For All Mankind is not afraid to kill off characters we love. Look at Karen Baldwin (Shantel VanSanten), Grigory Kuznetsov (Lev Gorn), or the heroic Tracy and Gordo Stevens (Sarah Jones and Michael Dorman.) And that’s only a few examples!
Space is dangerous … but the show wants us to always remember that humans are dangerous too. It’s that line of thinking that led to a heart-stopping moment in the season four finale.
***Spoilers for the season four finale of For All Mankind ahead***
Who almost died in the episode?
Dani Poole (Krys Marshall), respected commander of the Mars colony Happy Valley, was the one who ended up staring death in the face in this episode of For All Mankind. She attempted to stop a riot that had broken out between the low-paid Helios Mars workers and their higher-paid counterparts, but a security guard had gotten hold of a gun. It went off at a crucial moment, and the bullet hit Dani. Everyone was so shocked that they stopped the fight. Was that Dani’s destiny, then, to unite two opposing sides with her violent death?
Well, luckily for fans of the character, not quite!
Krys Marshall actually wanted Dani to die
Marshall says she has loved playing Dani, but she thought that a heroic death in the line of duty was the best way for her to go out. She told Entertainment Weekly that as the show had continued, she’d browsed the For All Mankind subreddit (yes, she’s a lurker!) and noticed how much fans loved her character. “It dawned on me that, as much as I love Danielle and as much as she is the connective tissue in our world, it would be the gut punch of the century if we just killed her.”
Well, she wasn’t wrong. Dani is one of the characters who’s been in the show from the beginning and we’ve seen half her life play out. She’s an astronaut, a NASA commander, and she’s also one of the few people who can successfully put Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) in his place. She made it despite the sexism and racism constantly thrown at her and by season four she’s one of the most accomplished people in the whole solar system. No one else’s death could be more devastating … especially since Dani was about to become a grandmother.
So, said Marshall, “We spent the whole season dancing around will she, won’t she, will she, won’t she. We had come to the conclusion that she was going to die.”
Did Dani make it?
Luckily for us fans, the showrunners decided at the last moment that no, Dani deserved to live and meet her grandchild. And after a good few minutes where audiences weren’t sure if she’d lived or died after the gunshot wound, she rocked up in a wheelchair and all was good again.
“With the gravity of everything going in the finale, it just didn’t feel right to end it in such a dark way,” For All Mankind’s co-showrunner Ben Nedivi told Variety. “It didn’t feel necessary, and it didn’t feel like the only way to leave our show was to be killed.”
Marshall came to agree. “Now, having played it and felt it, it feels right. I’m really glad that we didn’t [kill Dani]. I think it would’ve been too tragic,” she told EW.
It’s remarkable how far the character has come when you consider Krys Marshall was only contracted for three episodes to begin with. “Like the little hanger-on that I am, I just hung in there,” she told Collider during their post-season four discussion. “I clawed my way like Kuz on that asteroid. You can’t get rid of me!”
(featured image: Apple TV+)
