[Spoilers] What Happened to Danny in 'For All Mankind'?

Spoilers for the fourth season premeiere of For All Mankind

It’s been eight years since the events of last season on For All Mankind (here’s where we left off). During that time, Ellen Wilson — the first openly gay President — was reelected, along with her Vice President, George H.W. Bush. (They defeated Democratic Governor Jerry Brown). In this universe, the Clintons divorced, Weinstein was charged about 15 years earlier, JFK, Jr., is running for Senate, John Lennon is alive and playing the Super Bowl, and — in the year 2000 — Al Gore defeats George H.W. Bush to become POTUS (George W. Bush is not a thing in this universe). Gore and Gorbachev work together in a friendly alliance after the two ended the Cold War.

In For All Mankind’s 2003 present day, several characters are also missing. Karen Baldwin was killed when NASA was bombed last season. Molly Brown also perished in Johnson Space Center, but the new NASA building has been named after her. President Ellen Wilson has married and moved on with her life (Jodi Balfour is no longer a series regular).

Ed Baldwin is back, and though he’s aging (and experiencing tremors that he’s trying to hide), he is a Colonel working from the Mars colony they established last season, Happy Valley. His daughter Kelly is back home raising the daughter she gave birth to while on Mars, and Ed is clearly reluctant to return to Earth. Margo, meanwhile, escaped to Russia, although it appears that those in the United States believe she is dead. (She’s trying, in vain, to insert herself in the goings-on with Russia’s space program).

There is a major loss in the season premiere because every season premiere must have an intense action sequence that results in death or injury. In this case, it’s Grigory Kuznetsov (Lev Gorn), which is a real kick in the heart, particularly given how close he and Ed have become. Ed and Co. attempt to wrangle an asteroid and bring it back to Mars to mine, but things go awry, and Kuz dies with another crew member.

Eli Hobson (Daniel Stern) is running NASA now, while a traumatized Aleida is still working there. Aleida and Danielle are haunted by the events of their past, and that’s what brings us to Danny Stevens, the son of Gordo and Tracey, last seen being exiled to an abandoned North Korean spaceship on the Mars colony for basically losing his mind after a struggle with addiction and a screw-up that resulted in several lost lives during a mining accident caused by Danny’s negligence.

Casey W. Johnson, the actor who plays Danny, is not a series regular this season, and the premiere episode suggests that something tragic happened to him. Danny does not appear at his daughter’s birthday party in 2003, and his wife remarks only that it gets a little easier every year.

After the death of Kuznetsov, meanwhile, Hobson asks Danielle Poole if she would return to Mars as commander to both help an aging Ed Baldwin and act as a counterweight. Dani is reluctant to accept the gig. “Heading back up there again after everything that happened with Danny in the end … I don’t know if I could,” she tells Hobson (spoiler: She can, and she does).

Danny’s whereabouts are thus a big mystery and one that will likely shape a few storylines this season. Casey W. Johnson is no longer a series regular, but that doesn’t mean we won’t see him in a flashback (there’s also some suggestion that Jodi Balfour may return to give her character, Ellen Wilson, some closure). According to the showrunners, Danny was written out because they had exhausted his storyline, but the series will provide some clarity on what happened to him.

For All Mankind airs Fridays on Apple TV+.