Will There Be A Space Force Season 2?

Contains spoilers for Space Force season 1

General Mark R. Naird (Steve Carell) actually did it. With a little help from his chief scientist, Dr. Adrian Mallory (John Malkovich), the newly anointed leader of the sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces put American boots on the Moon ... if only he wasn't half a step behind the Chinese astronauts who got there first.

The final episode of Space Force season 1 — based loosely on a very real, relatively recent branch of the United States military — did the thing that all good season finales do: It reached a satisfying conclusion, while opening up new questions to be answered on a potential second season. By the end of episode 10, Naird's nascent Space Force had achieved the impossible, landing a crew on the Moon and setting up a long-term lunar habitat to compete with the Chinese. This high-stakes accomplishment is almost immediately undercut by an armed takeover of the Space Force facility led by Naird's arch nemesis, Air Force General Grabaston (Noah Emmerich). Grabaston orders an armed confrontation of the Chinese on the lunar surface, while Naird escapes confinement to go rescue his teenage daughter, Erin (Diana Silvers), who's gotten a bit in over her head with some ruffians in the desert.

It's quite the finale, and though Space Force has achieved its primary objective of putting military boots on the Moon, we are left with several dramatic cliffhangers. The open-ended finale suggests that the creative team, lead by Office alum Greg Daniels, is banking on a second chapter.

Alongside comedic greats like Lisa Kudrow and Ben Schwartz, fresh faces like Tawny Newsome and Diana Silvers, and legends like John Malkovich and the late Fred Willard (who stars as Mark's father in his last acting appearance), Carell easily carries a talented cast through the show's first season. As a recent addition to Netflix's lineup, Space Force hasn't yet been confirmed for a second season, but based on its all-star roster and Daniels' influence — as well as its cliffhanger ending — it seems pretty likely that the series will return for another batch of episodes.

Throughout the show's ten-episode first season, Mark Naird tries his best to make the Space Force into a literal force to be reckoned with, despite serious disadvantages. Surrounded by buffoons like the Space Force's social media manager F. Tony Scarapiducci (Schwartz), Naird struggles to simultaneously get American boots back on the Moon and balance his rocky family life, with his daughter angry about their move to Colorado and his wife Maggie (Lisa Kudrow) in jail.

However, as mentioned, the first season of Space Force definitely sets up a second turn. After finally making it to the Moon, Captain Angela Ali (Newsome) follows orders from the Joint Chiefs of Staff — which Naird defied — to attack an enemy Chinese base nearby, but ends up losing the American base and all of their supplies in the process. With the ragtag group of American astronauts stranded, viewers are left wondering how they could possibly recover while so far from home.

For his part, Daniels is definitely interested in pursuing a second season. As the creator told Collider, "We're certainly hoping for a few more seasons, and we have started to assemble the senior writers to discuss what would happen next year. We don't have the pickup yet, but yeah. There's a lot to follow up on based on where we ended."

Indeed there is. During the final scene of Space Force season 1, we see Naird, now AWOL from his military post, riding away with his daughter and his wife, who's freshly escaped from the federal pen. Maggie's also brought her prison guard lover, the person who presumably facilitated her escape, along for the ride. Back at Space Force HQ, General Grabaston has wrested complete control of the facility, but his plan to militarize the lunar surface and engage the Chinese hasn't gone at all as intended. The spacemen who were sent to sabotage the Chinese lunar habitat were planning to take the Chinese astronauts into their own pod, thus facilitating a national embarrassment without actually jeopardizing any human life. After complete their dismantlement of the Chinese Moon base, however, they return to the site of their own landing to find the Chinese astronauts had already responded in kind. We now have two groups of astronauts trapped on the surface of the Moon without any access to life-sustaining facilities. How's that for a season 2 set-up?