The rebellion becomes an all-out war in Friday’s (May 21) penultimate episode of For All Mankind … and there are far too many casualties to count. Could a Marsee favorite be among those lost, though? Warning: Spoilers forFor All MankindSeason 5 Episode 9 ahead!
The episode begins with Lily (Ruby Cruz) and Alex (Sean Kaufman) spotting M6 ships incoming to Happy Valley while out on a motorcycle joy ride. From there, things erupt into pure chaos. Though Miles (Toby Kebbell) tries to keep his followers in order, he can do no such thing once the bullets start flying. Among the invaders are A.J. (Ines Asserson) and Haskell (Barnett Carnahan).
Alex gets to work providing medical services, and Lily tries to document the attack with her camcorder. They’re separated, however, when Alex offers to retrieve much-needed med bay supplies from Dev’s (Edi Gathegi) Helios bunker. Lily, along with Celia (Mireille Enos), is captured by a guard who claims her father is a turncoat; meanwhile, Alex is almost caught sneaking through a vent. They’re all saved when soldiers gun down a group of MPKs, only realizing after the fact that these are allies they’ve just murdered.
Haskell, who’s grown up on Mars, breaks away from the other soldiers, along with Avery, because he knows the routes in Happy Valley better than anyone. Unfortunately, he crosses paths with Alex at the exact wrong time and wears a bullet from his old friend as a result.
Alex’s desperate cries for Haskell to survive convince A.J. to help him rescue the young man. Together, they carry Haskell to Dev’s lair and demand to be let in.
For Ines Asserson, Avery’s decision to trust Alex is instant. “It’s a first for her. She’s done all of it, but the reality of being in a battlefield is so different, and it’s brutal, it’s messy, and it’s not controlled. And I think her own kind of plan that really shakes her, I think it kind of makes her feel maybe a bit differently about what it means to be part of an institution,” the actress told TV Insider. “When suddenly she needs to shift her focus towards the future, what’s happened to Ruiz and what’s happened to Haskell, in an immediate situation that requires her training and Alex’s training as well, to be able to put that force towards each other for a good cause is kind of exactly what Avery needs in that moment.”
Still, as bad of shape as Haskell is in… we have to wonder if he’s doomed whether Dev lets them in or not.
Elsewhere in the episode, the Sojourner team’s search for life on Titan also takes a dangerous turn when Elena (Kristina Klebe) is injured while trying to collect samples. As Kelly (Cynthy Wu) works to save her, she sees a bit of glowing substance. Meanwhile, they still haven’t received their trajectory for the launch home, and given the violence underway at Happy Valley, they aren’t likely to any time soon. Will they all die on Titan?
And is more carnage still to come from this eruption of fighting on Mars? We have one more episode of Season 5 to find out.
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