Will There Be a ‘For All Mankind’ Season 3 on Apple TV+?

The For All Mankind Season 2 finale premiered on Apple TV+ today, catapulting the show into the stratosphere like never before. After two seasons of being a cult fave, the series reaches a dramatic high, and promises to keep it up with a thrilling tease for what’s still to come. So what is yet to come? Is Apple TV+ making For All Mankind Season 3? When will the third season premiere? And what brave new worlds will For All Mankind Season 3 take our favorite characters to?

At first glance For All Mankind seems like a straight forward series rooted in the realism of the late 1960s space race. But with a single twist of fate — the USSR landing on the moon first — the series swiftly becomes closer to the stuff of science fiction, imagining a world where the space race heated up. Women became astronauts as early as the Nixon administration and by the 1980s, NASA was entrenched on the Moon. For All Mankind Season 2 focuses on how the Cold War bubbled over to these manned bases, triggering a violent standoff that put the fate of the world at risk.

So where will For All Mankind go next? Here’s everything we know so far about For All Mankind Season 3 on Apple TV+…

(Warning, For All Mankind Season 2 spoilers ahoy!!!)

Will There Be a For All Mankind Season 3?

Yes! Apple renewed For All Mankind for a third season before For All Mankind Season 2 even premiered. In fact, Season 3 is already in production, with stars like Joel Kinnaman, Shantel VanSanten, Krys Marshall, Jodi Balfour, and Wrenn Schmidt all confirmed as returning.

Joel Kinnaman even shared with Decider in a recent interview that he had already wrapped shooting For All Mankind Season 3 Episode 1, and was in the middle of Episode 2. When Decider asked the 41-year-old actor about playing the now 60-something Ed Baldwin in the 1990s, Kinnaman said, “It’s a bit of a bitch with the makeup and it’s a little earlier mornings, with wearing prosthetics and all that stuff. But I have to say that when the age becomes more and more a factor, it becomes a more and more intriguing aspect of playing the character.” He even teased he plans on hanging with the show for a bit longer. 

Some of Kinnaman’s co-stars have also started sharing behind-the-scenes photos on social media, confirming they are back for For All Mankind Season 3.

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A post shared by Shantel VanSanten (@therealshantel)

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A post shared by Krys Marshall (@krysmarshall)

So yes! For All Mankind Season 3 is a go!

When Will For All Mankind Season 3 Premiere on Apple TV+?

We don’t know for sure, but the schedule for past seasons could give us some clue.

For All Mankind Season 1 started shooting in August 2018 and wrapped in March 2019. Eight months later, the season premiered on Apple TV+ in November 2019. Similarly, production on Season 2 was halted due to COVID-19, but the season premiered about seven months after they were able to resume filming the last two episodes.

Since the show started shooting last month — and it seems like it takes six-eight months to both shoot and wrap up post-production — we estimate that the earliest we’ll get the new season is in March 2022, but no later than 16 months out, which would be July 2022.

So let’s just say For All Mankind Season 3 is due to premiere sometime in 2022?

What Will For All Mankind Season 3 Be About?

Huge spoilers for the end of For All Mankind Season 2, but the season ended with two major characters’ deaths, the reveal that one of our favorites had been compromised by the USSR, and that For All Mankind Season 3 will feature another big time jump. The final moments of the episode show a boot landing on Mars in 1994. We don’t know if that boot belongs to the USA, USSR, or even a new rival in the space race (like China???). However someone will step foot on Mars in For All Mankind Season 3.

Of course getting to Mars is the lifelong passion of Ellen Wilson (Jodi Balfour). It was teased in For All Mankind Season 2 that none other than Lee Atwater wanted to groom the closeted lesbian NASA Administrator for politics. The eventual goal? Making Ellen the first female president. For All Mankind co-creator and executive producer Ronald D. Moore confirmed to Decider (in an interview that will run later) that Season 3 will delve into Ellen’s journey as a Republican politician.

Moore wouldn’t say if, when, or how Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt) would discover she was compromised, but said, “We are certainly continuing that storyline in Season 3, it’s a big deal. It’ll be one of the defining stories of Margo Madison’s life.”

Consider us already counting down until we can watch For All Mankind Season 3 on Apple TV+.

Where to stream For All Mankind