Dani Poole leads her own mission in this sneak peek at For All Mankind’s season 2 finale
For All Mankind season two brought viewers into the go-go ’80s—or rather, series creators Ronald D. Moore, Ben Nedivi, and Matt Wolpert’s collective vision of the early ’80s. D-mail and video conferencing keep people connected, but Ronald Reagan’s still president. The cold war still grips both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., but Black women like Dani Poole (Krys Marshall) are veteran astronauts. In its second season, For All Mankind captures the oft-glacial pace of change, while still firing up viewers for what’s to come—including the roughly 80-minute finale. “The Grey” will reveal what’s going on at the Jamestown lunar camp, which just last week was breached by Soviet cosmonauts in search of their injured comrade who recently received asylum from the U.S. government. Tense stuff!
But “The Grey” also features the more diplomatic efforts between the two nations and their respective teams of elite space explorers, including Dani, whose first mission command has been a long time in coming. Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) finally gave Dani her own command a couple episodes back, though only after she pointed out that only one Black pilot out of hundreds in the NASA program had ever done so (remember what we said about slow-moving change?). Regardless, Dani’s determined to make the most of the opportunity, even if the Apollo–Soyuz joint mission is effectively a “handshake in space.” But with things about to get really fraught on the moon, they could probably use such a gesture. Unfortunately, as you’ll see in this exclusive sneak peek at the season-two finale, Dani and her Russian counterparts are left spinning their gyroscopes.
“The Grey” is directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan and written by Moore, Nedivi, and Wolpert. The episode will be available on Apple TV+ at 12:01 a.m. ET on Friday, April 23.