The Expanse has wrapped up its fifth season on Amazon Prime Video, and the reviews are almost universally raves. This is one of the best science fiction shows on the air, now or ever, and it’s only a shame that it’s coming to an end next season.
There’s actually some ambiguity on that, but for now, let’s assume that The Expanse will end with season 6 as we’ve heard. If it does, the creators — including executive producer Naren Shankar as well as authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who wrote The Expanse books and serve as productions on the show — have plans to go out with a bang, as they told Collider:
"Shankar: “Let’s put it this way. There’s going to be a lot going on in that last episode.”Abraham: “I feel like we’re going out big, I think we’re going out well.”Shankar: “We ain’t going out small.”"
Will The Expanse season 6 be the last season, and when can we watch it?
The sixth season will adapt the sixth book in the series, 2016’s Babylon’s Ashes. It’s true that there are still three books to go after that, with Abraham and Franck finishing up writing the ninth and final book right now; it’ll be out later this year. The sixth season will be the final year of the show on Amazon, although it sounds like producers are hopeful that the show could continue somewhere else. With how good it’s been up to now, it’d be a shame not to get the full story.
Then again, maybe The Expanse has been so consistently high-quality because the team has treated almost every season like it’s the last, making sure the endings will work if this ends up being the final season. “I think we’ve just always been playing the game that way,” Abraham said. “So yes, this season is unusual and yes, we’re aware of that, but I don’t think it has changed our process much.”
That said, apparently Abraham and Frank do throw the phrase “stick the landing” around the writers room quite a lot. “And I absolutely do respect that,” Shankar said. “I mean that with regard to the show, but also with the books they’re working on book nine now, so yeah. So that is a, because a bad ending can ruin the rest of it.”
And season 6 is no exception to this rule. “I think, the thing that season 6 does is it pays off the story that we began in episode one of season one where the Martians, the Earthers and the Belters were all in this incredibly uneasy and unstable political system with the Belters absolutely being at the foot of that table and everybody fighting for their place in the solar system,” Franck said. “I think we pay off that story in a very satisfying way. And we keep some of the mystery intact involving the greater forces of the universe that humans are only starting to become aware. If we want to tell more stories.”
Surely someone could help them tell those final stories once the show is through at Amazon. Netflix? You have nothing but money. HBO Max? You’re still looking for a buzzworthy killer app. Someone make some phone calls.
As for when we’ll see season 6, Shankar confirmed that the team has just started filming. Hopefully we’ll see
the ending
the next season sometime this year.
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