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The sky is falling on another great season of The Expanse
The Expanse’s greatest strength is also the source of its biggest weakness. In adapting a series of novels to television, the show’s writers have a tremendous amount of material to draw from, including character histories, a fleshed-out universe, and a narrative arc they can tweak and reshape as they see fit. But each individual novel rarely fits within the confines of a single season of television, and books don’t have the same demands as television shows; characters can disappear for long periods of time without authors having to worry about actor contracts or audience investment. In its fourth season, The Expanse focused on Cibola Burn, the fourth novel in the series. Since that book’s plot stuck to a limited number of locations and a smaller cast, the show added in scenes and subplots following other characters who would be important for later entries. It made for a good season overall, but one that still felt essentially diluted.
Fortunately, the show’s fifth season does not suffer from a similar concern. Once again, the writers are focused on a single novel—here, it’s Nemesis Games. But thanks to some setup in season four and the scope of Games’s plot, every storyline feels like an equally important piece of the whole. This is critical, because the season also takes the risky move of separating its core ensemble for the bulk of its episodes. The chemistry and interplay among the crew of the Rocinante has always been a major draw, and here, it’s more or less a moot point, with each one stranded from the rest, isolated in part by the massive crisis that serves as the season’s main threat. The fact that this works as well as it does is both a testament to the quality of the source material, and proof positive of how much time the show has put in making sure all of its core cast is worth watching.
The fourth season ended on a major cliffhanger, with the Belter terrorist Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander) launching eight asteroids cloaked with Martian stealth technology at Earth’s blind side. When season five begins, the asteroids are in play, but none of them have struck the planet, which gives some breathing room to establish the new status quo and set storylines in motion. James Holden (Steven Strait) and Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper) are on Tycho Station, waiting for the Rocinante to be repaired; Amos Burton (Wes Chatham) is heading to Earth to take care of some personal business, while Alex Kamal (Cas Anvar) is off to Mars to do much of the same. Meanwhile Chrisjen Avasrala (Shoreh Aghdashloo) has been relegated to a meaningless position on the moon after losing an election last season, and Bobbi Draper (Frankie Adams) is deep undercover, investigating Martian arms-dealing to the Belt.
