Star City Spinoff Recasts Every For All Mankind Character — And Boldly Rewrites History

Apple has built some serious genre muscle since launching its streamer in 2019. They came out swinging with The Morning Show (Emmy winner, fifth season on the way), the sci‑fi drama See, the sly period comedy Dickinson, and the animated Snoopy in Space. But the anchor title—the one that quietly became the whole brand’s spine—is For All Mankind, the alternate‑history series where the space race never stopped and basically rewired the last 70 years of world history.

This week, For All Mankind wrapped its fifth season, with a sixth and final run already locked in. And yet, that is not the biggest move Apple just made. Alongside the S5 finale, Apple also dropped the first two episodes of a brand‑new spinoff, Star City—a Cold War‑era companion piece that flips the lens to the Soviet program right where For All Mankind first began.

So what is Star City, exactly?

Short version: same timeline, different side of the chessboard. Star City drops us into the Russian space program at peak Cold War frostiness (we’re talking 1969 territory) and shows how their wins and losses looked from the inside. It ’s a new cast for the most part, but fans will recognize a lot of names—and, yes, Apple is doing some strategic recasting to rewind these characters to their earlier selves.

Heads up: spoilers for Star City episodes 1 and 2 ahead.

5. Irina Morozova
   In For All Mankind S4 and S5, Irina is the icy ex‑KGB handler turned Roscosmos director, played by Svetlana Efremova. Star City dials the clock way back and hands the role to Agnes O'Casey, who plays Irina as a young operator nowhere near the ruthless power broker we met later. The premiere makes it clear she’s got a long road to becoming that amoral strategist. The show also slips in a curveball: Irina has a daughter. What becomes of the kid—or the father—is very much TBD.

6. Anastasia Belikova
   One of For All Mankind’s early needle‑pokes at the U.S. wasn’t just that the Soviets beat America to the moon, but that they also sent a woman there. That woman is Anastasia Belikova—originally played by Rita Khrabrovitsky—now portrayed in Star City by Alice Englert. The spinoff finally gives her the spotlight: how she ended up as the first woman on the lunar surface and what that did to her life after. Crucially, Star City reveals she was not the first pick for the mission, and when she tried to deliver her own message from the moon, the state was ready to swap her out with a double. Englert’s already making Anastasia feel like a fully realized person instead of the footnote she became on the American side of the story.

7. Sergei Nikulov
   A fan favorite since Season 2, Sergei (originally played by Piotr Adamczyk) charmed everyone with his gentleness, sharp engineering brain, and that soft‑spot for Margo Madison. Star City rewinds more than a decade to the late 1960s version, now played by Josef Davies. He’s a junior engineer in the Soviet program—clearly bright, clearly in love with space—and still sneaking in the music he loves, even when the artist is banned. He hasn’t climbed the ladder yet, but he’s already on the Chief Designer’s radar.

8. Alexei Leonov
   The man who kicks this whole alt‑history off shows up again. Star City’s opening flips For All Mankind’s iconic opener, showing the Soviet side reacting as Alexei Leonov becomes the first human to land on the moon. In FAM, Leonov’s appearance was uncredited; here, Sam Wilkinson is credited for the role in the premiere. Will he return? Hard to say. The show hints the state may consider him too valuable a symbol to risk beyond that triumph—much like what we learn they felt about Anastasia.

9. The Chief Designer
   Rhys Ifans steps in as the never‑named mastermind running Star City, the guy mapping Soviet pathways to every corner of the solar system. The show leans into the era’s secrecy: across the first two episodes, no one uses his real name—it’s just his title. Fans will quickly connect the dots to real‑world legend Sergei Korolev, famously known as "the Chief Designer" to protect him during the Cold War. In our timeline, Korolev died in 1966—three years before Star City’s 1969 setting—reportedly due to surgical complications. In For All Mankind’s lore, he survives past that date, which is one of the big reasons the Soviets beat the U.S. to the moon. Star City even shows him with mysterious health issues and doctors hovering, which pretty much screams Korolev. One more twist: this is a recast. Korolev appeared in two For All Mankind episodes played by Endre Hules; Ifans is the new face.

Where this leaves the franchise

For All Mankind closes out Season 5 with a confirmed final season on deck, while Star City plants a flag of its own with a confident, colder, and frankly fascinating perspective shift. Launching the spinoff the same week as the main show’s finale is a flex—and a handy reminder of how deep this universe now runs. Back in 2019, nobody would have guessed Apple’s space saga would splinter into this many compelling directions. Yet here we are, watching the Soviets get their close‑up—and it’s already paying off.