Every X-Ray bonus episode of The Expanse, explained

It’s hard to believe The Expanse is over. The show that saw humans colonize the solar system, discover an alien substance called the protomolecule, and travel through the Ring Gates to distant worlds has had one hell of a run, first for three seasons on the Syfy Channel and then another three on Amazon Prime Video. James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante have a special place in the hearts of so many viewers, as evidenced by the passionate fanbase the show has gathered over these past seven years.

Yet all good things must end. I still hold out hope that the show may one day return to adapt the final three novels of the book series by James S.A. Corey, but that’s a story for another day.

For now, we celebrate the end of the show’s run on Amazon Prime. Now that the epic 63-minute conclusion of The Expanse has aired, you could hardly be blamed for giving this latest season a re-watch. However, there’s one bit of bonus content you may have missed, and which is pretty much essential to getting the most from the show’s sixth and final season.

A newer trend on Amazon Prime Video is for the studio to release X-Ray bonus content for its original shows. We saw this in the form of animated lore videos with The Wheel of Time, but for The Expanse, the producers gave us something truly special. Each of the first five episodes of season 6 has a short five-ish minute bonus episode attached; when strung together, they make up a mini-series called “One Ship.” These can be accessed by going to the “bonus content” section of each episode’s X-Ray, though it should be noted that they aren’t accessible on every kind of device (for me it works on my computer but not my PlayStation 4, for example), so some experimentation may be necessary.

The “One Ship” videos are no throwaway scenes, but extra mini-episodes that give powerful looks into the motivations of certain characters. There’s even pretty crucial information in some of them, including a character death which is never mentioned in the main series.

There will of course be SPOILERS for season 6 of The Expanse ahead, as we’ll be discussing and breaking down when you should slot these X-Ray episodes in for the most complete viewing experience. Without further adieu, let’s get to it.

X-Ray 1 — “Ankwala”

When to watch: After Episode 1, “Strange Dogs”

"Belters have a creed. The doctrine of One Ship. As cells are separate but also make a body, so a ship is made from a crew, and a people from their ships."

The first X-Ray bonus episode of The Expanse comes out of the gate swinging straight for the feels, which should be no surprise considering that it’s about Camina Drummer (Cara Gee) and her polyamorous family. “Ankwala” picks up with Drummer’s crew right after “Strange Dogs,” and we immediately see some of the fallout from the episode proper. The X-Ray opens with Josep (Samer Salem) discovering that Marco Inaros has just raised the bounty on Drummer’s crew. We then get a brief scene that highlights the conflicted feelings Drummer and Josep have over the fact that Michio (Vanessa Smythe) is going to be removed from the crew, owing to her freeze-up during battle that almost cost everyone their lives.

Drummer has a call with Liang Walker (Stuart Hughes) — who we formally meet in the next episode, “Azure Dragon” — and we learn that they’ve had to reschedule their drop-off meeting for Michio, which also takes place in that episode. This is something that’s referenced during the meeting, so it’s cool to get a bit more behind-the-scenes context.

But the real heart of “Ankwala” is when Michio confides in Josep that she snuck a look at Drummer’s hand terminal…and that she was upset to find that the only recordings on it were of Naomi (Dominique Tipper). Drummer has saved a video of Naomi singing her happy birthday, a recounting of the Roci crew’s trip to Ilus, and even a video from just after Naomi’s rescue in the finale of season 5. In it, Naomi thanks Drummer, saying that Holden told her that if it wasn’t for Drummer’s aid the Roci would never have been able to save her. Which cost Drummer dearly, as it led to Marco Inaros murdering one of her family members and placing a bounty on her.

Michio claims this as a sign that Drummer is still pining after Naomi, and only settling for her polyamorous family members. For his part, Josep tries to put it behind him and encourages Michio to as well. “None of us came here without a past,” he tells her. After convincing her to promise not to look at Drummer’s terminal again, the two break down into tears and hug, because Michio is soon to leave the crew and they’re all struggling to accept it. Both Salem and Smythe do an incredible job of selling these difficult emotions, and it’s great to see their relationship brought to the forefront in this bonus episode.

The episode ends with Drummer deleting all of Naomi’s messages that she had been saving. This gives so much more context for their tense meeting during the season’s fifth episode, “Why We Fight.” Like I said, straight for the feels.

“Ankwala” gives a taste of just how integral these X-Ray episodes are to the overarching story of season 6, but there’s a lot more to come.

X-Ray 2 — “Zenobia”

When to watch: After Episode 2, “Azure Dragon”

"The doctrine of One Ship describe a system of unities, between home and society, work and rest, fear…and hope."

“Zenobia” is all about Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo). The episode begins with her receiving an update from the MCRN Admiral in command of the Martian forces of the combined Inner fleet. The two speculate that Marco Inaros is up to something, but aren’t quite sure what. It’s clear that this Admiral (played by John Ralston, who never appears in the season itself) is pretty eager to meet the Free Navy in actual combat. “Have you ever seen a Hekate keelhaul?” he asks Avasarala. She assures him she hasn’t, and he tells her how eager he would be to demonstrate it for her if they capture any of the Martian defectors who supported the Free Navy.

Keelhauling is a very old and brutal execution method done by pirates where they drag a person across the barnacle-encrusted bottom of their ship. So…not sure what that would look like in space, but there’s no doubt it would be pretty awful.

From there we launch straight into the “it’s all bad news” section of the episode, as Avasarala’s advisor Gareth (Ted Dykstra) informs her of all the various ways that Earth is fast becoming uninhabitable. The asteroid bombardment has really done a number on the human homeworld, leading Avasarala to remark that “we’re all Belters now.”

As with the MCRN Admiral, Gareth seems pretty eager to kill their enemies regardless of collateral damage. He actually suggests nuking Ceres station, which earns him a look of incredulous horror from Avasarala before she locks herself in her office.

Finally, the leader of the Inner forces is granted a reprieve when she learns that her next meeting has been delayed by 15 minutes. After checking on her vitals and seeing a bunch of warnings, she shuts off the lights and sets an alarm for 10 minutes later…only for her terminal to immediately buzz. The exhaustion that Aghdashloo exudes here is so strong you can’t help but feel it with her.

The call is from her granddaughter on Earth, who is growing her own indoor garden to help their family have vegetables despite the planet’s dying atmosphere. In a show where Shohreh Aghdashloo has had so many chances to display her amazing acting chops, I shouldn’t be so impressed when she does it again, but I am. The barely restrained emotion in her eyes during this scene is just so powerful.

After sending the message, Avasarala kicks the lights back on, sends a message to her doctor telling him to get the “medication we discussed” ready for her, and then brusquely orders the person who was late to the meeting to hurry the hell up. There’s work to be done, and despite the fact that Avasarala is clearly stretched thin, she’s not giving up.

This also sets up a minor plotpoint that we circle back to later in the season, during Episode 5. In that episode, we see Avasarala inject herself with a stimulant before her meeting with Holden. “Zenobia” sets that up, while also letting us know just how long Avasarala has been pushing herself past her own limits.

X-Ray 3 — “Win or Lose”

When to watch: After Episode 3, “Force Projection”

"The doctrine of One Ship encompasses both tension and resolution with no favor to either. Conflict and acceptance, unified into something greater."

The third episode of “One Ship” finally eases off the emotional gut punches…by focusing on actual punches. “Win or Lose” features Amos Burton (Wes Chatham) and Bobbie Draper (Frankie Adams). In the wake of the spaceship battle with Marco Inaros at the end of “Force Projection,” Amos and Bobbie are cleaning up the ship’s supplies and putting everything back in order. Bobbie makes a comment about how under-manned the Rocinante is for its size, Amos shoots back a snarky retort, and before you can blink twice the two are in a sniping battle of wits. It’s great fun, and the two actors have amazing chemistry.

Eventually, they start to actually get to each other, and the sniping turns to thinly veiled (if still amicable) threats. Bobbie suggests they settle things by sparring, with some simple rules. The first one to fall on the ground has to clean up the rest of the equipment by themselves. Amos agrees, then asks for some clarification…and as Bobbie is answering, he rushes her.

But this is Bobbie, and she is not to be messed with. She immediately gets Amos in a choke-hold. “Go to sleep, little man,” she cajoles, as Amos slips closer to unconsciousness. But at the last minute, the Roci mechanic manages to get the hand terminal out of his pocket and set off the ship’s alarms. Bobbie lets him go thinking there’s an actual emergency, and Amos throws her to the ground.

And just like that, we see the tension and resolution that the intro talked about. The two are laughing together, and the episode ends with Amos leaving Bobbie to clean up the mess. It’s a great moment that just deepens the relationship between the two baddest fighters on the Rocinante.

X-Ray 4 — “Night Watch”

When to watch: After episode 4, “Redoubt”

"The doctrine of One Ship arose from paradoxes. The cold of space and the heat of a drive; bright stars and pure darkness; companionship in the void."

While “Night Watch” might seem like it could take place immediately after Holden and Clarissa Mao’s conversation during “Force Projection” where he assigns her to the night watch rotation for the first time, upon closer inspection there are some indicators that this X-Ray episode occurs on a different night. It begins innocently enough, giving us a glimpse of how Clarissa (Nadine Nicole) has gotten more comfortable in her role as a member of the Roci crew as she goes about checking maintenance logs and keeping an eye on the ship.

However, things get intense when she sits down to eat in the mess hall and casually checks her hand terminal…only to see a news story that her father, Jules-Pierre Mao, has died due to an underlying medical condition. Jules-Pierre (François Chau) was one of the architects behind the protomolecule scandal that tipped the galaxy toward its first interstellar war in the show’s early seasons. We haven’t seen him since he was sentenced to life in prison back in season 3, an event that sparked Clarissa’s vendetta against James Holden before she eventually joined his crew.

Despite trying to put her feelings about her father behind her, the news hits Clarissa hard. As she listens to the broadcast, which also reminds us that the galaxy at large believes her to be dead, she bites down on the mod implanted in one of her teeth. She crushes the hand terminal, and the screen cuts to black.

When it returns, Clarissa is regaining consciousness on the mess hall floor, surrounded by debris she made during a rampage we didn’t see. She groans and pushes herself up to sit amongst the wreckage, before opening a private journal entry through the Roci’s logs.

Nadine Nicole does a beautiful job with Clarissa’s monologue about the nature of parent-child relationships, reflecting on how even after her father basically betrayed the entire galaxy, the news of his death still devastated her. She has been quietly owning the screen every time she’s on it this season, and “Night Watch” is no exception. The episode hit hard.

“Night Watch” ends with Clarissa finishing her entry and preparing to clean up the mess she made. That the rest of the crew never even becomes aware of this personal struggle just makes it all the more powerful. Although she’s now part of the team, Clarissa keeps many of her issues to herself. But the fact that she used her mods again here lends more weight to the moment when she stumbles in “Why We Fight.” In that episode she brushes it off, but now we know that it happens because she’s used her mods more times than she’s letting Holden know about.

As a final note, we also have to point out that the pipe Clarissa added to the maintenance list is the same one that breaks in the season finale. So I guess they never got around to fixing that. The Roci has a pretty long list of repairs, after all.

X-Ray 5 — “Remember the Cant”

When to watch: After episode 5, “Why We Fight”

"The doctrine of One Ship encompasses the physical and the abstract; the known and the imagined; space and time; the future…and the past."

And here we are, at the final X-Ray of The Expanse season 6. I’ve commented on this in my full reviews of the season’s regular episodes, but the show has done a fantastic job of reminding us how far every character has come on this journey. “Remember the Cant” takes that to a new level, serving primarily as a flashback that gives us a look at how James Holden (Steven Strait) found his way onto the Canterbury, the ice hauler he and the rest of the Roci crew were working on in the series premiere, long before they’d heard of the protomolecule.

The X-Ray episode begins with Holden gazing at graffiti of himself on the wall of Ceres station. The words “Remember the Cant” are sprayed there, which was what everyone in the Belt was saying after the ice hauler was blown up by stealth ships in the season 1 premiere. It became a mantra at the time, representing the frustration of Belters over what was initially perceived as a Martian attack against an innocent supply ship.

Journalist Monica Stuart (Anna Hopkins) comes up to Holden and asks him what his past self would say about everything that’s going on now in the solar system. “Probably keep your head down, stay out of trouble,” he replies. The two hug, part ways…and then the scene shifts to 10 years ago.

At a bar on Ceres, Captain McDowell (Joe Pingue) is trying to get a drink but is being shunted aside by the station’s Belter residents. McDowell is the captain of the Canterbury ice hauler, and since he was killed off in the season 1 premiere, it’s a real trip to see him onscreen once again. We even get a nice reference to his collection of porcelain cats when another bar patron intentionally crushes one. McDowell is from Earth, and he is not having an easy time acclimating to the culture of the Belt.

But then he hears a laugh, and we see someone who is adjusting quite well: a beardless James Holden sits drinking with a bunch of Belters, laughing about a miscommunication he had that resulted in him losing his pants. Considering that Holden is from Earth, McDowell is impressed by Holden’s easy rapport with his Belter friends. “Y’know, you’re pretty good with these people,” he notes.

“We’re all the same people,” Holden replies, and there it is: Holden and the crew of the Roci are bridging the cultural gap between all the different factions of humanity; that he views everyone as just people has always been at the heart of the series. It’s wonderful to get a nod to that before the series finale.

Despite his insistence that he’s not looking for work, Holden is eventually swayed by McDowell to join the Canterbury once the captain makes it clear that it’s a job which pays well and has basically no responsibility. The episode ends with a slow zoom out, and we see that McDowell has now finally gotten the drink he’s been struggling to get all episode as he becomes yet another person caught up in the personal gravity of James Holden.

And that brings us to the end of The Expanse’s X-Ray bonus episodes. Combined with the rest of season 6, this gives us the full picture of the show’s final outing. It’s a heartfelt way to end what has been an incredible journey. But then, The Expanse has never lacked for heart.

All six seasons of The Expanse are now available on Amazon Prime Video.

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