The Expanse cast and creators tease Season 5 as most 'epic' and 'personal' yet at NYCC

The cast and crew of The Expanse got together for an engaging panel at New York Comic Con today, where they got to catch up with each other and talk about the upcoming season, including what’s in store for the Rocinate crew.  

The virtual event was moderated by Dominique Tipper (Naomi Nagata), who was joined by showrunner Naren Shankar, Steven Strait (James Holden), Wes Chatham (Amos Burton), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Chrisjen Avarasala), Frankie Adams (Bobbie Draper), Cara Gee (Camina Drummer), and co-authors Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, who write the books the show is based on.

Tipper kicked off the discussion by saying that she thinks Season 5 will be the best to date, to which the rest of the panel readily agreed. As to what fans of the show can expect, Shankar provided insight on the overall theme of the ten-episode season: “We always put the big theme on the board, and this year it was, ‘You reap what you sow,’ Shankar said. “That is every storyline in one fashion or another.”

Each of the characters has their own journey to take in this vein, and some of these storylines are teased in the first official trailer, which was aired for the first time during the panel. The cast and creators also talked about how seeds for the storylines the characters will take this upcoming season have been laid since the beginning of the show. Hints of Naomi’s backstory — how there was someone out there she wanted to find — were hinted at in the first few episodes of the show, for example. Amos’s past life in Baltimore also has been mentioned in previous seasons as well, including in Season 3 when he destroyed the documentarian's camera when she probed too much into his past. 

While the details of Season 5 remain unknown, what’s obvious from both the trailer and the panel discussion is that the characters and the entire solar system are all going to go through A LOT.

“It was getting to take each individual member of the show that we’ve fallen in love with over four seasons, where we really got a good sense of who they are as people, and then peeling back the layers and exposing the crucibles which those people were formed,” Franck said. “Can the person they’ve become survive the most high-pressure situations they’ve ever been in in their life? Can they come through with their ideals and principles intact?”

Shankar agreed with Franck, saying the season, “was both the most epic and yet the most personal season we’ve done.” On the personal front, cast members also teased where their characters may be headed in Season 5. Adams, for example, mentioned that her character Bobbie Draper is convinced something fishy is happening on Mars, and that she’s determined to find out what it is, even if it means going against other Martians, while Strait suggested that Holden is the only one still really focused on the entities who created the protomolecule, and the looming threat they may be for humanity.

The event ended with the panelists answering some fan questions, including the burning question of who would win a race running in high heels: Wes Chatham or Shohreh Aghdashloo? The jury’s still out on that one, but fans of the show can catch both of them (high heels or no) as well as the rest of the cast on Amazon Prime Video before the end of the year.

The first three episodes of Season 5 will premiere Dec. 16, with new episodes available each Wednesday following, culminating in an epic season finale on February 3, 2021.

Click here for SYFY WIRE's full coverage of New York Comic Con Metaverse 2020.