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.
Season 5 of
The Expanse has finally landed on Amazon Prime Video the first three episodes, at least. Based on the fifth entry (
Nemesis Games) in the
Expanse book series, the new season sees the Roci crew all split up on different missions. Amos (Wes Chatham) is heading back to Baltimore to visit the ghosts of his mysterious past, Naomi (Dominique Tipper) is searching for the son she left behind, Alex (Cas Anvar) will team up with Bobbie (Frankie Adams) to track down some Martian arms dealers, while James Holden (Steven Strait) will be back on the Roci staring longingly at his coffee and wondering where the hell everyone went.
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
How to watch The Expanse Season 5 online from anywhere
16 Dec 2020
The Rocinante and its intrepid crew are returning for ten all-new episodes and we have all the details on how you can watch season 5 of The Expanse online.
The space drama is set in the 24th century in a future where humanity has colonized the solar system. While the first three seasons of The Expanse premiered on Syfy, the network ultimately decided to cancel the show and it was then that Amazon picked up the series for additional seasons. Part of the reason it did so is due to the fact that Jeff Bezos is a huge fan of the books of the same name by James S. A. Corey.
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.