The Expanse nears wrap on filming season 5

It’s hardly been two months since season 4 of The Expanse blasted onto Amazon Prime, and the good word is already coming through that season 5 has just about wrapped filming.

First of all, we have plenty of images from the wrap party, many of them courtesy of makeup department head Brian Hui:

In fact, Hui is a font of fantastic images pretty much round the clock:

Beyond that, confirmations that work on the season is nearing completion have begun to trickle in:

At this point, the team seems to be in the editing bay, and we’re getting lots of good signs. For example, check out how excited James S.A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the authors of the Expanse books) are about one particular upcoming episode:

What sort of awesomeness might the authors be referring to here? There are certainly plenty of clues from season 4 to draw from. While the lion’s share of the fourth season was adapted from Cibola Burn, the book that details the Roci crew’s adventure on the frontier planet Ilus, the show also brought in some extra elements to set up where they were going next. There are slight SPOILERS ahead, so take cover if you haven’t seen the last season yet.

Image:

The Expanse

/Amazon

The most telling clue was the inclusion of Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander), Naomi Nagata’s OPA pirate ex-lover, and the father of her son Filip (Jasai Chase Owens). Marco and Filip are integral parts of the fifth Expanse novel, Nemesis Games. Without going too deep into spoiler-ville, the main thing is that season 5 is going to be coming back to our solar system, with a strong focus on how the land rush for new planets through the Ring Gate is effecting the status quo between Earth, Mars and the Belt.

Season 4 ended with Marco revealing his plan to attack Earth with asteroids shielded by Martian stealth tech, which is bad for basically everyone. Nemesis Games has been hailed as “James S.A. Corey’s Empire Strikes Back,” and is widely considered a fan favorite, so the chances are good that the drama is going to be high next season.

No release date has been announced for season 5, but given how quickly filming is wrapping up, it seems safe to stay hopeful for a late 2020 release.

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