For All Mankind's Most Dangerous Character Just Got Even More Power
One under-the-radar character could be the key to everything.
As a series focused on the historic geopolitical tension between the U.S. and the USSR, For All Mankind has always been unique because, overwhelmingly, the show presents a timeline in which Soviet Communism didn’t dissolve, and the space race continued much in the way that it had in the 1960s. In Season 5, it’s sometimes hard to remember that the brinksmanship of the ‘60s and '70s is interconnected with the alternate 2012, in which humans from various Earth nationalities are banding together to free Mars. But in Episode 5, “Svoboda,” one flashback to events between Season 4 and Season 5 provides a crucial detail about the real power players on Mars, and could retroactively give us a clue to the upcoming spinoff series Star City.
Spoilers ahead.
“Svoboda” is a Slavic word that means “freedom,” but Episode 5 begins with the character of Irina Morozova (Svetlana Efremova) being thrown into a Gulag following the events of Season 4. Quick recap here: Irina is a KGB operative who was working with Roscosmos to gain intelligence information from NASA throughout the first three seasons.
For All Mankind’s spaceflight timeline is unfolding in two directions.
The main person Irina handled was Sergei (Piotr Adamczyk), who was Margo’s (Wrenn Schmidt) love interest throughout the series. Basically, after Margo was accused of selling state secrets to the USSR in Season 3, Irina recruited Margo to work for Roscosmos in Season 4. But, because Irina had Sergei murdered, Margo defied her and secretly allowed for the Goldilocks asteroid to be stolen, which neither the U.S. nor the USSR actually wanted. This is why Margo is in a U.S. prison in Season 5, but it also explains, ironically, why Irina ended up in a Gulag after Season 4, too. In short, Irina was partly blamed for the Goldilocks scandal and locked up. But, as the new flashback reveals, she used her crafty KGB training to smuggle information while in prison, and upon her release — catching up to the present — she ascends to a new position of power with Kuragin, the Soviet version of Helios, which, in For All Mankind, is a little like SpaceX.
So, although Iriana first appeared in Season 4, her influence goes back to Season 1, where we’re told she worked in Star City as an intelligence operative. Her journey is pretty topsy-turvy at this point: KGB, to Roscosmos, to prison, and finally, to Kuragin. But what’s interesting now, with her arrival on Mars as part of the Kurigan delegation, is that she has major influence on both the future and past of the franchise. The second she arrives on Mars, Governor Polivanov’s wife, Natalya (Olga Fonda), gets nervous. Clearly, Iriana has dirt on both of these political power players, and the fact that they’re all from the same country is likely meaningless to her.
Governor Leonid Polivanov(Costa Ronin) and Natalya Polivanova (Olga Fonda) in For All Mankind Season 5.
On top of this, Aledia (Coral Peña) is doubly freaked out that Iriana is now on Mars, scheming to help Kuragin, which mostly means pushing the pro-automation agenda even further than before. Aledia obviously hates Iriana because she was responsible for Margo going back to prison for treason, which, technically, Aledia committed.
The bottom line is, walking in the shadows, very casually, is a character who has a lot of power, influence, and dirt on many of the main characters in For All Mankind. And, because her influence extends backwards in time too, it seems like the events of 2012 could be setting us up for new revelations when Star City goes back to 1969. For All Mankind may be a show about futuristic spaceflight and the machinations of governance on other planets. But it's also an intergenerational epic of intrigue, and it seems that not all the secrets of this timeline have been fully revealed. Yet.
