#so I’m just staying in my lane to ramble about the imaginary space shooty stuff

[highprofilerichkid]

Just got around to watching the season finale of The Expanse and... well. Thoughts about The Thing. General spoiler warning but I’ll try to still keep it vague just in case. 

idk. I don’t have any feelings that haven’t already been explored in great depth by other fans so I don’t have a lot to add... I think I’m mostly just disappointed how incredibly obviously it was that it was a slapdash edit done at the last minute in post, without the opportunity to do major reshoots or significantly restructure the rest of the episode. Compared to the quality and careful character choices of the rest of the show, there’s no disguising the fact that it was a last-minute rewrite to cover the hasty departure of an actor, and I think even people who don’t know the context will easily pick up on that, and I’m sad that the legacy of the show will be marred by such an ugly crack in the fourth wall. 

I actually don’t have a problem with the in-universe circumstances - especially after how Fred’s death was changed (a change I was not keen on tbh), I like that that scenario was “given” to another major character instead. As a lot of fans have expressed, I think it was necessary to have someone go out that way to drive home the stakes and the danger of space travel, which is something that has been a bit neglected in the show. Characters are always talking about the risks they take under hard burn, but so far there haven’t been a lot of actual consequences to that, and I think it was important to have somebody that we care about get, uh, shot by that particular Chekhov’s Gun, so to speak. 

Again, though, it’s a bummer that the payoff was so underwhelming. I think a great strength of the Expanse is that, while the main characters absolutely have plot armor, no one ever feels completely safe. The Expanse is hard enough on the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction that you’re never fully able to forget that the universe is brutally uncaring and unforgiving, and abrupt, unexpected death is a very credible risk for everyone. At the same time, even though important characters do die regularly, they don’t drop like flies for pointless shock value just to remind viewers/readers that this world SUCKS and this story is GRITTY and REALISTIC so BAD THINGS have to happen to EVERYONE, ALL THE TIME (*cough* asoiaf *cough*). I think the Expanse strikes just the right balance so that when major characters do die it feels both shocking and earned. 

And the finale... just didn’t feel like that. It felt like a GRRM death. The editing restrictions gave it so little room to breathe within the narrative. A big dramatic heroic plot-altering death is easy to write, but a sudden, unexpected death needs, imo, much more sensitive and subtle writing to not feel pointless and out of place. It’s all about the emotional impact on the remaining characters and the underlying thread of existential angst about how easily any of us can die with no warning for no reason at all. And normally the Expanse is great about that, which is why it’s such a bummer that the circumstances they were working with didn’t allow it. Amos’ little speech was great, and the scene of Naomi’s recording was SPECTACULAR (I cried actual ugly tears) but in the end it still just felt like a band-aid slapped over a much bigger issue. And that fucking sucks. 

It had to be done, and I’m not upset about that. And the nice thing about having a show and a book series is that I never really feel like a character is “dead” until they’re dead in both versions, so I’m not grieving the character (at least until we see what happens in the last book, haha). But like many fans I’m sad and frustrated that it was a necessity, disappointed by how it was accomplished, and fucking FURIOUS at The Actor In Question.

Anyway that’s a lot of rambling to mostly just rehash what everyone else has been saying, so I’ll call it quits now. RIP to a great character played by a terrible human being. Wish it hadn’t had to go down this way. :/