Last December, around Christmastime, Amazon started putting out season 5 of The Expanse. If you want to know more about the show based on the book series by "James SA Corey" (who's actually 2 people) then you can read a couple of entries I wrote last winter.
Anyway, this season is largely based on the fifth book and for good or ill mostly follows the important stuff from that. For people who aren't fans of the books, this is not a great season because it's mostly about setting up the next season, which Amazon has said is the last season. Which makes sense because the sixth book ends in a way that can make a satisfying ending while books 7-8 take place about 30 years later, which would be hard to do on TV. Either they'd have to shrink the gap or spend a lot of time aging up the characters before each episode, which wouldn't be practical.
Like in the 5th book, in this season our main characters are spread throughout the Solar System. Captain James Holden is on Tycho Station, overseeing the repair of the former Martian gunship Rocinante. His pilot Alex goes back to Mars to try to make amends with his ex-wife and son, though she's not interested. His engineer Amos Burton goes back to Earth to tend to the affairs of a former caretaker who died. And his lover/XO Naomi goes into the Belt to find her son.
The father of Naomi's son is Marco Innaros, who's a charismatic terrorist or freedom fighter for the Belt, depending on your point of view. Marco has a daring plan to deal a deathblow to Earth and thus rewrite the balance of power. This is set up in the previous season as Marco and his people are stealing/buying Martian military technology, most notably stealth paint.
What do they do with the stealth paint? Paint a bunch of small asteroids. Then hurl the asteroids at Earth. With the stealth paint, they're almost impossible to see from a long way away and almost impossible to detect on instruments unless you're really looking, which no one is.
It's not until the fourth episode of the season that the asteroids start to hit Earth. Amos is in a prison underground to visit Clarissa Mao, who tried to kill Holden in season 3 but couldn't go through with it. Amos, Clarissa, some guards, and a prisoner amped-up on steroids manage to climb to freedom. For them then it's sort of like The Road or one of those post-apocalyptic movies as they have to find a way off Earth, with the help of some of Amos's old criminal buddies in Baltimore. They go to a remote community in New Hampshire or somewhere like that where Clarissa used to know people. One place there has a shuttle in a hangar but it's not working, so she, Amos, and Amos's friend have to get it running.
Meanwhile, as the asteroid attack is happening, Marco's agents assassinate Fred Johnson, the leader of Tycho Station and the more benign faction of Belters. In the book I was pretty sure he survived the attack and died in the next book, but maybe there were real world reasons why the actor couldn't be in the show anymore. The assassins also make off with a sample of the "protomolecule," an alien substance that infects and rebuilds pretty much anything it comes in contact with, as seen in the first three seasons. Holden has to assemble a new crew for the Rocinante to try to find the assassins, though when they find the ship, it blows up with one shot.
Meanwhile, Alex meets up with former Martian Marine Bobbie Draper, who's investigating the disappearing Martian military equipment. They follow some Martians until they're discovered and their ship winds up making some evasive maneuvers to escape.
The former leader of Earth, the foul-mouthed Chrisjen Avisarala, is pretty much the only one left after the destruction of Earth because she was exiled to the moon by the woman she lost to in a presidential election. At first some other guy is in charge, but after he starts ordering retaliatory strikes on Belter stations, killing a lot of innocent civilians, the rest of his cabinet backs Avisarala to take over. She then stops the retaliatory strikes to find a more strategic way to fight back.
Meanwhile, Naomi escapes from Marco's ship by injecting herself with something as she jumps out an airlock without a spacesuit. She's able to get into an old freighter before she would die out in the vacuum. But then she finds out the ship she's on is a bomb that's transmitting her voice to lure the Rocinante there. While she tries to find a way to get control of the ship, Alex/Bobby and the Rocinante are bearing down on the ship. The writers and producers think we're a lot more interested in watching Naomi cry, grunt, and bang on things than at least I was. It's too bad they couldn't have done a fun montage of her going back and forth.
A Free Navy flotilla is bearing down on the Rocinante and Naomi's ship so Holden orders the Rocinante to engage to buy time for Alex and Bobby to save Naomi. A few of the Free Navy ships change sides thanks to Drummer, who used to be in charge of the Belter station inside the Ring but went out on her own. Meanwhile, to keep Alex and Bobby away from her doomed ship, Naomi jumps out the airlock, this time with most of a suit so she won't die right away.
Though it's super implausible, Bobby sees Naomi and goes out to save her. (Naomi really needed some flares or something to light up when she jumped.) It's pretty cheesy that they focus tight on Naomi's face as she's rescued so they didn't have to spend the money for special effects to actually show Bobby coming out to get her. Just as cheesy is when they get back, Alex is dead from a stroke. This didn't happen in the book. From what Offutt said, Cas Avnar got fired for sexual harassment so they had to write him out of the show--sometimes real world considerations have to be taken into account. As Offutt suggested they might make Bull (who died in book 3) the new pilot. Or not. Whatever. I like Alex as sort of a sad clown but sometimes shit happens in the real world.
Everyone meets up on the moon in time to watch as a rogue Martian fleet destroys the UN ships guarding the Ring so they can go to Laconia and use the protomolecule sample to build super ships and stuff. I wasn't sure what they were going to do with the Laconia shit if they weren't going to do books 7-8, but I suppose they'll do a really stripped-down version of it. Or maybe it'd set up a spin-off? I don't know. At the very end we see one of the Martian ships entering the gate for Laconia and disintegrating. This is something that comes into play as it turns out if too many ships go through a gate in a certain amount of time they start disintegrating. The idea that there's some race (or races) out there that actively don't want anyone to use the gates is part of book 8 as a scientist from season 4 is going through various gates to find out more about them. (That could be a whole Star Trek-type spin-off really.)
So the pieces are in place for an epic ending as the whole Solar System goes to war. That should be a lot more exciting than this season, depending how much money they spend to bring it to the screen. This season was OK in that, though they could have done more to show the asteroid attack. I wouldn't blame a lot of people for not really liking this season because it's kind of slow as it's mostly about our heroes surviving and regrouping to fight the new threat of Marco and his "Free Navy" and maybe the Laconia thing. Fans of the books already know what's going to happen, but those who haven't read the books will probably be disappointed.
Anyway, I guess you can say they're going to save the best for last.
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