Apple TV has released the full trailer for Star City, the upcoming For All Mankind spinoff — and this one is not just more rockets, moon missions and NASA-style ambition.
This time, the story flips to the Soviet side of the alternate-history space race. If For All Mankind imagined what happens after the Soviet Union beats the United States to the Moon, Star City looks ready to dig into how that victory happened, and what kind of pressure cooker the Soviet space programme became after that.
Based on the trailer, the vibe is much darker and more paranoid than the parent series. We’re talking secret photography, tapped phones, disappearances, and a whole lot of Cold War suspicion running underneath the big dream of space exploration. Basically, less “heroic launch countdown” and more “bro, someone is definitely listening in the next room.”
That shift is important because For All Mankind has always had political tension, but its structure was built around major time jumps. The original series began in 1969, while season five is set all the way in 2012. Star City is taking a different route. According to showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi, the spinoff stays in the 1970s and works as “its own genre.”
For Malaysian and SEA viewers, this is actually a pretty good entry point if you’ve heard people praise For All Mankind but felt intimidated by the multi-season timeline. Star City seems more focused: one era, one side of the space race, and a heavier espionage flavour. If you’re into historical thrillers, political dramas, or sci-fi that is more about people and systems than laser guns, this one should be on your radar.
The cast includes Rhys Ifans, Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey and Alice Englert. The setup appears to focus on the Soviet programme after its Moon landing success, exploring the machinery behind the win and the cost paid by the people inside it.
Star City premieres on May 29 with two episodes. That date is also when For All Mankind season five wraps up, so Apple is clearly positioning this as the next stop for fans already invested in its alternate space-history universe. The main series has also been renewed for a sixth and final season.
Apple TV has quietly become one of the strongest streaming homes for sci-fi. Alongside Star City, the platform also has Dark Matter season two and Silo season three coming, plus titles like Severance, Foundation and Pluribus in its wider library.
For viewers here who rotate subscriptions depending on what’s actually worth watching, this is the kind of release that could make Apple TV worth checking again. Not every sci-fi show needs massive aliens or superhero-level stakes. Sometimes, the scariest thing is a locked office, a state secret, and a space programme where failure is not allowed.
Source: Engadget