How did For All Mankind season 4 end?
For All Mankind closed its fourth season on January 12, 2024 with "Perestroika" — a feature-length Apple TV+ finale that plays like a heist movie staged across two planets. Set in 2003, it settles the fate of the Goldilocks asteroid, and of Margo Madison. Here's how it all shook out.
The Goldilocks fight
The season built to a tug-of-war over Goldilocks, an asteroid loaded with priceless iridium. NASA and Roscosmos planned a 20-minute engine burn aboard the Ranger to slingshot the rock toward Earth's orbit. The workers of Happy Valley — led by Ed Baldwin, Dev Ayesa, Sam Massey, and Miles Dale — wanted it kept at Mars, where mining it would guarantee the colony's future. So they set out to steal an asteroid.
- Miles cracks — captured and interrogated, he gives up the plot, putting security on the crew's tail.
- The riot — Happy Valley erupts, and Commander Danielle Poole is shot with the North Korean pistol an engineer had found buried in the Martian sand two months earlier. She survives, barely.
- The spacewalk — Sam Massey climbs along the outside of the Ranger mid-burn to trip the manual override, cutting the engines early.
- The stowaway — Lee Jung-Gil's wife, smuggled across the solar system, finally emerges from the cargo hold.
The heist works, and Goldilocks stays at Mars.
Margo's choice
The finale 's emotional core belongs to Margo Madison. One episode earlier, her friend Sergei Nikulov was murdered on the orders of Roscosmos chief Irina Morozova — and Margo responds by defying her KGB handler entirely. From mission control, she helps ensure the asteroid stays at Mars, reasoning that Earth's nations will only keep funding spaceflight if the prize stays out of reach.
Before acting, she tells Aleida about confronting Wernher von Braun over his Nazi past back in the 1960s — a full-circle moment for the character who started the whole series in his shadow.
Then federal agents walk onto the floor and arrest her. She doesn't resist.
The 2012 flash- forward
The final minutes jump nine years ahead. Mining is underway on Goldilocks, now home to Kuznetsov Station — named for the cosmonaut who died in the season premiere. Happy Valley has grown into something resembling a real settlement, and the last shot follows Dev walking the rim of a Martian crater. Notably, no major character dies in the finale itself — a first for the show.
What happened next
Season 5 premiered on March 27, 2026, picking up in the 2010s with Happy Valley a thriving colony of thousands and tensions rising between Mars and Earth. Apple has since confirmed a sixth and final season, due in 2027, plus Star City — a Soviet-side prequel spinoff that premiered on May 29, 2026.