‘For All Mankind’s Joel Kinnaman Breaks Down Ed Baldwin’s Stunning Death (Exclusive)

It’s still the same decade as it was in Season 5’s premiere, but it’s the end of an era on For All Mankind as the show says goodbye to another beloved original character. Warning: The following post contains spoilers for For All Mankind Season 5 Episode 3, “Home.”

This time, it’s Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), a stalwart space cowboy ’til the bitter end, who hangs up his flight suit for the very last time.

In the episode, Ed is revealed to have very progressive lung cancer, and, despite Kelly’s (Cynthy Wu) attempts to convince him to seek treatment, he of course declines.

Of that futile effort, Cynthy Wu said, “Kelly knows her dad very well, and I think we all know Ed fairly well, but this point, he’s stubborn. And if he has a certain idea of how he wants things to go, he’s not going to listen to anybody. He’s an icon… I think he convinced us he was going to live forever, and that he doesn’t need medical interventions and was always going to be around. [But] she knows her dad. We all know Ed is not listening.”

Instead, he spends his final good days toasting to his daughter and grandson, and his bad ones reliving the worst experience of his life in a fever dream flashback to finally reveal what happened to him in Korea.

Executive producer Matt Wolpert explained of the decision to finally reveal Ed’s memories of Korea, “We wanted to make sure it felt emotional and resonant… The show is so much of a passage of time, and it feels like Ed references his past in Korea all the time, almost every season, but it’s the one part of his life you haven’t really seen. And so it felt appropriate, in his last moments, his last episode, as happens to people as they’re going in their final breaths, to experience that part of your life that maybe you don’t want to revisit. And we felt it’s an opportunity, actually, to inform a lot of who Ed is. A lot of the questions people have about this character, he just goes for it, he doesn’t seem to care… and you understand why, because to him, his life is this opportunity he never should have gotten.”

Before his last breath, he finds himself young once again, in his astronaut gear and being greeted with a hall full of NASA folks applauding him along, just like in the olden days. He’s soon walking side by side with the late, great Gordo (Michael Dorman, returning to his role for the first time after dying in Season 2) before seeing Karen (Shantel VanSanten, returning after Season 3’s death) and little Shane (who died in Season 1) standing at the end to join him on his journey — to “home.”

“We were hopeful that that would happen. I’ll be honest, we didn’t think it would,” Wolpert said of these unexpected role reprisals. “But the reaction from all of them, the actors, and their willingness to do this in the middle of everything else they’ve got going on, I think it’s really a testament to their connection to their characters in the show, and also to Joel and Ed Baldwin, the character he’s created. I mean, this guy is so central to this show, to the journey he’s been on is the journey of the show so far. So it felt an opportunity to really pass the baton on from that generation, that group of characters, to our next in a way that felt emotional but also very fitting.”

This powerful sendoff was intensely emotional for Joel Kinnaman— so much so that it even surprised the veteran TV star. Here, Kinnaman talks about saying goodbye to the character, those role reprisals, and more.

I’m sure this is a little bit of a bittersweet conversation for you.

Joel Kinnaman: No, not really. I’ve mourned. I think watching the episode on Friday is going to be very emotional because I really genuinely love this show, and telling the story has really been such a privilege and honor, and I feel so much gratitude for it. So for this final season, I told them, “I don’t want any scripts past my death, and then I don’t want any links or screeners to the episodes. I’m just going to watch it with everyone else.” Because then, the rest of the season, I get to be a fan. I’ve been part of series that have continued on without me, and I don’t think I’ve ever continued watching something that I’m on. And this one, I’m really looking forward to it.

At the beginning of this season, Ed is aged-up quite a bit, but he still has so much spunk. How important was it for you coming into the season to have that shown one more time before saying goodbye to this character?

Yeah, it meant a lot to me, and it was really fun to get to really lean into the aging in a different way. I learned some things from Season 4, and it was surprising. I found it a lot easier to portray an 80-year-old than 70. At 80, I could really lean into it and in a way that it didn’t quite at 70. I’d been studying so many 70 year olds and late 60s, and a lot of these guys move really fluidly, but at the same time, you have this expectation of aging and showing it. I just found it harder… I also was thinking about being on a space station for that many years, it’s going to affect your vocal cord. So also, changing my voice a little bit. Also, in the fifth season, I sort of stayed in my old age even in between takes, and it was very important for me to modulate my inner and outer tempo that Ed still has a very rapid inner tempo, but that his body has really down-shifted and is moving slowly. So I sort of kept my outer tempo slow for the duration of the shoot, and I feel like when I watch it, I feel good about it.

That definitely comes through. Going into this episode, what was it like for you to finally get to explore Ed’s history in Korea? I mean, it’s always been kind of on the edge of the character, but we didn’t get to dive into it before.

It’s been this kind of running conversation with me and the writer team where the Korea episode has always been there. For three seasons, we’ve been talking about the Korea episode, this kind of flashback episode, and they’ve written it, but they always had to scrap it. Didn’t feel like it was quite earned or in the right place, or then you had to sacrifice them for something else. So I was really happy that it did come back in this version.

The final scene with Gordo, Karen, and Shane coming back, it was very moving. What it mean for you that Michael and Shantel were willing to come back for that and be part of that?

It meant the world to me. They wrecked me. I was a total mess the whole last week. I was so emotional, just crying every day, and then doing those flashback scenes, I was in my car crying, crying. I was trying to understand — I’m still trying to sort of unpack — why I got that emotional because as actors, we do this all the time. We create these little short-term families that we all fall in love, and then it ends, and then we say goodbye. And this was completely different. There were so many other things that were mixed in.

I think it was having portrayed these different ages and having my own mortality kind of at the forefront of my mind, and at the same time, playing 80 and same age as my dad, and having the scene where I’m saying goodbye to my child and grandson, the sort of inevitability of life being present. There’s also just the love that I have for this show and this story that we’ve been telling… and I felt that with some of the crew members as well. There are some of these crew members that have been with us from the start. We’ve been on doing this together for seven, eight years, and the love that they have for this world that we have created, it’s a strange thing where you love something, a piece of art, but it’s a collective piece of art, something that we’ve done together, and I had many crew members that were also really moved. It really meant something to them, and Ed meant something to them. So it was confusing that it was such an emotional impact.

And I was standing there with Michael. We played best friends on the show, but then we became really close friends while we were shooting it, and I love Michael Dorman. I love this cat. He’s such a beautiful human being. And he came in, he was just standing there, has this kind of wry smile, and we were in the same suits that we were at in the beginning, and we’re just looking at each other… I was like, “Man, I can’t tell you how happy you’re here.” And then we walked out. We were both laughing and crying, and it was a beautiful moment.

Lastly, Star City‘s coming up. I don’t know if there will be crossovers. I don’t think Ron Moore has revealed that yet, but if there was, would you be willing to step back into Ed’s shoes one more time?

I haven’t thought about that. Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to cross over like that, but yeah. Why not?

For All Mankind, Fridays, Apple TV