Today at the Virtual New York Comic-Con, Amazon brought along a first look at its upcoming fifth season of its series The Expanse, based on the novel series by James S.A. Corey, teasing the beginning of a massive war between Earth and the Outer Planets Alliance. It also let us know when we’ll see the next season: December 16th, 2020.
This season will adapt the fifth book in the series, Nemesis Games, following up on the events of Season 4’s adaptation of Cibola Burn. In that season, we saw the crew of the Rocinante (James Holden, Naomi Nagata, Amos Burton, and Alex Kamal) dispatched to an alien star system to assist the UN with a rogue colony, only to find themselves dealing with some greater issues—long-dormant alien technology that poses a unique danger to humanity.
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Additionally, tensions between various factions in the solar system have been boiling up, with the tease that a shadowy group of OPA extremists were about to attack Earth with some asteroids.
In the teaser, we see those tensions continuing to escalate. The crew of the Roci is taking some much-needed rest to try and recuperate after months being on the job, and scatter around the solar system, meeting up with loved ones, or taking on odd jobs. They’re still apart when Earth comes under attack, and from the trailer, they’re going to have to fight to reunite amidst the attack. Complicating factors is the fact that the Belters are uniting behind a charismatic leader named Marco Inaros—the father of Naomi’s son, Filip.
Amazon is also changing up the release schedule for the series: it won’t drop the entire season at once, but release the first three episodes on December 16th, and the rest weekly.
Ahead of the trailer’s release, showrunner Naren Shankar noted that the theme for this season is “you reap what you sow,” and that it’s the “most epic and most personal season thus far.” We’ll find out how on December 16th.