The Expanse is a sci fi show about space, politics, action, drama, lasagne, and ancient
alien mysteries.
It’s set in a future where humans have colonised the solar system.
Earth is the big old political power, run by the United Nations.
Mars is a rival superpower, with advanced technology and military.
In the outer planets and the asteroid belt are the Belters, living on the dangerous frontiers
of space.
Belters have their own culture and language, and their bodies have adapted to low gravity.
But the resources and wealth of the Belt is still owned by the inner planets, Earth and
Mars.
A group called the OPA fight for Belter rights and independence.
So tensions are high between Earth, Mars and the Belt – and a single spark could cause
war.
In Episode 1, Holden works on a ship called the Canterbury.
He used to be in the Earth space navy, now he’s kinda slacking and avoiding responsibility,
and taking his shirt off a lot.
Naomi is an engineer from the Belt – she’s smart and secretive about her past.
Naomi is close with Amos.
Amos is weird – he’s emotionally detached, and can be brutally violent.
But he can also be friendly and loyal, and he tries to be a good man.
Amos has a mysterious past involving organised crime in Baltimore.
Alex is pilot from Mars – he loves flying, and cooks a mean space lasagne, and he left
a wife and child back on Mars.
Holden Naomi Amos and Alex are the only survivors when the Canterbury, and then a Martian ship,
are both mysteriously destroyed.
Holden steps up as a leader to protect his crew.
They steal a Martian warship and name it Rocinante, which is a reference to a story about a foolish
heroic knight.
Cause Holden’s heroism is often impulsive and naïve, and sometimes does more harm than
good.
Naomi becomes his voice of reason, helping him make better choices – and they eventually
start a relationship.
The destruction of these ships sparks conflict between Earth Mars and the Belt.
The Martians blow up the moon Phoebe, Earth blows up the moon Deimos – and the system
hurtles towards all out war.
With the help of OPA leader Fred Johnson, the Roci crew investigate who started this
conflict.
Which leads them to Eros and Miller.
Miller is a washed-up beat-down cynical crooked cop, who doesn’t really believe in anything
anymore.
But he investigates the disappearance of a girl called Julie Mao.
He learns that she rejected a life of wealth and privilege to fight for the Belt with the
OPA.
She’s tough and determined and selfless, and Miller comes to love her – without ever
having met her, almost like a religious faith.
Miller meets Holden and the crew on Eros, and together they find Julie dead, infected
with a mysterious alien virus called the protomolecule.
It turns out that Julie’s father, a powerful businessman called Jules-Pierre, is secretly
experimenting with this protomolecule.
He had the Canterbury and the Martian ship destroyed to deliberately spark war, as a
distraction so that he and his scientists can infect everyone on Eros with the protomolecule.
Julie tried to stop him, and just got infected herself.
So Eros turns into a nightmare with this alien contagion, and Holden and Miller work together
to escape.
Their personalities clash – cause Holden’s an idealist who believes in peace truth and
justice – while Miller uses deception and brutality to survive.
They find Dresden, the scientist who infected Eros.
And Miller kills him on the spot.
Holden is furious that Miller would execute someone in cold blood, and kicks him out of
their crew.
But on Eros, the protomolecule is consuming the bodies and minds of infected people, and
seems to be “Building something”.
Probably.. something bad.
So the crew make a plan to destroy Eros.
Fred has this giant Mormon spaceship called the Nauvoo – and they plan to slam it into
Eros to knock into the sun.
But Eros inexplicably dodges the ship, seemingly breaking the laws of physics, and speeds towards
Earth.
So Miller goes into the heart of the infected Eros, and finds Julie Mao.
This infection spread from her, and her consciousness is part of the protomolecule.
So he asks her to move Eros away from Earth and to crash into Venus instead.
Eros and Julie and Miller disappear into the clouds, and Earth is saved.
But while all these heroics are happening, Avasarala deals with the politics.
Avasarala is one of the most powerful politicians in the government of Earth.
In Season 1, she’s ruthless in stopping OPA terrorism, and Martian aggression.
She tortures, and blackmails, and lies, and betrays one of her close friends.
Cause she believes that “Earth must come first”, and will do anything to protect
her home and her family.
But she discovers that the conflict around Eros weren’t caused by the Belt or Mars.
There’s a conspiracy within her own government on Earth, working with Jules-Pierre Mao to
deliberately cause war and use the protomolecule as a weapon.
Avasarala gets help from Bobbie.
Bobbie is a Martian marine – a powerful soldier loyal to Mars.
At first, she wants war with Earth.
But on Ganymede, her squad gets wiped out by a monstrous protomolecule creature.
And she discovers that her own government was behind this – Jules-Pierre secretly
works with Mars as well as Earth to weaponise the protomolecule.
His scientists experiment on children, transforming them into these hybrid protomolecule “killing
machines”.
So Bobbie leaves the Martians, and goes all Iron Man to defend Avasarala, and works with
the Roci crew to fight the conspiracy.
These people from Earth Mars and the Belt settle their differences and come together
as a team.
Amos makes friends with a botanist called Prax and helps him save his daughter.
Naomi and Alex save Mars from protomolecule missiles.
Bobbie kills a hybrid to avenge her squad.
And Holden arrests Jules-Pierre Mao.
The evil conspiracy is ended.
But on Venus, the protomolecule from Eros has been busy.
When a science ship investigates, the protomolecule disassembles the ship, and poor Adam Savage
asphyxiates.
The protomolecule is intelligent and powerful and purposeful.
In Season 3, it emerges from Venus and forms a mysterious Ring, which seems to be like
a wormhole.
So Earth and Mars and the Belt send ships to investigate, including the Rocinante.
Holden and the crew are sued by Mars for stealing their ship.
So a journalist called Monica pays their legal fees, and in return she films them for a documentary.
But Naomi isn’t with them.
She loves Holden Amos and Alex, but she also loves her people, the Belters.
So she joins her friend Drummer on the OPA ship Behemoth.
The Behemoth was originally the Nauvoo, that giant Mormon spaceship.
But after it was launched it at Eros, Fred and Drummer converted it into a giant OPA
warship called the Behemoth.
It represents the hope for a Belter nation, and of the OPA as a real political power.
Drummer captains the Behemoth at the Ring.
But she has to contend with Ashford, an OPA pirate who would rather control the ship himself.
And there’s a greater threat from Clarissa Mao.
Clarissa is the eldest daughter of Jules-Pierre Mao, the businessman behind the protomolecule
conspiracy.
When her father is jailed and shamed for his crimes, Clarissa wants revenge on Holden.
So she flies to the Ring as a maintenance worker, and she blows up a ship, and uses
like a.. deepfake video to frame Holden for her crime.
The Behemoth attacks the Roci, so they escape into the Ring.
And inside the Ring is a mysterious space where an alien force prevents anything from
going above a certain speed, which prevents ships from attacking each other.
And Holden has weird visions of Miller.
Miller died when Eros crashed into Venus.
But the protomolecule incorporated Miller’s consciousness into itself, and uses him to
communicate with Holden.
This Miller leads Holden to a mysterious station at the centre of the Ring.
And Holden has visions of the ancient past.
He learns that Ring was built by a powerful alien civilisation called the Builders.
The Builders created the protomolecule – not as a weapon, but as a tool to build these
Ring gates.
But aeons ago, the Builders were destroyed by some mysterious other aliens.
This ghost of Miller is the Builders’ technology trying to learn what happened to its creators.
Some Martians attack Holden, and the Ring sees them as a threat, so it suddenly lowers
the speed limit – which instantly decelerates all the ships in the space, killing or injuring
thousands.
Drummer and Ashford get trapped under a tractor – they spend some quality time, and squash
their beef – and their legs.
But Naomi builds Drummer some robot legs so it’s all good.
But these injured people are a disaster.
Because ships in The Expanse create gravity by constantly accelerating with their thrusters
– like how you’re pushed back in your seat when you accelerate a car, but constantly.
With the Ring’s speed limit, they can’t accelerate to make gravity.
Which means the injured people can’t heal, cause blood doesn’t drain right in zero
G.
But the Behemoth has another way to make gravity – it can spin, creating gravity by centrifugal
force.
So Ashford invites all the injured Earthers and Martians to the Behemoth to heal – it’s
a show of strength and compassion and reconciliation from the new Belter nation.
Naomi returns to the Rocinante.
Cause she’s loyal to the Belters.
But the Roci crew are her family.
Clarissa tries to kill Holden, and attacks Naomi, but she’s saved by Anna.
Anna is a pastor, and on the Ring, she offers compassion and comfort to the scared and injured.
She offers some guidance to Amos, and helps convince Clarissa to cool it with all the
murdering and to seek redemption instead.
Everyone’s still stuck in the Ring space, so Ashford tries destroying the Ring.
The Ring gets fed up with humanity, and starts charging its weapons to wipe out the entire
solar system like a bloody Halo ring.
Holden has a better plan, and fights Ashford’s men for control of the Behemoth.
With the heroism of the Roci crew, Drummer, Bobbie, Anna, and even Clarissa, they defeat
Ashford, and shut down all their ships, to show the Ring they’re not a threat.
The Ring chills out, and reveals its true purpose – it opens a thousand new gates,
wormholes to distant star systems with habitable worlds.
These are thousands of new opportunities for land and resources and freedom, so in Season
4, humanity ventures into new worlds.
Earth Mars and the Belt are at peace, and Avasarala becomes the Secretary General of
the United Nations, governing Earth.
Some Belters go through the Ring and settle a planet called Ilus, where they discover
some mysterious alien protomolecule-lookin structures.
So Holden and the crew investigate.
They land on the alien planet, and Naomi walks under a sky for the first time.
As a Belter, she grew up in low gravity, so this planet is hell on her body – so she
and Alex stay in the Roci in orbit.
On Ilus, Holden tries to make peace between the Belter settlers and an Earth corporation
who want the planet for themselves.
Their leader Murtry kills some Belters and calls them terrorists.
He’s a brute, but he’s not all wrong – some of the Belters do blow up a ship full of people
in their desperation to keep their new home.
Holden investigates the alien structures.
The ghost of Miller leads him to reactivate some billion year old alien machinery, which
malfunctions and explodes, sending a massive tsunami at their settlement, and disabling
their ships.
They take cover in one of the structures, but it’s full of deadly alien slugs, and
everyone except Holden goes blind from an infection, and they’re running out of food.
It’s a really shitty time.
So Miller guides Holden to a mysterious ancient weapon.
Billions of years ago, the Builders, who created these structures and Rings and the protomolecule,
were destroyed by some other aliens using these weapons.
Miller puts himself into a body, and steps into the weapon, to disable all the alien
tech on the planet, and to destroy himself.
So the tortured ghost of Miller is finally put to rest, and the planet is safe.
Holden has a Western showdown with Murtry, and captures him – rejecting his lawless
brutal wild west ethos in favour of peace, justice, and due process.
Amos has a relationship with one of Murtry’s soldiers, and she forces him to choose between
her and Murtry or the Roci crew – he chooses the Roci.
Alex and Naomi pull some smart moves to keep their ships in the air, including using a
rail gun as a thruster.
They protect a Belter who was a terrorist but was nice about it.
And a scientist called Elvi gets to study the remaining alien artefacts.
So the crew save Ilus, but the alien technology a mystery.
On Earth, Avasarala fights a political battle.
She’s challenged in an election by a rival, Nancy Gao.
And Avasarala pulls some dirty tricks to try to win – she leaks and lies and orders a
military strike that ends up killing civilians.
In the end, Avasarala loses the election, and her husband Arjun leaves cause she put
politics and pride ahead of her morals and family.
Without Arjun, and without her power, who is Avasarala now?
On Mars, Bobbie gets kicked out of the military for disobeying orders to go save the world
so many times.
And life on Mars is kinda depressing now.
Martians worked together for generations to terraform the red planet into a habitable
world.
But now that there are thousands of already habitable planets beyond the Ring, Mars is..
kinda pointless, people leave.
Bobbie believed in the Martian dream, but now the dream is dying.
And her new boyf who buys her waffles leaves as well.
So Bobbie gets involved with criminals who steal Martian technology and sell it on the
black market.
It seems harmless at first, but she discovers that it’s linked to a dangerous conspiracy.
In the Ring, the OPA ship Behemoth is renamed to Medina Station – it’s the hub of the
new Belter nation, and the gateway to the worlds beyond the Ring.
It’s run by Ashford and Drummer, and they learn that peace is hard.
They try to cooperate with Earth and Mars, but many Belters still hate the inner planets.
There are attacks by a Belter extremist called Marco Inaros.
Back in the day, Naomi had a son with Marco, called Filip.
Naomi left Marco because she didn’t want to be involved in Marco’s terrorism, and
Naomi hasn’t seen her son since.
Marco believes that peace between Belters and the inner planets is impossible, and they
need to fight for their future.
So Marco plans a terrible attack, using Bobbie’s stolen Martian technology.
He gets an asteroid, and paints it with Martian stealth tech, and launches it towards Earth.
This could kill billions of people, and with the stealth tech, they won’t see it coming.
So will Earth be saved?
Will Bobbie uncover a Martian conspiracy?
Will Holden discover the mysteries of the alien Builders?
Will Naomi reunite with Marco and Filip?
Will Alex and Amos make peace with their pasts?
Comment below what you hope to see in The Expanse Season 5.
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