Is it just me, or are this season’s unfolding plotlines on Earth far more riveting than those on Mars? The scenes in “Leningrad” in the titular city are full of crucial character moments and plot developments. The high-stakes negotiations for a new M7 treaty and the executable plan to capture Goldilocks crackle in conversations among Aleida, Irina, El, and eventually Margo. Margo’s decision to come forward, knowing she’ll face public fury and censure for having defected to the USSR, is no small thing. It’s significant that the opportunity to collaborate once more with Aleida is what prompts her to do it.
Meanwhile, the inheritors of the consequences of Margo’s decision are up on Mars, deciding to take risks of their own. Massey (with an assist from Ed, of all people) leads the charge for a union drive of Helios workers. While the unionization plotline itself feels inert and poky at the moment, it’s bizarre because the stakes are incredibly high. As Massey correctly points out, they may never have a better opportunity or more powerful leverage to successfully make their (eminently reasonable) demands. Time is on their side, thanks to the swiftly closing window to capture Goldilocks and the fact that “they can’t just shitcan us and fly in a bunch of scabs” as they did when Moon workers went on strike a few years ago (a detail that leapt out at me in the first episode’s opening time-lapse montage).
Massey has compelling facts at the ready – workplace safety is about to decline rapidly due to likely forced overtime and insufficient rest periods, and everyone at Happy Valley has already been reminded recently that their line of work isn’t just risky, it’s dangerous. But it’s not until Ed drops key details about the sweet overtime pay everyone is hoping will make the reward worth the risks they’re likely to take that things really start to heat up. Thanks to Palmer requiring Ed’s sign-off on the new pay-and-bonus tables (he’s still Happy Valley Project Manager, even though he’s been fired as XO), he can tell everyone that Helios’s calculations for bonus tiers and amounts have drastically reduced all of their financial prospects. Getting to the first bonus tier will take ten times longer than previously, and the bonus itself is dropping from $20,000 to $5,000. What remaining shreds of “get rich or die trying” anyone’s been clinging to disappear altogether when they learn (again, from Ed) that the M7 has announced that the asteroid capture plan will send the valuable rock to be mined in orbit around Earth, not Mars, so those crummy bonuses will only be available for a few months rather than years. That’s the last straw, even for the most strike-skeptical folks in the room. Strike!
My For All Mankind BINGO card has never once included a square for “Ed Baldwin Embraces The Power of The Collective,” and it’s making me feel like I’m experiencing narrative whiplash. In one episode, he’s grousing about Helios workers – a group that counts him among their ranks – being on Mars for the wrong reasons, and a few weeks later he’s saying things like, “they gotta pay the people who do all the dirty work, and if they refuse, let’s shut this place down!” When did this king of acting unilaterally develop class consciousness? How much of this is sincere, and how much of it is driven by his desire to mess with Dani and Palmer?
The CO and XO are up to their elbows in drafts of asteroid capture technical specs from Helios. When Palmer voices reasonable doubts about Happy Valley’s capacity to manage the required pace of the operation, Dani firmly declares herself an adherent of the sunk cost fallacy. Her entire reason for being at Happy Valley is “to prove that this base was worth the years of blood, sweat, and tears it took to establish a Mars operation.” In the names of their friends and colleagues who worked so hard to make Happy Valley a viable endeavor, she is going after Goldilocks no matter what. It’s hard to believe that Dani, who is so gifted at seeing the big picture and at managing people and who was sent to Mars to course-correct following a tragic workplace safety event, isn’t making workplace safety her top priority. As much as I understand her ambition and eagerness and know all too well the seductive allure of For a Limited Time Only-ness, it’s a mistake to go full steam ahead rather than take the time to engage with the idea that they’re simply understaffed for this mission.
In the bustling corners of Happy Valley, Ilya and Miles engage in their own version of the Great Obsidian War, each making their own set of mistakes. Rather than confronting Miles about his pursuit of a side hustle despite Ilya's rejection, Ilya takes drastic measures by revoking Miles's access to the loading dock through Faisa. To drive the message home, he enlists Petros, a massive man, to hoist Miles up by the neck and nearly strangle him, instructing him to "not fuck with Ilya's business" and never to return.
Enterprising Miles, faced with such a predicament, decides to turn Lee Jung-gil's desperation for reunion with his wife against him. Once Lee learns that Ilya had dropped his efforts to help his wife escape North Korea and secretly defect to Mars, he immediately dispatches several of his colleagues to physically confront Petros. This retaliatory action does not bode well for Ilya, and by the end of the episode, he finds himself out of business entirely, left with only the privilege of visiting his own bar whenever he desires. This plotline, seemingly disconnected from the rest of Happy Valley's happenings, becomes intriguing due to the role the DPRK guys will play now that Lee has lost hope of seeing his wife again.
Back on Earth, in the bustling city of Leningrad, the nations of the M7 Alliance gather to negotiate a new agreement centered on capturing, extracting, and profiting from the unprecedentedly vast quantities of iridium found in Goldilocks. Irina chairs the initial meeting, but it's really Aleida's show. Her direct and unpretentious presentation of what the post-capture mining operation will require for success stems from her assumption that there's no point in trying to sugarcoat the scale of land vehicles, spacecraft, ore transport, and buildings necessary for success. The basic costs hover around $2 trillion, which is both an unfathomably huge price tag and also a very reasonable amount, considering that the total value of the asteroid is at a minimum $200 trillion. Nevertheless, this announcement sets off a round of concerned murmuring among all M7 signatories who are not the U.S. and USSR.
Margo observes this unfolding drama through a massive bank of surveillance cameras in a file storage room. It's intriguing and a little tantalizing to see these two interacting in a multiply-mediated way, through camera lenses, physical separation, and Irina herself, who listens to all of Margo's real-time commentary and follow-up questions. The strength of Margo and Aleida's relationship was always rooted in their excellent collaborative problem-solving skills, and it's nice to see them get to do that again, even if, for now, only Margo knows it's happening. As the meeting attendees break for some casual midday Champagne and hors d'oeuvres, Eli and Irina gently school Aleida (and Margo) in the stickier ways of treaty negotiation. The more experienced agency heads have seen things like this unfold many times - good projects fail when they can't reach an agreement on money, even when all partners agree on them in principle. Sure, the U.S. and USSR could foot the entire bill together, but as Eli puts it, "everyone needs to have skin in the game to benefit." Philosophically, this isn't a million miles away from what Massey and company are talking about, but their conversation takes place in a literally sparkling and golden room as they drink actual sparkling wine rather than in a tiny, poorly lit, clandestine bar while drinking moonshine strong enough to degrease an engine.
As Aleida stands firmly on her feet as a problem-solver, Irina and Eli illuminate the importance of time within their eight-week timeline for capturing Goldilocks, not just for the sake of expediency but also to fulfill the economic and political expectations of every signatory. Politicians yearn to run for re-election on the bounties of Goldilocks, but they can only do so once there are substantial riches to claim credit for. Waiting decades for a substantial return on investment? That’s not going to cut it. Eli’s suggestion of mining the asteroid from within Earth’s orbit sparks a brief, promising race. This idea, leveraging existing technology and infrastructure, could deliver iridium and profits within five years rather than four decades. However, the timing for hammering out a viable agreement stinks, even with massive simplifications, and it seems increasingly likely that they’ll have to give up hope.
It’s a poignant moment when Margo, seven years into her exile, decides to reveal herself to the world. Irina misinterprets it as an opportunistic and career-driven power grab, but that just underscores her incomplete understanding of Margo’s priorities and character. As Margo puts it, her drug isn’t potential power but the thrill and satisfaction of solving complex engineering problems. This is an opportunity to reunite Margo and Aleida’s two-woman team, and their reunion is rich with every shade of their shared history. Aleida’s shock turns into a bear hug of disbelief and sobbing, underscoring the restricted life Margo has led since her secret defection. As they debrief, Margo must receive Aleida’s fury and grief at Margo’s betrayal, and we hear the awful details of Aleida’s experiences on the day of the JSC bombing for the first time alongside Margo. It’s a strong, effective narrative choice to have withheld those details until this moment, as they too reflect the strength of Aleida and Margo’s bond. Aleida’s first thought, as soon as she could stand, was to find Margo, and Margo confesses that some part of her has long wished she’d been at her post when the bomb exploded.
Aleida manages to set aside her intense, multifaceted, and 100% fair anger with Margo to work the problem as a team once more. That conversation is far from over, but it’s impossible not to feel a glistening glow of joy watching them slide seamlessly back into their element together as the sound begins to drop out and the camera pulls back by degrees.
