Well, I finally finished The Expanse.
Season six has been, as I understand, an adaptation of the novel Babylon's Ashes and the novella Strange Dogs. The latter hints at the plot that comes in the final three novels, but the show ends with some clear dangling threads.
I don't know what to expect here. On one hand, the additional 3 seasons Amazon was able to give the show let it bring things to a conclusion that felt fairly satisfying, resolving some of the big themes that have been part of the story since the beginning. Indeed, I noticed some bookending motifs in the finale that paid off nicely.
But the show makes no attempt to hide the fact that there are elements of the story that remain an issue - issues that I know are part of those final three books.
Will we get an adaptation of those stories by the same team? Or are we just going to be content with this partial adaptation? Are the producers playing their cards close to the vest, or should we truly consider this the end?
Let's get into spoiler territory.
In episode 5, the Martian fleet that is unwilling to wait for UNN backup enters the Ring Space and swiftly gets wiped out by the massive railguns installed on the Ring Station. Even though the station itself is basically too indestructible to even sink a couple nails in to anchor the guns, the Free Navy and Laconia have just created giant bands to strap the guns to the station, and take advantage of the fact that it sort of magically has infinite inertia to be able to fire railguns from it without any kickback.
The Martians get wiped out (including that one admiral we met in I think season 3) and so things are looking dire.
Meanwhile, Drummer has become a folk hero by bringing the supplies raided from Marco's hidden depots to relieve the resource-starved people of Ceres. Unlike Marco, Drummer is actually fighting to help her people, and even though her polyamorous family is falling apart, she's gathering Belters who want to fight Marco.
Ultimately, with the UNN no longer pinned down by the asteroid attacks, the Free Navy is forced to retreat to the Ring Space, but they're doing their best to inflict as much damage on retreat as possible. Marco actually winds up pulling a move similar to what the Roci did by disguising his ship, the Pella, as a freighter, and Drummer's Belter fleet is devastated when they are taken unawares - only getting the message that the UNN realized they had been following a decoy after the battle.
Still, Marco's not doing great. The battle loses them Rosenfeld, who seemed to be the one competent advisor he had, and Fillip is feeling more disillusioned than ever while Marco seems indifferent to losing her.
The pursuit of the Free Navy on their retreat to the ring serves partially as a distraction - The Rocinanate and an ice-hauler called the Giambatista (poetic, to end with an ice-hauler just like we started with the Canterbury) slip in toward the ring with a couple dozen marines packed into crates, which are sent into the ring space to land on its surface and capture the guns - among them being Bobbie and Amos.
The Giambatista unleashes hundreds of crates, hoping to use a kind of "school of fish" approach to ensure that as few of the ones carrying marines are actually hit as possible. Meanwhile, the Roci breaks off to try to give them support by shooting down missiles fired by Medina Station (aka the Behemoth, aka the Nauvoo).
We get one of the most nauseatingly terrifying shots in the series as we follow Amos being ejected from his crate and then taking an evasive path down to the station. Fewer marines land safely than they had expected, and Free Navy marines start shooting back, and ultimately, Bobbie decides they need to destroy the rail guns' reactor rather than capturing them.
While this wins them this stage of the battle, allowing the Roci to come in and take out Medina's targeting systems, they now expect that Marco and his fleets are going to come through and annihilate them.
But Naomi has a plan - she's realized that the thing that has been triggering the red aliens in the ring gates seems to be some threshold of matter and energy - and that if they can overload the gate as Marco's forces come in, they'll be destroyed.
Sending the Giambatista at the ring and overloading its reactor as it nears it, the ring-gate aliens are awoken just as the Pella is about to enter. Marco sees the evil red glare swirling in the gate, but it's too late to stop, and the Pella is frozen in time as Marco and the rest of its crew are eaten/erased by the alien menace.
Naomi, knowing she has condemned her son to this fate, is distraught, but ultimately knows that she did what had to be done. She did all she could to try to rescue Fillip.
With the remains of the Free Navy scattered and broken, negotiations to end the war and settle things down begin. Earth and Mars don't want to cede control of anything, including the Ring station, to the Belt, unwilling to reward anyone for cooperating with Marcos. But Drummer cannot accept this, given that it just means agreeing to be under the boot heels of the inner planets once again.
Ultimately, they realize that, because of the red aliens, some authority needs to be regulate usage of the ring gates, and it'll only be possible to do so with an independent agency. They need someone who has proven to be trustworthy to both the inner planets and the Belt, and all eyes turn to Jim Holden.
Holden reluctantly agrees to take the job, running the new Transport Union. He gives a speech about the goals of the organization, and then, as his first act as president, he resigns, giving his vice president, Camina Drummer, the job.
And that's where we end: the Free Navy is basically gone. Earth might not be totally screwed because of some (vaguely explained) techniques developed by Prax (remember him?) and the Belt now has a significant stake in a huge economic role for all of humanity. Meanwhile, the Roci is free to go off and ride into the sunset.
Oh, and on top of it all, we find out that Fillip didn't die - he took the maintenance skiff attached to the Pella and left before the frigate got eaten by the ring aliens. Now taking the name Fillip Nagata, maybe he'll find a new, better life to live.
But all that being said...
As his Free Navy faces defeat, Marco reaches out to Admiral Duarte, the leader of the Laconians, hoping to get some new weapons to surprise his enemies with. But Duarte announces that he's done with Marco. No more weapons, no more ships. And if they try to enter the Laconian system, Duarte will have them instantly destroyed.
On Laconia, Cara brings the body of her brother Xan out into the forest, to the "Strange Dogs" that she saw restore the dead bird to life. Sure enough, after a couple hours, she finds three of these odd creatures surrounding her brother, who is now sitting up. Though grey-skinned and with dark eyes, he is conscious and recognizes her. She brings Xan home, but while she's overjoyed to have fixed her dead brother, her parents are terrified, and even attack him (when they cut his hand, Xan's wound closes immediately).
Cara takes Xan and flees into the forest. Though he protests that she won't be able to eat anything out there, she says she doesn't mind - when she starves to death, the dogs will fix her as well.
All the while, Duarte watches with glee as the alien space vessel that orbits the planet seems to awaken.
So yeah, this is the big unresolved element of the story - I know that Duarte becomes one of the major villains in the final books, and we're left with the Laconians as a threat, as well as the red aliens, who seem to have been the ones to kill the protomolecule builders.
So, there's obviously some comparison between this show and Game of Thrones. I think this one sticks its landing a lot better, though I think there's a similar issue with the focus of its "final boss." In Game of Thrones, I remember being disappointed that the White Walkers and the whole Army of the Dead wound up being resolved somewhat anticlimactically - seemingly rushed along to deal with what felt like a lower-stakes issue. Ultimately I think one of the biggest issues with Game of Thrones was the producers' reluctance to own the fact that it was a fantasy show, and their choice excise a lot of George R. R. Martin's more fantastical elements (should Martin finish the books, I wouldn't be that shocked if the basic sequence of events happened the same way, but I suspect he'd make it all feel more earned).
Anyway, Marco, as a villain, is not really even at Cersei Lannister levels to deserve to be the "final boss" of the show. The sociological focus of the Expanse is a great source of drama, but my sister and I found ourselves wishing that there had been a bit more focus on the alien plot.
In this case, though, I don't think it's a case of plotting as much as that it's a case of editing. Ultimately, Marco is just a big distraction for Duarte, who says he has "gods to kill." Marco is ultimately just a second-string villain - but that makes it kind of frustrating that he's the one we end the show with.
So, again, I wonder if they're just playing their cards close to the vest and whether we might see an adaptation of the final three books in some different form.
That, of course, leaves my feelings for this finale a little muddled - is it really the end? If so, I want to feel that sense of closure and reflect on what has been one of my favorite TV shows. But if not, I want to know when and how they plan to continue.
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