There’s another key detail that has started every season of For All Mankind from the beginning, even before the montage of historical updates became a staple, and that’s the montage of Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt) getting ready in the morning. Across each season, there have been many key recurring moments in these scenes, like Margo sleeping at work ahead of getting ready, but the Season 5 premiere left out a key detail: what Stephen King book is Margo reading? After considering it for a few minutes, though, the absence of this detail made me realize they had to stop it. Spoilers for For All Mankind‘s Season 5 premiere will follow.
For All Mankind Reveals Margot’s New Status (But Forgot My Favorite Detail)
Like every other season opener of For All Mankind, Season 5 begins with a montage of Margo Madison’s wake-up routine. There are two major changes this time, though, the first being that Margo has found herself locked up behind bars in federal prison after turning herself in on US soil and admitting to helping the heist of Goldilocks. In truth, Margo is set to spend the rest of her life in prison (assuming a Presidential pardon isn’t awaiting her) as she’s likely also jailed for the times she helped Russia. We know Margo is seen as a traitor by the US at large as the opening montage of headlines reveals.
The second major change for Margo’s opening montage is that her daily cycle as an old woman in prison is juxtaposed alongside her former mentee, Aleida Rosales. Now the CEO of Helios, Aleida’s mornings are quite different from Margo’s, but they both still wake up, stretch, brush their teeth, and try to eat something to start their day.
As noted, though, Margo’s wake-up routine in nearly every other season of For All Mankind has featured a key indicator about the timeframe that the series is set in, revealing a Stephen King novel on Margo’s nightstand. In Season 2, set in the 1980s, Margo was reading Christine, the killer car book, which she later recommended to someone. At the start of Season 3, set in the 1990s, both Misery and the short story collection Needful Things are seen in her room. Finally, at the start of Season 4, despite living in Moscow, Margot’s nightstand features Dreamcatcher. Season 5, though? Nothing from the Master of Horror. There might be a reason for that, though.
For All Mankind’s Stephen King Trend Had to End in the 2010s
As noted, each Stephen King book at the start of For All Mankind‘s new seasons is often used as an indicator of the era. With the new season of the show set in 2012, there are a couple of Stephen King novels that could have been used to further denote the time. Maybe the 2006 horror novel Cell, where cellphones turn people into zombies? The problem there is that cell phones are not at all the same in the world of For All Mankind as they are in ours, meaning this book may not even exist. Perhaps they could have used Under the Dome, which would have worked thematically for the series, especially with Margo’s incarceration. There’s also a 2011 Stephen King novel that might have worked, but if For All Mankind had acknowledged that 11/22/63 exists in the universe, it might have broken the show entirely.
As fans of the Apple TV series know, For All Mankind is set against the backdrop that asks one question: What if the Russians beat America to the moon? The thought experiment spurred by this question has resulted in a robust alternate history with vast differences from our own reality that make sure the drama is thoroughly entertaining. The result of that being the DNA of For All Mankind, however, means that it cannot put a book like 11/22/63 out there for fans or even the characters to consider.
King’s novel was published in 2011 and follows a character who discovers a portal to the past, which he uses as a means to change history, intending to go back and prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Now, yes, JFK was still assassinated in the realm of For All Mankind, but positing one change to history opens a can of worms for everyone watching the show and the characters inside of it, one that puts a metatextual spin on the premise of the show itself, which it likely isn’t interested in engaging with.
To make matters worse, 11/22/63 delivers what we might expect: that preventing the assassination of JFK ended up causing a massive ripple effect with OTHER major changes to the world. Furthermore, King’s novel was fully written in the context of our own world, and not one from For All Mankind, where JFK’s brother Ted became the 38th president of the United States. All of that is to say, yes, I was dissapointed by For All Mankind Season 5 skipping out on one of my favorite details (truth be told, there could very well be a King book buried in Margo’s cell that’s just not visible), but I get why they had to stop it, because the show might have collapsed under the weight of just one Easter Egg.
