The Expanse TV show

Yeah, it's been really cool to see how rapidly the show went from "almost dead" to "flagship title for prime video".

I have been reading through all of the novels during the off-season downtime and I'm really excited for seasons 4 and 5.

Nemesis Games is going to be insane to watch. Happy we're getting more seasons, The Expanse deserves it.

What i've seen of S4 so far looks good, definitely quality stuff.

Yeah, I keep being consistently surprised at the little things they do in the show to make space travel seem so tangible and realistic:

Long hair realistically floating and waving in zero-g; high-g acceleration having visible and traumatic effects on the human body; people born in space feeling disorientated and weakened when exposed to high gravity,...etc.

It's all such great stuff. I don't think any other live-action depiction of space has ever made me feel so visceraly aware of the challenges of that environment.

And I second your thoughts about Nemesis Games: that book is absolutely crazy and I can't contain my excitement at seeing it adapted to screen.

Edited by GutstheBerserker on Aug 12th 2019 at 2:45:09 PM

So I binged the first two episodes of Season 4. The show is as amazing as ever — the new stuff is welded perfectly onto the old stuff, even if the aspirations are somewhat enlarged — and I can't wait to get back to it, except that my wife's asleep.

I am four episodes deep into the new season and loving it so far. The various actors really seem to have settled in their roles and really seem to be excelling this season.

Special mentions go out to Amos and Drummer.

This season also continues the series habit of bringing in elements of future books and foreshadowing them here and I'm all for it.

I wonder if anyone's going to call out both Earth and Mars about how they expect the Belters to just give up the planet that they discovered just because Earth and Mars want it. I've already gotten that feeling from one of the trailers where someone claims that the Belters are "squatting" on a planet they found first.

"Oh we can't have Belters getting a planet of their own, how can we expect to still be able to profit from their slave labor?"

Catching up after taking a break after episode 6. God damn, the "why didn't Holden go blind" explanation was so obvious I figured it out right off the bat.

Only because they made a point of showing him injecting his implant in the first episode to remind us it was there.

Edited by ginsengaddict on May 14th 2020 at 3:50:52 AM

The Expanse has been renewed for a sixth season, which will be its last.

Got to admit, I'm a bit bummed that it looks like they won't be adapting the last three books. Tiamat's Wrath in particular has a lot of scenes that I was looking forward to seeing adapated.

On a darker note, it looks they quietly fired Cas Anvar (Alex's actor) following an investigation into multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.

It would be a pretty huge time skip.

Don't the last three books completely upend the status quo into the entire Solar System being taken over by a terrorist army with alien weaponry or some shit?

Yeah, the last 3 books are basically a sequel to the story that wraps up in book 6. No way they do 2-3 seasons of 30 years older make-up on the entire cast.

Should I read the books before watching the show or can I just jump into the show?

You can jump in the show. The books provide more detail, Holden is more self righteous at first. The books are very good, they tell a good story without being super dense. It's a nice change of pace after reading through the Malazan series.

Well, the latest and possibly penultimate season has come to an end. It was... good, but it felt like a bit of a step down from the previous season. And I wish that they'd handled killing off Alex better. I understand why they did it, but it still feels awkward.

That's how the book feels too. This season was mostly just lining up the pieces for the big finale.

There's only one guaranteed season to go. They've got three big plot threads: Inaros, the Magnatar ships, and whatever it was that killed the Builders. I'd love to see it all to fruition, but it sounds like too much to do in one season.

I get the impression they're speeding up events. Point 2 is probably going to handle Point 1, then Point 3 drops in near the end.

I'm astounded that point 3 was left in. There isn't enough show left to cover it.

It would be rather nice to see Inaros get atomized because the Martians decided You Have Outlived Your Usefulness.

Edited by MisterTambourineMan on Feb 5th 2021 at 8:48:46 AM

Point 3 will likely not be adressed.

Specifically, the next season will likely mix some plotpoints. We have Inaros controlling Medina, which makes the Medina Uprising and the gatespace operations parts of the later books an obvious target to losely adapt. This will likely end the Inaros plotline.

We have the magnetar, which will likely require too much setup to satisfactory handle it. I expect it'll be Dutchmanned in stead, switching out the Inaros plotline resolution. This means Sol will likely not fall (too complicated to handle in 1 season). This season essentially resolved the Sol end of the conflict, so we'll likely see Gatespace and Laconia as major setpieces. The laconian siege will likely happen, but Duerte will likely already be dead by the time they arrive. He'll likely be a giant red herring. The events of book 8 will likely be highly streamlined.

Lastly, i think the mysterious entities will not be dealt with fully. The latter half of S6 will likely deal with Laconia, so we either compress some plotline such as the giant memory crystal and the supernova plot, or we end with all major enemies defeated but the long-term mystery of the gate creatures intact. I think the supernova option is more likely: they could even have Inaros and Duerte and the Magnetars resolved in a single strike, annihilating virtually everything in the Ringspace.

Edited by devak on Feb 12th 2021 at 1:23:18 PM

The Season 6 teaser is out:

Aaand here's the full trailer:

Just saw the finale. Pretty satisfying conclusion to the series all things considered. I was a bit worried about the final season having only six episodes, but they did manage to wrap all things up quite nicely. I really liked that they used the hyperspace aliens to defeat Inaros.

The Lakonian subplot was pretty pointless though and didn't even lead to anything.

Alcon (the production company) has been extremely obvious about having plans of some sort for the last three books. The Amazon deal was for three seasons to begin with, so it looks an awful lot like Alcon was trying to work things out the whole time. They haven't outright said they have a deal with someone, but everyone involved has basically refused to say that the show is over and done.

I don't know if that means they have some sort of deal now, but if they did, it'd make the last season containing subplots that mean nothing to the season itself but that exist to build up to future plot points make a lot more sense.