Yahoo News For All Mankind EPs Talk [Spoiler]’s Exit, Tease Mystery Surrounding Their Fate (Exclusive)
Warning: The following contains spoilers for the For All Mankind Season 4 premiere. Proceed at your own risk!
Another astronaut has permanently left For All Mankind’s space program: Casey W. Johnson, who played the polarizing Danny Stevens for the past two seasons, will not be returning as a series regular for the current fourth season of the Apple TV+ alt-history drama.
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Friday’s season opener vaguely hinted at a tragic fate for Gordo and Tracy Stevens’ eldest son: First, he was absent during his daughter Amber’s birthday party in 2003, and his wife ominously remarked that every year gets a little easier. Then Danielle was offered a job as Happy Valley’s new commander, but she hesitated at the idea of returning to Mars, explaining, “Heading back up there again after everything that happened with Danny in the end… I don’t know if I could.”
In case you forgot, Season 3 concluded with Danny fessing up to being responsible for the mining accident that cost several astronauts their lives, leading Ed and Danielle to exile him in the finale to an abandoned North Korean spaceship on Mars.
While we don’t know (yet) what exactly happened to Danny after that, TVLine did get the exclusive scoop from co-showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi about the controversial character’s exit.
TVLINE | What was the thinking behind the decision to write out Casey’s character?
MATT WOLPERT | Well, I think with a lot of different characters in the show, there are times where the story feels like it’s run its course, and the nature of our show is that it has to keep evolving. So I think it felt like the right time for Danny to fade into the background, to put it one way. But I also think, this is a generational story, right? We told the story of his parents, and we’re telling the story of their children, and he has a daughter now. So in the evolution of the show, there’s something about telling the story of these families that is really intriguing to us.
TVLINE | Did the polarizing fan reaction to Danny, especially last season, play into your decision at all and the way it’s kind of addressed off-screen in the premiere?
BEN NEDIVI | No. If anything it probably pushed back against it. [Laughs] Because honestly, I think if you start reacting too much to what fans are saying, you kind of are chasing your own tail. It’s a slippery slope. We felt the actor did a fantastic job conveying that character. I think the hatred for him was partially because of the job he did conveying that character. And like Matt said, many characters, their arcs are shorter on this show, and some are longer. The nature of the show, really, from the beginning, we kind of had to do a deal with the devil that some characters are going to have to go in order to bring in new characters. So I think this season was a big pivot point in terms of bringing in someone like Toby Kebbell, someone like Tyner [Rushing] and Daniel Stern. So in order to do that and give those characters the room they need, you need to also move on from other characters.
And really, honestly, like what guides the decision of whether a character comes back or how they come back, a lot of times, it really comes down to the story potential. Like, do we feel like we’ve covered enough ground in their story? Have we completed their arc? Or is there more story to tell with that character? That’s usually the guiding light for us in the room. And with Danny, originally, I think we wanted to bring him [back], but we saw the bigger scope of where the story was going this season and it didn’t really make sense. But again, the actor did a fantastic job, and we would definitely work with him again.
TVLINE | How did Casey react to the news?
WOLPERT | He’s a professional, so he understood, and he got the story that we were trying to tell. Obviously, it’s never easy for any of us. You grow close to these people, working with them, and they’re not just characters on a screen, they’re human beings that you go to see at work every day. So it was bittersweet, but I think, like any good professional, [he understood] the story [was] what was most important, and so he was on board fully.
NEDIVI | What’s interesting, too, [is] it’s not like his story is over. Not to give away any spoilers, but in a way, the mystery of what happened to him is something that does play this season, and I think that was really intriguing to us as a way to help other storylines and character arcs.
TVLINE | It is vaguely implied in the premiere that something happened to him, that it seems like he probably died. What can you share about what went down or when/if viewers will get clarity?
NEDIVI | I mean, I hate to share anything, honestly. I think that the mystery is intentional, and there will be some clarity, but you know, it’s For All Mankind, so you never know.
TVLINE | The two characters closest to him in the show are Danielle and Ed. So how does that loss shape the two of them as they move forward this season?
NEDIVI | And this, to me, is really one of the things that I think I appreciate the most about writing this show is, because it’s a show that takes place over decades [and] not just over like a few years, you’re able to show how trauma or pain or some experience from the past continues to impact you years later. I think that not only what happened to Danny, [but] what happened to Gordo and Tracy continues to haunt Danielle and Ed. So in a way, what we’re able to do, and what we really lean into on the show, is the idea that a lot of what happened in the past continues to play a role. And I think this season in particular, it’s something that we don’t want to spoon-feed the audience, we never do that, but the idea that you do feel something happened. We definitely lean into the idea that something happened there, that they’ve been through [an] experience.
And not to mention the fact that Danielle and Ed and all 10 of them were left up there on Mars to survive together for 18 months, and that’s something we skipped over in between seasons. So a lot is alluded to in terms of that time period when they were together on Mars alone, and the suffering and how painful and tricky it must have been to survive that. And it was really fascinating to us to skip over that, actually, and to come back a decade later and hear references to it and learn more and more about it as the episodes go. It’s a unique form of storytelling that we were able to do with the show, and that was one of the things that, really, was most exciting to us going into this season.
For All Mankind fans, what did you think of the Season 4 opener? Grade it below, then hit the comments!
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