The Expanse.
BOOM! That is both the sound of one of Marco Inaros’ cloaked asteroids hitting the Earth as well as the sound of viewers of
The Expanse having their minds blown at the end of season 5’s third episode as millions of lives were seemingly ended… beginning with a lonely fisherman.
The cataclysmic event has been in the making since the end of season 4 when Marco spaced Ashford and sent his asteroids cloaked with Martian tech hurling towards Earth, and the impact from the weapon hitting its target capped the first three season 5 episodes that were released Dec 16 on Amazon Prime Video. Clearly, the asteroid is not great news for Amos, who happens to be down on Earth revisiting his roots in Baltimore. Only we learned that Amos is not really Amos, but actually Timothy and that he assumed the name from another Amos when he first made his way up into space.
Warning: spoilers ahead for episodes 1-3 of season five of “The Expanse”
“The Expanse” is a peculiar show, insofar as some level of initial trickery is usually required to convince people to give it a try. One demographic of friends typically get hit with, “It’s the only show to depict gravity and space physics correctly!”
Another generally more successful hook usually goes along the lines of, “It’s like ‘Game of Thrones’ in space!” Of course, given the general downward trajectory of “Thrones” after its fourth season, compounded by its divisive conclusion, it’s an angle now apt to do more harm than good.
‘The Expanse : How That Amos Shower Scene Defied Expectations With ‘Power of Editing’
“That scene is not about him killing, kicking some dudes’ asses. It was about what’s going on in his head,” showrunner Naren Shankar tells TheWrapRoss A. Lincoln | December 16, 2020 @ 5:01 PM Last Updated: December 16, 2020 @ 5:48 PM
Amazon Prime/The Expanse
After a
relatively calm fourth season, “The Expanse” returned with a bang Wednesday via the first three episodes of Season 5 and with it a major storyline, plus a lot of personal growth, for Amos Burton (Wes Chatham).
As things kick off, the crew of the Rocinante have (temporarily) split up, with Holden on Tycho station while Alex, Naomi and Amos travel through the system to deal with various personal business. In Amos’ case, he’s headed back to Earth for the first time in decades after learning that Lydia, the woman who raised him in Baltimore, has died.
The Expanse came racing out of the gate after Amazon swooped in to save the cult favorite from cancellation. While the crew of the
Rocinante dealt with alien artifacts on frontier planet Ilus, the seeds for
The Expanse Season 5 were laid back on Earth, Mars, and the Belt with Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo), Bobbie (Frankie Adams), and Drummer (Cara Gee) investigating contraband weapon sales and Belter extremist factions. Now, as the
Roci crew returns to their home solar system, those storylines begin to bear fruit.
In an intense Season 4 cliffhanger, viewers saw Belt revolutionary Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander), alongside Naomi’s estranged son, Filip Inaros (Jasai Chase Owens), launch stealth-coated asteroids towards Earth. The impending doom that those asteroids could spell for the entire planet hangs over early episodes of
When recommending
The Expanse, I often highlight its rare ability to improve with every season. The show is now five for five, with the new season delivering more nail-biting action and a shift in the balance between Earth (the old political superpower), Mars (the upstart military colony), and the asteroid belt, which is home to a hardscrabble diaspora of miners, criminals, and spacefaring separatists. While the stakes were always high, they were high in the way of a blockbuster apocalypse: we don’t necessarily care about the body count or the size of the explosion. In season 5, those stakes finally feel earned. Without going into spoilers, the introductory episodes pack a serious punch, tying a massive interplanetary event into some deeply personal storylines.