For All Mankind Creator Reveals What Will Make Spinoff Series Even Darker

For All Mankind’s universe is expanding with the upcoming spinoff Star City. Originally announced at Apple TV+ in April 2024 alongside a Season 5 renewal for the flagship show, Star City is set to shift the primary focus to the Soviet Union’s space program as it continues to tell the alternate history of the space race. Speaking with Comiccook at San Diego Cmic-Con 2025, co-creator Ron Moore teased that the transition will bring “a very different feeling” and a “darker” tone to the show.

“Star City takes place in Star City, which is in the Soviet Union in our alternate history, and the Soviet Union was obviously a very very different place than Houston,” Moore said. “In Houston, you screw up your job, you get fired or you get shuffled to a bad desk. You screw up in Star City, you could get a bullet in the back of the head.”

For All Mankind premiered in 2019 and is set in an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union beats the United States to the Moon, allowing the space race to continues on for decades. Described as “a propulsive, paranoid thriller,” per the show’s official synopsis, Star City “takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race” when the Soviets put a man on the moon. Rather than exploring the story through the American perspective, however, the series will “explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers, and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humanity forward.”

Moore told ComicBook that the Soviet Union is “a very different world, and you’re watching them deal with different political problems.” In addition to dealing with a “different lack of resources,” he said that the “technology, even though it’s impressive, is still a step behind NASA for the most part. And there’s a tremendous amount of courage you know in that program.”

“The cosmonauts, what they really did in history and what we’re going to play as well in the show, you know, they were going out in spaceships that had like bolt heads on them and you’re like, ‘Wow, you really get in this thing?’ And they lost some guys. They lost people over the years that they hid and kept secret until many years later,” he continued. “So it was a daring, ambitious program that was operated in a totalitarian government, you know, in the middle of the Cold War, with a lot of espionage going on. So it’s a very different show. It’s a very different feeling of a show than For All Mankind… It’s a darker show.”

Star City is created by Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert, and Moore, who teased that the show has been shooting.” The series stars Rhys Ifans (House of the Dragon) as the Chief Designer, who is “the driving force behind the Soviet Space program.” The cast also includes Solly McLeod (House of the Dragon) as Sasha, “a reckless cosmonaut who has yet to live up to his potential;” Agnes O’Casey (Dangerous Liaisons) as Irina, “a recent addition to the surveillance department at Star City;” and Alice Englert (Ratched) as Anastasia, “an untested female cosmonaut in the Soviet Space.”

Star City doesn’t yet have a premiere date. For All Mankind Season 5 also doesn’t yet have a release date.