For All Mankind Finale: EPs Explain The 'Difficult' Choice To Kill Off [Spoiler] — Plus, More On That Time Jump Mystery

The following post contains major spoilers for the "For All Mankind" Season 5 finale.

Kelly Baldwin has left the "For All Mankind" universe for good — but she made one heck of a discovery on her way out.

Apple TV's alt-history drama wrapped its penultimate season on Friday with a finale that included the heartbreaking death of Cynthy Wu's astronaut and biologist, who has been a major character since Season 2. Kelly's demise came not long after she and colleagues Walt and Elena uncovered something monumental on the surface of Titan: Microbial cells exist on that moon of Saturn, and they're made up of methane rather than Earth's carbon, indicating the possibility of life everywhere in the solar system.

But after the trio celebrated their scientific victory, an upsetting realization dawned: The rover that would bring them from their research bay back to the Sojourner spacecraft had a dead engine, and there wasn't enough oxygen left for all three of them to safely walk back to the craft. There would, however, be enough oxygen for only two astronauts to walk to Sojourner — and Kelly opted to stay behind on Titan permanently, allowing Walt and Elena to get back to Earth with their game-changing cell sample.

The end wasn't all sad for Kelly, though. Later, as her oxygen supply depleted, she ventured outside to place a commemorative plaque on Titan's surface before she died... and, in the process, realized she'd happened upon a lake. She waded into the water — liquid methane — and was astonished as it glowed with bioluminescence around her.

Meanwhile, as is "For All Mankind" tradition, the season once again ended with a time jump, now to the year 2020. The long-defunct Mars 94 spacecraft appeared out of the abyss, and as we went inside the craft's interior, its computer display suddenly lit up and displayed a short message in Russian.

Below, "For All Mankind" showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi explain that time jump cliffhanger — as much as they can, anyway — and offer more insight into the choice to kill off Kelly. Read on for our Q&A, then grade the finale in our poll at the bottom of the story.

TVLINE | Let me make sure I have this correct: We end this finale with a time jump to 2020, and we're seeing the Mars 94 spacecraft again, which has a message coming up on its display, right?
WOLPERT | That's right.

TVLINE | Tell me about the choice to end with that scene, and what the implications might be for the start of Season 6.
WOLPERT | We found it really intriguing to bring the past of the show into the future of the show, on some level, and hint at how those two things come together. It's really built off that moment of Kelly walking into that methane lake and being surrounded by these bioluminescent microbes, and the hope and awe of that. And then, as we travel up and go around the rings of Saturn and find Mars 94, there is a kind of mystery that's teased, which will connect in Season 6 to the whole "search for life" story that we're building on with Kelly's discovery. Without getting too much more into it, because it really is meant to be a mysterious tease, it will play out in a way that people will find fascinating in Season 6.

TVLINE | From a technical standpoint, when Kelly finds that lake, how many conversations did you have behind the scenes about what that liquid should look like?
NEDIVI | Oh my God. Honestly, by the time we're done with discussions like that, I feel like I know as much about this stuff as actual scientists. [Laughs] But there were so many discussions about how this kind of microbe would behave in the lake, and how the water of methane would act and look differently than regular water, and how Kelly's suit looked going into it. So much goes into it to make it look as accurate as possible. But I have to say, it was also important that it looks cool, right? And beautiful and elegant. Because it's also Kelly's last moment of life. That was the thing, more than anything, for us. After all the research into how to make this feel real, and be true to science, and the color and the movement — more than anything, it's Kelly's face. Giving her this moment of pure joy, in a moment that's really sad also, felt so true to this character's journey and to the show as a whole. With Ellen Wilson at the end of Season 1, we ask, "Is it worth it?" You see the answer to that question in Kelly's face in that scene.

TVLINE | You have a habit of killing off major characters in your season finales, but even before we lost Kelly, we'd already lost other big players this season, including Ed. How did you come to the decision to have Kelly die now, as well?
WOLPERT | It was a very difficult decision, honestly, and one that took a lot of discussion and weighing what the best path forward was. For us, it wasn't about, "Oh, it's the finale, we have to kill someone" — even though we have done that many times. [Laughs] But it was really about the evolution of Kelly as a character. You really saw her, in this season, take on the mantle of being a Baldwin and making some questionable choices, to put it mildly. In Episode 7, she basically forces that ship [to Titan] to land when they were going to turn around, without anybody else knowing. She's carrying the weight of that, and the audience knows she's carrying the weight of that. And seeing her still-maniacal pursuit of finding these microbes — we definitely had a few discussions about Captain Ahab [from "Moby Dick"] with her, and the question of, "What are you willing to do for that ultimate goal?" Having her reach that goal and then sacrifice herself to ensure the thing she's been chasing for decades is able to get back [to Earth] — and to protect the lives of the people who she put in a dangerous situation — it felt like a great culmination of her character, and a way to show the toll of these scientific pursuits.

TVLINE | But how much of her decision to stay on Titan is driven by guilt? She and Walt never do have a conversation about how she interfered in the Titan mission.
NEDIVI | Honestly, I think [guilt is] most of what's informing her decision. We had talked about having that confession [scene] and how the truth would come out, and actually, the best way for it to come out is through this sacrifice. She gives the reason of family, which is also a very good reason — that Walt's got three young kids — but what's really driving her is the guilt. If not for her earlier decision, they wouldn't be in this predicament. So even though they've made this big discovery, that's a lot of what's going through her mind in that great scene with the three of them.

... There's many reasons that Kelly had [to make that sacrifice], which, by the way, did not make that decision easy by any means. We've grown really attached to Cynthy [Wu, who plays Kelly] and the arc she's had since playing a teenager in Season 2, and now she's at the end of her life. And I have to say, the fact that Kelly's father died earlier in the season made it even more difficult. We kept asking ourselves, "Can we really kill both the father and the daughter in the same season? That's nuts!"

WOLPERT | Can we do this to Alex?! That poor kid! [Laughs]

NEDIVI | But in the end, that's also what made it feel right. What we've learned is, the more painful it is for us, the more painful it usually is for the audience.

TVLINE | Alex was on my mind, too, while watching this finale. He's lost his grandfather, his mother, and a close friend this season, and he's been part of a civil war. I know years will have passed when the show picks back up, but what can you say about how those losses will have affected him?
WOLPERT | They've affected him in a huge way. I think it would affect anybody who's gone through even one of those things, let alone all of them. That's not to say he's catatonic in his room. [Laughs] People react in interesting ways to going through difficult experiences, and without getting too much into details, he's carrying the PTSD of all the losses he's experienced, but also the weight of the legacy of his family and whether he wants to pursue that legacy or go in a different direction.

TVLINE | Thinking about the final season more generally, how much more do you want to expand the show's scope, now that we know life can exist everywhere in the solar system? Do you want to keep exploring new planets and moons while you're also trying to wind the show down?
NEDIVI | The promise of the show is always to go further than we've ever gone before, and that's definitely a focus of Season 6 — going further into the solar system, digging deeper into this discovery that they make at the end of Season 5. That's the thrust of Season 6, and it's always been that for us, honestly, since before Season 1. We're still somehow on the roadmap that we had internally when we started this show.

The other focus will be this young nation of Mars. It's one thing to lead a revolution and get your independence; it's another thing to then run a country. [Laughs] That's something we're exploring, as well.

"For All Mankind" fans, how did you like the Season 5 finale? What are your hopes for the show's final season? Grade Friday's episode in our poll below, then drop a comment with all of your thoughts!