The Expanse Book vs. TV Recap: Critical Mass & Leviathan Wakes
The Expanse comes to a resounding end in the two-part season finale, “Critical Mass” and “Leviathan Wakes.” It’s a crazy train ride that brings the season to an amazing finish, and we’re already jonesing for our fix of new episodes.
Part one starts by jumping back and bringing us up to speed on Julie Mao’s story. When the season began, we saw that she had been left in a storage locker. This ep shows just what happened, and why. The OPA knew that something was going from Phoebe to Eros, and the Scopuli was there to intercept it. The mission went wrong, and Julie ended up heading out to Eros, the lone survivor.
Enter Holden and Miller, who’ve discovered her ruined body. She’s been infected with the protomolocule, and after they get out of the flop house, they find that security teams are shepherding people into radiation shelters. Sematimba wants to get off the station, and Holden tells Naomi and the rest of the crew to get going—if he’s not back in time, they should just take off without him. He and Miller try and find Dresden, the scientist that seems to be directing what’s going on.
Dresden and his team find Julie, and he says she’s about to do something wonderful. He then makes a call to Jules Pierre Mao, Julie’s father, who orders him to proceed with the experiment.
Holden finds one of the CPM detail, and shoots him. They discover they’re all former criminals enticed to Eros for easy work, and that they’ve been setting up scientific equipment for… something.
Back on Tycho Station, Fred Johnson points to Earth as the home to the stealth ships that got the system in this mess, while Avasalara discovers some more information about the fusion drives: they were manufactured on Earth, but used with private contractors, on Tycho Station. Someone is trying to start a war to distract from something big about to go down.
Holden and Miller discover people have been herded into radiation shelters, where they were injected with something. Now, they’re dying. As the two watch in horror, their radiation alarms go off, and they’re given a massive dose of radiation.
The next episode starts with the pair trying to find anti-radiation meds, and they get trapped as they watch a scientific crew set up some equipment. They’re accidentally discovered by a distracted CPM soldier, and they kill him before he can raise the alarm. Holden and Miller are at odds, much as they are in the novel. Before they leave, Miller sees something strange: Julie, standing before him. A hallucination?
Naomi and the rest of the crew try and find their way to the docks using maintenance shafts, picking up a couple of survivors along the way. Naomi uses OPA markings to try and find her way. They eventually locate the ship, and Sematimba uses his codes to take care of the lockdown. On the Roci, Naomi wants to wait for Holden, but Sematimba puts a gun to her, telling her to get the ship going. Before he can do anything rash, Amos shoots him in the head.
Holden and Miller start to find their way back to the ship, and realize an entire war has been started has been to take eyes off of Eros. They come across two soldiers, and Miller shoots them, taking their gear to get past the guards. Holden comes across Kenzo, and tells him to get away.
Once they have the armor in hand, they come across a group of security contractors—the gangsters, and the science ones running the show. The Belters are about to be left behind, and Holden and Miller use the ensuing gunfight to get through them and get to the elevator to the docks. Miller recognizes one of the gangsters (the one who shot Havelock) and kills him, telling Holden he had it coming.
They reach the docks and think they’re too late. Miller sees Julie once more, and soon, Amos appears. “You look like shit,” he says.
They’re brought onboard and hooked up to life support systems. Amos notes that they keep trying to kick them over to hospice care, rather than saving them. As Alex rockets away from Eros, a stealth ship also escapes: onboard, Dresden sees the feeds from Eros, which he transmits out to his overseers. His experiment is underway.
As both ships speed away, Kenzo comes across blue fireflies that mimic him before the protomolocule tears him away, and we see that it’s growing and doing… something.
That’s it for season 1. The show didn’t quite follow the Game of Thrones one season/one book model. By the end, we’ve reached page 310 of Leviathan Wakes, just a little over the halfway point. There are a lot of exciting things ahead, particularly with the rest of the protomolocule story, and all that entails. Fortunately, with a Season 2 pickup assured, we’re can presumably look forward to seeing the next half of Leviathan Wakes (and perhaps some of Caliban’s War), play out in early 2017.
Now, it’s time for a rewatch.