The final season of The Expanse starts today, with a new episode each Friday. Open spoilers as each episode airs. Comparison to the books is also fine, but please no book spoilers for anything that hasn’t happened in the show yet.
This season mostly follows Babylon’s Ashes, which IMO was a solid book. I’m hopeful for the season.
Just watched it on my lunch break. Some good action, but mostly just setting up the pieces for the whole season arc.
My big take-away of the episode is that Marcos isn’t learning that winning a war is different from running a government. You can’t just order people on Ceres to not starve to death, guy.
This for sure. Sooner or later, the Belters are going to wonder what they fought for.
Filip’s mental breakdown (PTSD, maybe), I think, has the potential to cause real trouble for Marcos.
Could anybody figure out what was going on with the opening scene and that ship hanging out in space?
I wasn’t crazy about him before but now I truly detest Marcos, he’s such a stupid strutting peacock of an asshole and I want to shove him out an airlock. Genocidal dickwad. Does he never consider that maaaaaaybe making the only inhabitable planet in the solar system uninhabitable might not be a great idea?
Downside of being the one in charge, anything that goes wrong is your fault. Belters blamed Earth for all the troubles they had, now that Marcos has taken over, Earth doesn’t make such a great scapegoat anymore.
The belter life is probably never going to be one of universal luxury, but when people start suffering due to lack of basic resources, not just food and water, but even air, they will turn on the ones that lead them down this path.
If you are not a sociopath, being involved in the killing of millions tends to take its toll on your mental health.
Having his mother on the other side of the conflict, (though I’m not sure if he knows she’s alive or not) can only increase the amount of internal discord he is experiencing.
Shooting his friend, at which I had to exclaim, “No! Not the alligator vest!” is probably what will trigger a rapid dissolution.
I assume that it will be explained more later. But that was another planet, probably settled by humans since the rings opened up. The ship didn’t look like any Sol design I am familiar with, so may be a relic of another alien civilization. It may be a dead artifact, or it may be an active ship. Seemed as thought the native life was reacting to it, so that’s a bit odd.
I’ve not read the books, so I have no insight on it from there.
If he can’t have it, why should he let anyone else have it?
Yeah, that about sums it up. The kind of asshole who’ll crap in the cookie jar once he gets his handful out.
In the book series settlers find a planet with left-over alien orbital shipyards for building super-advanced warships, so I figure it is the TV version of that. The animal thing is completely new, though. I’m just very suprised that Cute Timid Animal didn’t split its mouth into 3 or more tooth-filled segments and charge.
Chrisjen has never understood the difference between constituents & subjects; I love her for that 
That makes sense. In the episode, they made a point to mention that they didn’t have enough ships to deal with the incoming asteroid attacks, as well as do the other things that they need to do.
I assume a plot point for the season will revolve around them trying to use this to bolster their numbers.
Yes, but only because I’ve read the books and the short stories. “Strange Dogs”, the title of this episode it taken from one short story that is pretty much what you saw in the opening.
The Cute animals are actually Protomolecule devices that are basically repair drones for the protomolecule technology. You might have noted that the planet is named “Laconia” in the opening. This is where the rogue Martian Fleet from last season was heading. As noted, they decided this was the best place for possibly exploiting the protomolecule technology.
Yeah, not so much. Laconia is pretty much the (human-level, at least) Bad Guys for the last few novels. It remains to be seen how significant they will be in the TV show, though.
S6 E1 was fantastic; 9/10.
I was disappointed in the CGI in the walking outside/drone launch sequence.
I continue to be impressed with Dominique Tipper’s willingness to go hard for this role; she truly comes across as beaten down and weary as hell.
I think Phillip has some trouble coming his way.
I just started Leviathan Falls, and see they showed up in there.
I noticed that, too—in fact, I thought the CGI was off in some other places, too, such as the exploding asteroid looking really blocky.
But that really is the only bit of criticism I could come up with. Hugely excited for the rest of the season.
Aye; the docked ships at Ceres, etc.
Oh, and I thought it was amazing that Naomi threatened Amos and Amos backed down.
I mean, sure, you could argue that he only backed down to keep from killing Naomi, but even that is a helluva thing for Naomi to tempt and shows how far Amos has come.
I thought this brief scene really showed how familiar they’ve become to each other while acknowledging that the dynamics of their relationships have and are continuing to change.
This was, to me, the overarching theme of the episode.
Remember though that Naomi and Amos were the only two who really had a relationship before season 1. She was his boss, and he always deferred to her. There were many times that Amos was ready to go against Holden’s commands, but backed down when Naomi told him too. So it’s more a return to how things were than anything new.
I don’t know about that. One point of Amos’ character is that he is incapable of figuring out what the “right thing to do” is, in a moral sense, and that he’s aware of this problem. So he tends to find a person who he thinks makes the right choices, and then follows that person. But what we’re seeing here in Amos starting to recognize that Naomi doesn’t always make the right choice, and now he’s uncertain if his method of operating is correct. Now, he’s not sure if he can trust Naomi, Holden, or even Peaches, to make the right choices, leaving him holding the bag for a decision he knows he’s going to suck at making.
This could go anywhere.
Plus, he even said: why is it okay for you to do but not for me? He deferred to her, yes, but she never challenged him. Amos does not back down from overt challenges; we’ve seen this over and over. For him to do so now is a big deal; it shows that his character has changed.
And Naomi knows what Amos is capable of; she challenged him on purpose. Which again shows that her character has changed; she wouldn’t have needed to do that in the past.
I was too busy thinking about how unwise it was to blow it up 0.01 seconds after they were 10 feet from it to notice the CGI quality.
Real challenges yes, but he feels strongly about family. I saw this as him thinking “okay, you’re being a little irrational here and I don’t see the need to get into a thing over this.” and walking away. Maybe it’s growth or maybe it’s just being a little tired of the same old argument.