A revolution is coming on For All Mankind

Apple unveiled a new trailer for the fifth season of its science fiction streaming series For All Mankind, showing that the state of the solar system is about to heat up considerably.

The show debuted way back in November 2019 as one of the company's launch titles, set in an alternate timeline in which the Soviet Union reached the Moon first in 1969, rather than the United States. From there, it's played out a story about a continued space race that's taken humanity to the Moon and to Mars, and all the problems that come with it. In Season 1, NASA worked to build up a base on the Moon in the 1970s, while the action jumps ahead to the 1980s in the next season, where the nuclear tensions of the Cold War erupt and threaten their progress.

In Season 3, the action shifts to the race for Mars in the 1990s, and Season 4 jumps to the establishment of a permanent base on the Red Planet in the 2000s, in which the new Martians work to capture a valuable asteroid.

That brings us up to the 2010s for this upcoming fifth season. The Happy Valley settlement on Mars is thriving, now populated by thousands of people, and they're starting to look even further out into the solar system for signs of life. Not everyone is thrilled at these efforts: people on Earth (and a new president) are looking to rein in spending and try and get a bit more control over the Martian colonies, which threatens to erupt into violence between the two planets.

You can watch the full trailer here:

In a bunch of ways, I'm getting some prequel to James S.A. Corey's The Expanse vibes, given that in that story, Mars had broken away from Earth and the two were pretty hostile to one another.

It's fitting that this is the focus for this season in 2026, given that it's the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As seen in the trailer, the people on Mars are really being pressed by the faraway leaders on Earth, and it really looks like there's a big fight coming up this year. We've seen some elements of space-based warfare before (way back on the Moon in Season 2), and I'm really excited to see how they approach it on the Red Planet later on.

The series will debut on Apple TV on March 27th.