Improving The Expanse Season 4

You know when you watch a show, and you think to yourself “I love some of these characters… but my god this cast needs a culling.”

That’s how I felt watching The Expanse Season 4

Why? Well, I’ve listed the main storylines here:

Holden’s crew – Stuff’s always happening, tensions always there, this is great.

Bobby – This is pretty cool; she has a great, if somewhat illogical, arc.

Avasarala– Election campaign against… some other politician? no real stakes here.

Ashford – Marco Inaros is awesome, but nothing else here feels like it matters.

Two of these four plots lines aren’t in the books at all, unfortunately. Bobby’s is much better than the latte two because it’s adapted from a Novella, Gods of Risk. As for Avasarala and Ashford’s plotlines however, well them not being in the books…

…It really shows. All of the plot and jeopardy are on New Terra, with Holden and company, whereas the other storylines feel tacked on. I believe they don’t want these characters to leave the show between seasons; If they want Avasarala to have the same face in the next season, she needs to have scenes in this one. Otherwise she’ll have to be recast, like her husband, Arjun. Even if they don’t serve the overall story, or the plot, at all.

So, we have this odd situation where the main plot is driven, and the stakes are high, the villain is great and well-motivated. I’m always on the edge of my seat as to what’s gonna happen next, will all these settlers be wiped out? then we cut back to will Avasarala win the election? What? Who cares? Is her opponent evil? No, just ideologically different. Then why does it matter?

Then we have the station stuff, the Macro Inaros actor is fantastic, and he totally steals his big scene. Unfortunately, he’s only in a handful of scenes, and the rest of it is just Ashford and Drummer discussing how to deal with him being a pain in their ass. What are the stakes? Bad guy might do a bad thing again, maybe.

How could these two side plots be better?

Simple, give them the same villain.

Who should that be? It’s obvious, Inaros is the best part of both chapters, he also gives both chapters their only real sense of jeopardy. He can expand upon that

So how could we bring him into Avasarala trying to get elected?

Easy.

We have him try to get an Earth-side partner elected over Avasarala. First I thought maybe she finds this out early but can’t reveal it because of blackmail reasons. Then I realised it’d be even better, if she doesn’t and only we know the jeopardy she’s really in. That dials up the tension, as her actions are all taken sitting next to a time bomb. Suddenly her election’s stakes seem huge. A terrorist could become the president of earth by proxy? Those are some high stakes.

Because she didn’t know about it as well, she could effectively be her own enemy in this plot, maybe she continues making a deal with the puppet of some sort, or her husband convinces her to consider resignation. Logical for him, and her given the right circumstances, but disastrous in a way that only we know.

How do we combine them?

Across the solar system, Ashford and Drummer’s mission is the same: stop a terrorist. Only thing is this time he’s threating to become President of Earth. First, I thought, maybe he could push the colonisation agenda to link us thematically to the Rosinante crew’s jeopardy.

Then I realised we could directly link it in by having Inaros say he’s going to have his terrorist chums wipe out Holden over New Terra. There’re loads of plausible reasons for this, one being to help start a galactic war and capitalise on that chaos. So now instead of having one very driven plot and two unrelated events, we have three separate storylines dovetailing together.

Obviously, readers would know these things aren’t ultimately going to happen, but at least it gives them something more interesting to watch in the meanwhile, a story that twists and turns with the plot, rather than humming along in the background.

That’s me though, how did you think they could’ve improved Season 4 of The Expanse? What would you like to see in Season 5? Leave a comment down below and let me know.

p.s. I hid a secret pun in this article, leave a comment if you think you found it.