Star City Season Finale: How Do These Characters Rise to Power
About a month ago, I shared my thoughts about Star City, a spinoff series of For All Mankind on Apple TV. They just had the season finale on Friday. The seasons tend to only be 8 episodes. Star City has been just as engaging as For All Mankind. They are pretty good at cliffhangers.
Nothing But Spoilers
As the season developed, we saw more character development for Irina Morozova, the fledgling intelligence worker who will eventually run Star City. She has been been hard to pigeonhole. Like many Soviets, Irina doesn't seem strictly patriotic. She has done things to undermine her boss, Lyudmilla Raskova. But at the same time she is also showing allegiance to Raskova by letting her know that she was tasked with surveilling her boss. What I get from this is that Irina has her own agenda. At her core, she is sympathetic to people. But she is also willing to do awful things as her job requires. Irina plays a dangerous game.
I thought for sure that Sasha Polivanov would have died on the mission to Venus, leaving his fellow astronaut wife Anastasia Belikova pregnant. But as it turns out, Sasha and Lakshmi managed to return to earth after Valya Mironov sacrifices himself to change the trajectory of the Venera spacecraft. Valya actually lands on Venus and lives for a bit before the bathyscape implodes like the Titan submarine that was visiting the Titanic.
Sergai Nikulov was instrumental in figuring out that the Venera had not been destroyed. He came up with a plan to secretly send landing instructions to the Venera, with Anastasia's help from the space station. The plan was to land in Finland, but Roskova gave orders to shoot down the lander. The missile only managed to change their course so that they landed ten miles from the Finland border. Anastasia takes the space station lander and attempts to help Sasha and Lakshmi get across the border. Lakshmi makes it across, but Sasha stays back to be captured by Raskova.
What's important here is that Sasha is a live and has been captured. Anastasia would not have been sent to the space station if she were pregnant. So this tells us that at some point in the future, Sasha and Anastasia will be together again. In their arranged marriage, they had only been intimate once after growing to love each other right before Sasha is sent off to Venus.
The season ends with Sergei in trouble for secretly helping the Venera land. Sasha isn't exactly in trouble, but he is a problem because the entire mission was meant to remain secret as a result of Valya's treason, which would be an embarrassment to the Soviet Union. In terms of plot, how do these characters eventually get to rise in the ranks so that Sergei is allowed to travel and eventually meet Margo Madison? How does Leonid Polivanov gain political prominence in the Soviet Union? How does Irina take over Raskova's position?
These characters have plot armor because they have prominent roles to play when Star City starts to mesh with For All Mankind.
Again, like how we already know Andor's fate in the Star Wars universe, the backstory is still fascinating to watch.
I'm a little annoyed that it takes Apple TV so long to produce new seasons. But you can be sure I'll be watching when a new one comes out.
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