Board 8 > The Expanse series finale (no spoilers first post)

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neonreaper
01/13/22 9:33:36 PM
#1:


Usually not a big Sci Fi fan but Ive enjoyed this show. Definitely recommend! The series finale is now up ( Amazon Prime).

anyone else watch/read?


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LeonhartFour
01/13/22 9:44:28 PM
#2:


Great show. Hopefully they find some way to adapt the last three books, even if it's just movies.

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neonreaper
01/13/22 11:05:10 PM
#3:


Given that the books were originally written up as MMORPG lore maybe thats how it ends up!

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Donny: Are they gonna hurt us, Walter?
Walter: No, Donny. These men are cowards.
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neonreaper
01/13/22 11:05:27 PM
#4:


They stuck the landing imo. Just finished the finale

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Donny: Are they gonna hurt us, Walter?
Walter: No, Donny. These men are cowards.
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LeonhartFour
01/13/22 11:09:18 PM
#5:


neonreaper posted...
They stuck the landing imo. Just finished the finale

Yeah, the finale was great, but they were clearly setting stuff up for something more if they ever decide to go that route.

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neonreaper
01/13/22 11:13:04 PM
#6:


I havent checked out the webisodes/X-rays/bonus vignettes yet but I hear they are fun

and yeah the door is open for sure. Which is good / even if they never get to do more , its nice that everything isnt completely buttoned up.

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Donny: Are they gonna hurt us, Walter?
Walter: No, Donny. These men are cowards.
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xp1337
01/14/22 1:04:58 AM
#7:


Been a fun ride these past many years. Been watching since Season 1 when it was on Syfy.

Kinda feels like it ended a bit too open for my tastes but it feels pretty clear there's definitely some plan even though I feel like everyone involved keeps denying it lol.

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ChichiriMuyo
01/14/22 7:54:03 AM
#8:


Stuck the landing? Bullshit. Everything happened way too fast in this last season (or two, or maybe even three). Almost everything was actually unexplained, and that's before we talk about Laconia. It makes the last two seasons of GoT look well-paced. They successfully finished off one plot thread out of the dozen that make the story, but it wasn't even the most interesting one they had going on.

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xp1337
01/14/22 7:59:38 AM
#9:


While I think this season was moving too fast (why only 6 episodes?) I don't agree with the pacing overall going off the rails. It just left a bunch of stuff out there unanswered for now. Later seasons GoT just unlocked fast travel and started skipping cutscenes lol

I do think that unless they reveal a movie plan or Season 7 or some continuation roadmap that spending an already shortened season with the Laconia scenes was a questionable use of the runtime they had, but eh.

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ChichiriMuyo
01/14/22 8:13:56 AM
#10:


The problem is we all want those things to be unanswered for now but evidence suggests this is the end. Those things can and probably will remain unanswered forever (if you don't read the books). Maybe we'll get some movies, but they'll probably have the taint of not really fleshing out or finishing anything.

IMO we didn't even get a complete story for why Drummer sides with.. actually, the only explanation for almost every political decision all season is either you are with Inaros to your dying breath or obviously you have to be against him no matter what anyone else has done for the last two centuries. They took one of the most politically complex and realistic stories ever told in a sci-fi show and turned it into "this guy is bad, so he gets beated at da end."

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xp1337
01/14/22 8:41:14 AM
#11:


IDK, I feel like Drummer's decision-making was fairly consistent if not explicitly handed to the viewer.

She was on a personal mission to end him because he killed Ashford and she felt responsible for that and all the death he had caused because she had him dead to rights before and made the decision that he was to live. So she was on her pirate/sabotage mission and when she saw strategic opportunities to screw him over further she took them (allying with the splinter faction, raiding his supply depots) culminating in her taking the supplies to Ceres to massively undercut his support at a key point in his war. This inadvertendly made her a hero among non-Inaros loyalists.

Avasalrala noticed that and saw that if she could get Drummer to publicly ally with her they could divide the Belt and basically create an official non-Inaros Belt faction to treat as the "legitimate" Belt rather than it just being the Free Navy. Drummer told her to fuck off though because she very much did not forget nor forgive the Inners for their past transgressions against the Belt, especially coming from Avasalrala of all people - seeing it for what it was, an obvious play by the Inner Planets to use the Belt against other Belters when it was convenient for them.

So Avasalrala goes to Holden to try and negotiate for her instead and ends up telling him about the railguns in Ring Space and how Inaros is heading there and if he does then he can sit safely entrenched in there for pretty much the rest of his life and he'd have all the colony worlds at his mercy and able to supply him indefinitely so they couldn't even try to just siege him by blockading the Ring. So now Holden knows there's a very immediate time pressure on the situation. Now the following takes place off screen but I think becomes pretty clear at the end of the last episode - Holden (and probably Naomi, mostly Naomi probably) goes to Drummer and tells her that. Now "kill Inaros" still isn't a good enough reason for Drummer but they foresee the obvious Ring negotiation thing happening once he's dealt with because they need to set something up to manage the whole "there are things that will eat people and ships if you mismanage Ring transport" and concoct the plan to form the Transport Union with Holden as its head because the Inner Planets will go for that... only to secure Drummer as VP, etc. in writing with the intent to immediately resign to put the Belt in control of it.

Like Drummer was motivated by revenge and then ultimately only joins the Inner Alliance at the end there because she and Holden (and she only likely listened to Holden because of Naomi) hatched the plan to create and then steal the Transport Union out from under the Inner Planets and end the cycle of Earth and Mars treating the Belt as second-class citizens who can never hold any real power because revenge against Inaros alone wasn't enough for her to overlook all the shit the Belt endured for her back when it was Avasalrala making the pitch.

And even then Drummer had to be broken down by Naomi at the end of Episode 5 because of how much she hated the idea of going along with the Inner Planets even for the sake of stopping Inaros.

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xp1337
01/14/22 9:34:20 AM
#12:


Though I guess what I'm really pushing back against is the idea that the show boiled down the Solar System politics to "grr kill Inaros" because I feel like something this season repeatedly hammered in was that while that was a shared goal between the various parties, it alone was not enough or a winning message.

You basically had Earth, Mars, Drummer, and Holden as four different parties all sharing various goals but all sharing "kill Marco Inaros" as one of them but they each (aside from Mars) had other goals they ultimately placed higher in priority.

By Season 6, the hollowing out of Mars politically we saw in the wake of the Ring worlds reached the point where it was arguably done a disservice and reduced to one-dimensionally screeching "kill Inaros" all season and having no presence other than that (with the "spirit of Mars" that we saw in Seasons 1-3 going off to Laconia.) Pretty much all Mars did this Season was advocate for killing Inaros as soon as humanly possible regardless of consequences. And they spend the entire season failing spectacularly and coming off as idiots. When Avasalrala is talking about how they have a humanitarian crisis on Ceres and they can't just ignore that even if it's Inaros's doing and they're doing exactly what he wants by trying to help them Mars is like "don't care, let's just go to the ring and blow the Free Navy up" and just make everything worse, almost "game over" worse. Sure there's the scene where later Avasalrala wonders if they were right and she's at fault for going "soft" and not shoving all-in with them but I think the show makes it pretty clear she made the right call.

Everyone else, while still gunning for Inaros, has other things they end up placing ahead of it when they're faced with the choice of maximally going after Inaros instead: Avasalrala has the humanitarian crisis on Ceres as the last stage of her redemption tour where she places her growing empathy for the Belt and atonement for her past cruelty above just passing it by and letting Ceres die in pursuit of Inaros. Like she has, and justifies it with, strategic and PR reasons but that's a bit paper-thin IMO - she gives up the game with that "have I gone soft?" speech to Bobbie from before. Drummer has the past treatment of the Belt by the Inner Planets. If all she cared about was killing Inaros at all costs then she would take Avasalrala's alliance deal to maximize the chances of killing him but her grudges and resentment outweigh that initially and it takes Naomi appealing to a better future and someone having to break the cycle as well as Holden scheming to make sure the Belt isn't screwed over again for her to work together with the rest. And Holden's main concern is the Ring Entities because they scary. Remember he proposes informing Inaros about the problem and Avasalrala tells him to just get the fuck outta here.

Really the whole thing falls apart if not for the domino effect and culmination of a lot of past character arcs fitting together to make it all work out. If Holden hasn't gained the trust of Avasalrala through continued actions, or built up some cred with Drummer and the Belt (and even then it really seemed to come down to Naomi being someone Drummer loved) then I imagine Drummer just goes back to being done with it all as her revenge quest ends in failure and the dissolution of her family. Maybe tries to go out in a hopeless blaze of glory and gets torn apart by the railguns she wouldn't know about.

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Leonhart4
01/14/22 11:13:52 AM
#13:


I feel like Season 6 got truncated partially because of what happened with Alex's actor.

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