The Expanse Review

The show's great achievement is that its politics are load bearing. Earth, Mars and the Belt each want something coherent, each is willing to kill for it, and almost every crisis in six seasons follows from resource scarcity rather than villainy. Ships flip and burn to decelerate, high g maneuvers put the crew into drug filled couches, and a thrown wrench keeps going. That rigor buys enormous credibility, and the protomolecule arc stays legible across a story that spans the solar system.

The problem is everything around it. The Syfy seasons look cheap in a way no amount of good production design fixes, the station interiors repeat, and the visual language only turns confident once Amazon takes over. Several leads take two full years to find their characters, and the writing gives Holden a moral certainty that flattens him. Shohreh Aghdashloo is the exception and close to the reason the middle seasons work at all, playing Avasarala as a woman who swears like a longshoreman because it saves time. Substantial, intelligent, and rarely as thrilling as the ideas inside it.