'The Expanse': Season Six Review
Image Source: The Expanse Lives
Here we are, at the end of the run. For the better part of a decade, The Expanse has delivered some of the best sci-fi on TV. It’s sad to see it end, especially with the knowledge that there are still three more books to cover, but as was the case for the entire series, The Expanse ends on a spectacular note, leaving the door open for someone else to pick up the show and really finish the story.
In the final season, we find a Solar System changed. Mars and Earth have been battered and beaten, and Earth is struggling to figure out how to survive as nuclear winter settles in. The OPA, in a shaky alliance with the Free Navy, controls the Belt and beyond, with Medina Station, formerly the OPA Behemoth, controlling the Ring Space. Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are flying infested waters trying to help Earth identify the remaining asteroids Marco and his people have weaponized. Everyone is tired, everyone is stretched thin.
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Filip (Jasai Chase Owens) discovers who he is apart from his domineering father.
Image Source: IMDb
Meanwhile, a phenomenon at the Sol Ring draws Naomi’s eye. When Holden and the Roci crew manage to remove the asteroid threat, and a discovery from an old friend gives Earth a fighting chance to survive, the Allies hatch a bold plan to take Medina Station, control Ring Space, and eliminate Marco and his navy once and for all. But a bigger threat looms in the systems linked to the Ring Space, where the last remaining sample of the Protomolecule was taken it’s being used to build something dangerous.
Season six certainly ups the stakes for the fate of humanity. The writing is fantastically done, establishing a tone that starts somber but builds in intensity as the allies’ decisions are increasingly leading to having to take drastic action to end the threat of the Free Navy. Season five left off on a similar tone, but there was hope. It felt quite like The Empire Strikes Back. Then, to open season six on such a tone really helps highlight what’s at stake. You find yourself on the edge of your seat watching and hoping for anything to go in the Allies’ favor, all a testament to the strength of the show’s writing and storytelling.
This season did suffer unfortunately from the circumstances surrounding the end of the series, at least for now. There are still three books to finish, and a large part of those books involve a character introduced in one of the arcs in this season. On the planet and system of Laconia, breakaway elements of the Martian navy have settled and established a military dictatorship under the control of Winston Duarte. After the events of this book and season, he uses the Protomolecule and invades the Solar System, establishing an empire. Laconia and Duarte are introduced in this season, but sparingly and almost as a side note. It’s distracting and unresolved.
Drummer (Cara Gee) and Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) meet for peace talks between Inners and Belters.
Image Source: IMDb
That said, the season succeeds again, as the others did, with fantastic performances all around. Jasai Chase Owens deserves high praise for this season. Naomi’s ability to erode Marco’s influence on Filip is evident throughout the season, as the things his father is doing, and his dismissiveness of those who are caught in his path, eat away at him. The familial tension in these last few seasons has been perfectly done and acted. Just because Naomi has escaped, thinking her son was lost to his father, Dominique Tipper continues her stellar performance from the fifth season as she’s about to condemn her son and his father to be taken from existence. The gut punch is real, even though we know Filip survives.
Toward the end it did start to feel a little rushed. Having crested the hill, the Allies plan and unleash their plan in short order, by the episode count, that is. While it does wrap up fine, minus the Laconia characters, the point from the plan reveal to the conclusion is really fast. It doesn’t fall victim to the final-season-of-Game-of-Thrones kind of conclusion, but it has a similar enough feeling that I felt there could have been at least one more episode.
I meant it when I said it wrapped up nicely. The themes of racism and genocide and vengeance are strong in this series and, by the end, with Belters actually at the table with Mars and Earth, everything has come together. I won’t say the circle is complete because that would indicate it just devolves into violence between them again. Instead, their reliance on each other is finally realized, and it finishes like a satisfying novel. The Laconia issue would be a non-issue as well if there was a definitive answer as to whether there will be more seasons, but since that hangs in limbo, it just takes away from what is otherwise one of the more satisfying series finales.
Rating: 8.5/10
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