The Expanse: The End

I just watched Episode 6 of Season 5 of The Expanse...the 62nd and last episode of the series. 

And I'm really sorry to see it go. Also wondering why it is going, since there's still plenty of material left to do--at this point there are 9 novels and 9 shorter pieces, and while I'm not exactly sure where we are in that bibliography, I'm certain that there's quite a bit of stuff that hasn't yet hit the screen. But the show never had a huge following...according to our friends in Wikiworld, the highest rated season only garnered .606 million viewers. And tv runs on ratings, after all. So I guess that's the story. But I thought Jeff Bezos was willing to take one for the team here. Well, he gave us three years / 26 episodes, anyway, so I won't try to bite that hand that fed me.

It was a good run. 

That last season (only six episodes) felt very rushed to me, and it didn't seem like there was much time for the Little Moments that made the show so great for the first five seasons, but it brought things around to a more or less satisfying conclusion, so at least there's that.

And one thing more. 

No spoilers of any import here, but there was a moment in this final episode when one of the characters was giving a speech, and had this to say about another character:

"He was evil and he was cruel, but he tapped into something real. He was able to do what he did because so many people were angry and frightened. They saw the future and they weren't in it."

And that's it in a nutshell, isn't it? Where we are today? Why hatred has been loosed on the streets of America? Because people are angry and frightened, and they see a future in which they have no place. So of course they want to stop the forward motion of social evolution. They can't, but they can cause a lot of harm and horror and bloodshed for an extended period of time. It's kind of like the Foundation's Hari Seldon Plan in reverse: You know that a Dark Age is coming, but instead of doing what you can to make it of shorter duration (a la the Foundation) you do everything you can to make it last longer. Not because you actually want the Dark Age, but because you don't see yourself on the other side of the end of that Dark Age. It's kind of the ultimate attenuation of the old "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."  

So there's another reason to mourn the passing of The Expanse: it was a science fiction show that gave you some food for thought. We can always use a bit of that.