THE EXPANSE – Episode 606 – Babylon’s Ashes – SPOILERS ⁓

Cara (Emma Ho) brings the newly resurrected and repaired Xan (Ian Ho) back home, only to find that her parents are less than pleased with his return. Her father (Gary, played by Daniel Jun), who may have seen too many zombie movies, pulls a knife on the boy, and cuts the palm of Xan’s hand (which bleeds black stuff and heals itself quickly). Then he locks Xan in a closet and calls the soldiers. Cara decoys mom and dad into chasing a recording of herself, returns, and flees into the woods with her brother, who cautions her that (unlike him?) she can eat none of the things in the woods and that she will probably die. This does not concern her overmuch, since she knows the dogs will repair her as well. As Cara continues deeper into the woods, we get to see Cara from her brother’s point of view, which includes the same sort of energy signatures Detective Miller saw on Eros just before it crashed into Venus. Cut to Admiral Duarte (Dylan Taylor), who seems quite pleased with himself, and is looking upward at the flashing lights of the alien artifact in orbit.

The protomolecule has apparently learned a lot about humans since Eros. The mind of Xan 2.0 seems to have been left intact. He is still concerned with his sister’s welfare, reacts rationally to his new situation, and does not seem at all dangerous. Lots of questions come to mind. What makes Xan’s blood black? Is it copper based now? If the blood is darker, why does his skin remain pale?

In Episode 6.5, Clarissa (Nadine Nicole) remarks on the new armour plating being installed on the Rocinante. “The lace plating is new technology,” she says. “It came out of protomolecule research. The things my father did, he tried to justify them by saying the Protomolecule was the key to ensuring the survival of our species. Stuff like this makes him seem right.” One cannot help but wonder how she might react to developments on Laconia, especially after learning (in this episode) that she has about five years left to live. (Her reaction to this unfortunate news is to tell no one, and instead cook everyone dinner. Holden suggests to Naomi that Clarissa is trying to get the blood off her hands, but it seems more like she’s trying to impress Amos (Wes Chatham). Later she tells Amos “For someone who doesn’t want to be a hero, you sure end up being one a lot.” She also makes him a silver pin to replace the one he lost while rescuing her from Earth, and shows him that she is wearing a duplicate of it.

A battle between the joint Earth/Mars/Belt forces and the Free Navy is made mostly irrelevant by two things. First, in a mission reminiscent of The Guns of Navarone, the Rocinante attacks the railgun emplacements on the Ring Station, then, after The Pella takes some damage from Drummer’s battle group, Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander) breaks off from the conflict and makes a run for the rings. After failing to capture the gun emplacements as planned, Bobbie Draper (Frankie Adams) destroys them. The destruction of the guns leaves Holden & Co. outnumbered by the approaching remnants of the Free Navy and almost defenseless.

At the suggestion of Naomi (Dominique Tipper), and before The Pella can enter the ring, Holden makes use of that matter/energy threshold discussed last episode, sending as much energy and matter as possible through the ring before Inaros gets to it. This causes The Pella to be destroyed just like The Barkieth was at the end of Season 5. (Naomi herself detonates the abandoned ice hauler Gianbattista as it enters the ring, making herself the direct cause of what she believes is her son Filip’s death.)

At negotiations following the effective defeat of the Free Navy, Holden proposes an independent agency to control traffic through the rings. A Transport Union is created and by general consensus he is made its first president. He insists that Camina Drummer (Cara Gee) be his VP, and then publicly resigns, much to Avasarala’s displeasure (although she must appreciate the elegance of the subterfuge).

Naomi has no knowledge of it, but later in the episode, we find out that Filip (Jasai chase Owens) left The Pella hours before its destruction in a repair skiff, and changed his last name to Nagata. Filip’s abandonment of his father in favour of his mother parallels Cara’s abandonment of her parents in favour of her brother. (The entire Laconian situation is a result of Naomi’s failure to destroy the protomolecule sample in “Paradigm Shift”, and ultimately giving it to Fred Johnson (Chad L Coleman) in “Caliban’s War“.)

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THE MERCY OF GODS (The Captive’s War I), the first book of a new trilogy by James S A Corey was released in August, 2024.

All 62 episodes of THE EXPANSE can be streamed on Amazon Prime Video.
The complete series is available on Blu-ray.

Is there a future for THE EXPANSE?

On Amazon Live, Expanse co-author Ty Frank was asked by interviewer J.D. Roberto what fans can do to help THE EXPANSE continue. He responded: “Please don’t be abusive to our friends at Amazon. Amazon has been lovely for us. They gave us three more seasons. They’ve been great partners to work with. The fact that the show is stopping, at least for some amount of time, after Season 6 doesn’t mean you should go after Amazon and be mean to them. We love them over there. I would say wait and see. There’s a lot of things happening that fans don’t know about…and we can’t talk about. So if they could just wait and see, and we can see what happens.”