The alt-history world of For All Mankind is expanding, and it’s heading straight into one of the most intense chapters of its timeline.
The newly released trailer for its spinoff, Star City, pulls viewers into a version of the space race where the Soviet Union’s victory on the Moon isn’t just a historical twist, it’s the start of something far more dangerous and politically charged.
Set to premiere May 29 on Apple TV, Star City rewinds the clock and zooms in on the Soviet side of the space race. Instead of jumping across decades like its parent series, this story plants itself in the 1970s, digging into the people and politics that made that historic Moon landing possible.
The trailer makes it clear this isn’t just rockets and glory. There’s a nervous edge running through everything—scientists watching their backs, intelligence officers lurking in the shadows, and a constant sense that one wrong move could cost more than just a mission.
Showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi are very aware they needed to carve out a different identity here, and they explained how Star City sets itself apart. They told io9:
“This is not a show that jumps in time [like For All Mankind does] … it lives in the 1970s [as a] Cold War spy thriller behind the Iron Curtain,” Wolpert said.
Nedivi doubled down on that approach, saying, “For us, the only reason to do a spin-off is if it feels like its own thing. It feels like you’re really adding a different element. So for us, this show is not only its own show; it’s its own genre. It’s a totally different look [and] feel.”
That shift in tone is exactly what makes this project so interesting. Where For All Mankind thrives on long-term storytelling and generational change, Star City looks like it’s built to feel tighter, more immediate, and way more paranoid.
Apple’s official description leans right into that vibe: “Star City is a propulsive paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race—when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon.
“But this time, we 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 humankind forward.”
It’s not just about who got to the Moon first, it’s about what it cost the people who made it happen.
The series comes from Wolpert, Nedivi, and Ronald D. Moore, and features a strong cast led by Rhys Ifans, alongside Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey, Alice Englert, Solly McLeod, Adam Nagaitis, Ruby Ashbourne Serkis, Josef Davies, and Priya Kansara.
With its mix of alt-history, espionage, and character-driven tension, Star City looks like it’s ready to bring a fresh kind of intensity to this universe.
The first two episodes land on May 29, with new installments rolling out weekly after that.
