The Expanse is one of the best sci-fi shows on TV, and it manages to do something that many adaptations can't: It keeps fans guessing. Even those who have read the books don't know exactly what's going to happen in each new season, thanks to the ways the show has blended disparate novels into cohesive stories, expanded certain characters' storylines because they worked so well on TV, and even pulled from other sources besides the novels.
As a result, even the most diehard Expanse fans don't know exactly what's going to happen in the upcoming Season 5. The show is, of course, based on the series Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey, a pseudonym for collaborative authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Season 5 will certainly include plot from Nemesis Games, and fans have speculated that it will dip into the following novel, Babylon's Ashes, as well.
Beyond those guesses, we don't know for sure what's coming in Season 5. But we did get a chance to ask the show's cast and creators during a set visit in Toronto last year, and Amazon has finally lifted the embargo on the tidbits we received. Let's get into it.
One of the most exciting storylines coming to the forefront in Season 5 is the story of Marco Inaros. Marco is an extremist Belter leader and Naomi's former lover, as well as the father of their child, who she hasn't seen in years. This has been hinted at and mentioned throughout the four previous seasons, and it's in the spotlight in Season 5.
"Obviously Marco is a big deal," said series co-author Ty Franck. "We laid in the first hints of him in Season 1 when Naomi tells Fred that she has somebody she wants to find. It's cool that we got far enough into the show, and thanks to Amazon, that we're able to do the seasons where that's going to pay off. It's nice to pay off the things that you foreshadow. We've always been playing a long game."
Marco is one of the main "villains" for Season 5, but we'll likely meet him through Naomi's point of view, and they have a complicated history.
"It's a gargantuan element of Noami's backstory," said showrunner and executive producer Naren Shankar. "We have touched on it, we've hinted at it, but this is the first time you meet this person." Shankar continued that Episodes 4 and 5 of Season 5 will explore their past relationship in a unique way. "You get Marco telling it to Drummer, and then you get Naomi telling it to Lucia," he said. "We don't show an objective flashback of their life together, because that's not what's important. What's important is people's memories of the situation. Both of those stories can be true to the person saying it. Whose side of it do you pick?"
Dominique Tipper, who plays Naomi, said she's excited to explore this element of her character's backstory. "It's a full circle thing for my character," she said. "It's rare you get to do all this work with backstories and past, and then you meet the thing that all the backstory and past has been about and been based on. I'm not sure where we go after this. I'm sure our brilliant writers have much in store. But, for me it's like, that's it. That's what you kind of want and hope for."
Season 5 will split the characters up more than ever before, and the crew of the Rocinante will be scattered to separate corners of the galaxy. Franck said this is a direct result of adapting book 5, Nemesis Games, to the small screen. "Book 5 in the book series, we always called it the axle on which the series spins," Franck said. "It's the first book where we take our core crew and split them up and make them all point of view characters and give them their own storylines separate from the Roci and the big story. Getting to do that on the show is very exciting."
In Season 5, Amos will travel home to Baltimore on Earth, Naomi will reunite with her son and deal with Marco Inaros as she reconnects with her roots as a Belter, Alex and Bobby will return to Mars, and more. However, "obviously, they're all seeing different pieces of the same larger story," Franck explained.
In Season 4, Naomi discovered that, having grown up and lived in artificial environments all her life, she can't actually survive for long on the surface of a real planet. Going forward on the show, more people are going to discover that problem. "What happens to her in Season 4 becomes a tale of what's going to happen to a lot of people going forward," Franck said. "We see her land on a planet and be unable to live there; there are now 1,300 worlds on which a lot of people like Naomi will never be able to live. What happens to those people? Are they the forgotten people of that future, and what are they going to do about it? That becomes a major theme going forward in the show."
Like basically any adaptation ever, The Expanse has diverged from the books in various ways. But Franck said that showrunner and executive producer Naren Shankar knows full well where the story is going, and has all along. "Obviously we only have one more book to write, and we outlined it years ago, so [co-author Daniel Abraham and I] have known what that last book is for a long time," Franck explained. "But we've been very open with Naren, our showrunner. Daniel and I work very closely with Naren on the show, and he's known where all of this is going for quite some time, and we've tried to lay a lot of that in. We were laying in hints about [Season 4] and even Season 5 in Season 1, because he knew where we were going and wanted to put those little details in there."
Shankar said one of the main themes of Season 5 will be consequences. "I think Season 5 is really a reckoning," he said. "It's about, I think, thematically, the sins of the past coming back to haunt you...reaping what you sow--that's what we put on our big board in the room, was that you reap what you sow. And that is about personally, emotionally, and also politically and historically. That is really what's going to happen in Season 5."
We got some further hints about Amos's story, which will be based largely on The Churn, a novella set in the Expanse universe that focused on Amos's backstory. Wes Chatham, who plays Amos, said he re-reads it every time he needs to get back into character. "That's kind of like the foundation that I've built off of," Chatham said. "It's like, if this happened to me, how would this manifest? What would this look like into the future? And so this season is The Churn. It is going back and visiting that."
Shankar elaborated. "There have been hints about where Amos came from, what his backstory was on Earth--they've been dropped very, very carefully and occasionally," the showrunner said. "I think you're really going to get a much better sense of who he was and where he came from and how it happened. And that's really--if you guys have read the novellas, The Churn is a wonderful novella."
The Expanse is certainly an ensemble show, but if it does have a main character, it's Holden (Steven Strait), particularly after Thomas Jane's character Miller's death in Season 2. Among all the characters, Holden has the most knowledge of the protomolecule, and thus, of the larger dangers that humanity faces. "The only other person who personally experienced the genocide in the beginning of the series is gone, and [Holden] has seen the entire history of this ancient civilization occur and die in a split second in his mind, and he sees the danger out there," Strait said. "It's a danger that no one else can see...Holden is the one always within the macro story structure who keeps his eye on the ball of what is the predominant, primary concern."
Franck agreed: "Holden is always seeing a big picture nobody else seems to see. That's sort of his story arc, right? He's always the one banging on the table going, 'Guys, why are you fighting over the little stuff? The big stuff is right over there.' We're going to keep doing that with him."
Lastly, in Season 5, the series' two most prominent Martian characters, Alex and Bobby, will team up on their home planet together. Cas Anvar, who plays Alex, spoke to his arc, discussing how the pillars of his character--his identity as a proud Martian, a family man, and a pilot--will largely crumble around him in the upcoming episodes. "Mars is not the Mars--the proud, noble terraforming vision--that he was expecting," Anvar said. "Everything that holds his identity together unravels. And in order for him to survive, he has to figure out who he is without any of those things. And that's exciting."
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