The Expanse showrunner previews the dark direction of season 5

We’ll finally learn about Amos’ backstory in the fifth season of The Expanse, and based on this advance pic, things get very messy.

With little more than a month to go until the premiere of The Expanse season 5 premiere date, new details are starting to emerge. Entertainment Weekly talked to showrunner Naren Shankar, who gave the biggest and juiciest preview of the next season to date.

The Expanse‘s fourth season ended on a massive cliffhanger: Belter revolutionary Marco Inaros launched a bunch of asteroids outfitted with black-market Martian stealth tech at Earth. So while Holden and the crew of the Rocinante were successful in helping humanity settle on the alien planet Ilus, the system at large is in a precarious place.

“From the end of season 4, the last image that we left with was Marco looking at the plotted trajectory of all of these asteroids,” Shankar said. “The last image that you see is a whole lot of them that are lined up to hit Earth in its orbit. So, they’re coming.”

And Marco’s play to destabilize Earth isn’t the only issue on the horizon, however. The characters will face all kinds of crises this year:

"The theme really is about the sins of the past. To one extent or another, that’s every single story line, whether it is Naomi personally confronting the fact that she had a son with this very charismatic, and now quite violent, revolutionary-type leader. Whether it’s Amos connecting to his past, or going back to Earth for reasons that we’re not quite sure of. Whether it’s Holden’s past with unleashing the protomolecule. Whether it is the past geopolitical history of the Belt, and its relationship with the inner planets, which we see through Avasarala.That’s really what the season is about. It is connecting all of the things that we have done in our lives to the moment of the present that we are in. It’s like everything comes to a head all at the same time.”"

Speaking of Amos and his trip to Earth, we also got a look at what he’ll be up to in season 5:

Clearly, things get pretty messy.

From information released already, we know that Amos will be returning to Earth to visit Baltimore this season. While his mysterious origin and connection to the city have been hinted at plenty of times before, it sounds like this season will connect the rest of the dots about Amos’ bloody backstory.

“There’s a lot of mystery attached to Amos’ backstory around Baltimore,” Shankar said. “Without telling specifically why he heads back, you’re going to get a lot of answers to it. Things are going to feel really, really satisfying because it illuminates a side of him that nobody else on the Roci gets to see. Nobody else really knows, but the audience is going to get to go with Amos to experience it.”

Much of that information was detailed in James S.A. Corey’s novella The Churn. The show has spent a lot of time weaving in these novellas and side stories (such as Fred Johnson’s backstory in season 1, which was drawn from The Butcher of Anderson Station). It appears that approach is going to continue in season 5, which Shankar says will be based primarily off of the fifth Expanse book, Nemesis Games, but will also incorporate The Churn and elements of the sixth book, Babylon’s Ashes, as well.

Shankar also hinted at the potential return of season 3 villain Clarissa Mao, as well as how badly things might go for Naomi, who will be trying to save her son Filip from the influence of his extremist father. “[T]he reunion that she is hoping for is probably not the one that she’s going to get,” Shankar hinted. “He doesn’t bake her a cake.”

From everything said so far, and considering that Nemesis Games is widely considered one of the best Expanse books, it sounds like this is going to be one dark, emotional roller-coaster ride of a season.

The first three episodes of The Expanse Season 5 premiere December 16 on Amazon Prime, followed by one episode a week after that for the rest of its 10-episode run.

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