their meager supply of fuel to get the shuttle close enough to orbit that Kelly might — just might — be able to thrust her way to Phoenix. And then Ed has to land blind, without fuel reserves, and probably die.

Meanwhile on Earth, Jimmy Stevens (David Chandler) got cold feet about his creepy anti-NASA friends’ plans when he realized, oh snap, they mean to murder people at NASA. He tries to call sister-in-law Amber (Madeline Bertani) for help, only to find himself trapped in the back of a van with a bunch of explosives. Amber, in turn, calls Karen (Shantel VanSanten) for help. Jimmy’s last remaining maternal figure had already seen Jimmy inside NASA HQ and decides to look for him. When she calls his cellphone and it rings in one of the terrorist bro’s pockets, Karen knows something is majorly wrong. She breaks Jimmy out of the truck and tells him to run when she sees the explosives before attempting to call security on the bad peeps.

So does Karen save the day? Is Kelly okay? Does Ed survive the descent back to Mars? Who dies in the For All Mankind Season 3 finale?

Who Dies in the For All Mankind Season 3 Finale?

Let’s do the good news first: Kelly somehow makes it to Phoenix and Ed miraculously — with the help of some pointers from Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger) — survives his wild landing.

Back in Houston, the bomb does go off, though. Since Molly is in the building to help Ed, she is able to take command of the emergency situation and lead injured NASA employees to safety. (It helps that because she’s blind, now, she has memorized the corridors and stairwells in the building down to the step.)

Aleida (Coral Peña) survives, too, but when she goes to look for her beloved mentor Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt), she opens Margo’s office door to discover the entire room has been blown to bits. Margo, who is about to be exposed as a traitor who gave secrets to the USSR for years, had been melancholically playing the piano in there when the bomb went off. So Margo appears to be dead.

Karen was perhaps closest to the blast and although Jimmy is able to pull rubble off of her, she dies soon afterwards. It’s kind of a tragic twist considering that Karen had just taken control of Helios. Meaning she dies just as she’s truly established herself.

Someone else who dies? Molly Cobb. One of the final moments of For All Mankind Season 3 reveals that Sergei (Piotr Adamczyk), aka Margo’s one true love, has successfully been spirited out of the USSR and is living in suburban America. He picks up a 1995 newspaper with the headline, “NASA Space Center renamed for fallen hero Molly Cobb.” If you zoom in on the article, it is confirmed that Molly died saving other survivors.

So Margo, Karen, and Molly die in the For All Mankind Season 3 finale…or do they?

For All Mankind Ending Explained: Why is Margo Madison in Russia in 2003?

The final moments of For All Mankind Season 3 jump to 2003. Radiohead’s “Everything in Their Place” hums as a rather antiquated alarm clock goes off. We see bare feet and pajamaed-legs get out of bed and walk to a window. The curtains are pulled open and we see an older, worse-for-wear Margo Madison looking out at a Soviet cityscape.

It seems that instead of perishing in the bombing, Margo took the USSR’s offer of extradition and is now living in secret there. She has essentially swapped lives with Sergei, allowing him freedom and herself a life where…well, I don’t know what she’s up to. I guess we’ll have to wait until For All Mankind Season 4 to find out…

Will There Be a For All Mankind Season 4 on Apple TV+?

Yes, there will be! Apple TV+ recently confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con that For All Mankind had been renewed for a fourth season. In fact, when Decider spoke to star Joel Kinnaman ahead of the Season 3 premiere, he let it slip that there is a five season plan for Ed Baldwin and that was affecting his performance now.

“It’s very easy when you’re playing the aging aspect that you overdo it. It’s something we’re always very wary of, both in terms of prosthetics but also in terms of movement. But Season 3 — and then hopefully season 4 and 5, then we’ll really get into it — but season 3, it’s started to become a real thing and I was in makeup for over an hour every morning,” Kinnaman said, adding that he’s starting to look at his own father — who he put closer to Season 4 or 5 Ed — for inspiration for movement.

So not only is For All Mankind Season 4 happening, but maybe Season 5, too? (Though Season 5 is not confirmed!)