For All Mankind (Season 4) Episode 6: Recap & Ending Explained - Can Roscosmos and Helios work together?

I will have to give it to “For All Mankind,” as every week all the plot threads zags rather than zigs. It stays true to the characters, but the progressions take some swerves, or the characters make decisions that change the overall trajectory of the entire story. For a show very much delving into an alternate universe, it is very much focused on characters, as all the best long-form storytellers do. This is why a long-coming confrontation between two characters has the same impact as an explosion or a disaster sequence. Here is a breakdown of For All Mankind (Season 4) Episode 6 with a detailed explanation of what takes place in the end.

For All Mankind (Season 4) Episode 6 “Leningrad” Recap:

At Leningrad, crucial negotiations for a new M7 treaty are underway. The primary players are Eli Hobson of NASA, Aleida Rosales representing Helios, and Irina Marzovna representing Roscosmos. But they were helped surreptitiously via a trusty communication link by Margo Madison in a hotel room, who is feeding her relevant information as the negotiations are underway. Margo is shocked to see Aleida there.

The negotiations start with Eli proposing the launch of an asteroid capture mission in 8 weeks, to which Aleida throws cold water upon stating that Helios would require 11 new spacecraft and 2500 individual vehicles for the project to come to terms and sustain itself. It’s a mammoth undertaking that would require enormous financial backing, something that the United Nations can do, but they are reticent to come forward fully. It’s a daunting prospect, especially considering that the return on investment would span over 35 years, after which a positive result would be seen.

However, Eli strikes upon a brainwave to redirect Goldilocks, the asteroid, towards the moon’s orbit. Mentioning this in private to Irina and Aleida, Irina, through Margo, believes that it would work, but they would need to work on an elegant solution and work on it straight away. Margo excitedly tries to relay all the prior experimentation techniques of NASA to redirect asteroid trajectories through Irina, which does surprise Aleida and also runs the risk of turning the meeting combative, especially considering Russian involvement in stealing the plans of the NASA engine.

However, excitement to work again trumps caution, and Margo asks permission from Irina to unmask herself to work with Aleida, as she believes they can hatch a plan together if they can work the night over. Irina does warn her of the danger of unmasking, but Margo is unfettered.

Meanwhile, Danielle and her new XO Palmer are up to their necks in drafts of the asteroid capture program specifications. Orchestration of 25 flights in the first month alone is an intense feat, but Danielle is determined to do it at the cost of proving the viability of the Mars mission, perhaps revealing herself to be blind to the current class divide that has already been occurring since Moon workers went on strike a few years ago. The class divide in Happy Valley is slowly reaching a fever pitch at this point. One of the primary reasons is the internal politics occurring on Earth in Leningrad at the conference between the M7 countries.

But you wouldn’t have expected Ed Baldwin to be the person to fan the flames of unionization in the first place. Then again, with how the episode opens, with Ed spending his time away in his room, one can understand why he would be angry at both Danielle and Palmer. It is irrelevant that he is wrong; at this point, boredom has made Ed Baldwin mischievous and nasty. So when Palmer has to bring in the tabulations containing the new payment and bonus structures because he still needs Ed’s sign-off, Ed takes the document and shuts the door in their faces. Armed with that knowledge, Ed now feels almost chaotic.

For All Mankind (Season 4) Episode 6 — Joel Kinnaman and Tyner Rushing in “For All Mankind,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

The first thing he does is visit Ilya’s bar, revealing that he already knew of the bar’s existence and also revealing that this isn’t Ed’s first attempt at building an illegal still or creating a bar. He also reveals himself to be adept at understanding how Ilya’s vodka could improve its taste, revealing that the air conditioning’s infestation of rats is one of the reasons why the still and thus the vodka have a firm “cinnamon rat’s ass” aftertaste.

The one disconnected track here is the Ed and Ilya conflict. After having been cut off by Ilya and his connections because of Miles’ business of sending Mars stones to Earth, Miles is beaten to a pulp by one of Ilya’s goons because he was trying to send one of those stones. Not to be deterred, Miles takes the only route that Ilya had left unguarded. He tells Jung-gil that Ilya had no intention of bringing his wife up to Mars but had been stalling him so that the North Korean customer base would not be disturbed. That, of course, makes him decidedly mad.

For All Mankind (Season 4) Episode 6 “Leningrad” Ending Explained:

Margo shows up at Aleida’s hotel room and surprises her. Aleida is overcome with emotion at finding her alive, and she hugs her. But Margo’s revelation of the reasons behind her defection from the Soviet Union doesn’t sit right with Aleida. Justifiably, too, because the bombing and the deaths of many people and the subsequent trauma of the living, including Bill Strausser’s paralysis, keep Aleida up at night and, as prior episodes have shown, forced her to finally leave NASA.

Margo’s admittance of wanting to be dead and having many regrets herself wouldn’t be enough to convince Aleida, but her admitting that the mission is bigger than both of them and they would need to work together to make this brainwave successful finally forces the two women to join hands. Subsequent scenes reveal Margo at a present conference “unmasking” herself to the world as a part of the Soviet Union, which one can understand to have mixed results.

But the fascinating wrinkle is that Ed is becoming the king of unionization. He crashes into the meeting of the Helios union workers, who are already being worked up to a frenzy by Massey, for entirely logical reasons: workplace safety is clearly not a priority here, and it is only going to become more dangerous as the Asteroid Capture mission becomes riskier and requires overtime. But Ed’s revelation about the changing of the bonuses and the pay, especially the reduction in the bonuses and overtime, incenses the workers.

This is the moment when the key conflict of the show begins to boil over, but the fact that Ed Baldwin is the one instigating it, who had previously castigated Miles in an earlier episode about Helios men’s loyalty to the money, is suspect. Is Baldwin really sympathetic to the worker’s cause, or is it a more self-centered decision?

The final thread, though, is Ilya being locked out of his own bar by Miles, now with the additional support of the North Korean faction of Happy Valley. This is the least investing war currently occurring here until subsequent episodes might reveal a deeper game at play. As I said in the intro to this recap, never count “For All Mankind” out.