The Expanse: A TV Fan’s Post-Finale Guide to Books
It was a distraction to allow Duarte and his loyalists to establish a colony on Laconia, a planet with an unusual alien artifact orbiting it: a construction platform that can create spaceships with abilities advances based on protomolecule technology. In The extent season 6, we hear obsessive scientist Cortazar telling Duarte that they were able to use the stolen sample to activate the orbital station, the same way the ghost-Miller was able to activate the artifacts on Ilus in season four. Let the fireworks begin!
The strange dogs, Cara and Xan
But that’s not all the protomolecule can do! We have also seen that Laconia has an unusual fauna which seems to modify “broken” things in a semblance of repair. Remember, the protomolecule was discovered in season one on Phoebe, one of Saturn’s moons. Miller (as the protomolecule’s eventual spokesperson) informed Holden that it was designed to alter anything in its path to the specification of the alien race that created it. It was frozen and unused until Protogen dug it up.
If you look closely, however, you will see that the “strange dogs” in The extent season 6 brings changes to the drone and mama bird that leave a soft blue glow like we see with all things protomolecules. After Xan is brought back to life with black eyes and heightened perception, it’s clear that the restorative creatures have made changes that are less destructive but certainly as drastic as what happened to Eros in the opening season. . Without Cara and Xan’s involvement in the later books as a result of these changes, humanity would have little hope of understanding the extraterrestrial forces around them.
Needless to say, Duarte has his own discoveries to make about what this more stable form of protomolecule can do for the dominance of his new empire. Given the robustness of Martian efforts to terraform their own home planet, it’s no surprise that this same discipline is becoming the central tenet of a new political force bent on doing what’s best for the survival of the planet. human species… at least from Duarte’s point of view.
The union and the doors
The drummer was named head of the new independent union at the end of The extent season 6, and that’s exactly where she ends up in the books, too. But his position as leader becomes far more important to the solar system than perhaps Avasarala or Holden could have foreseen, and that’s a glorious thing to see. The many fans of this great character will be delighted to see her rise to power.
Given the strategy employed by Naomi to defeat Marco in The extent series finale, one of the main dangers the syndicate has to deal with involves the entities inside the gates that eat ships for breakfast. Traffic should only cross the rings at a regulated pace to avoid “going Dutch”, as they say, in reference to the famous ghost ship. But even with careful coordination, there are no guarantees, and the pressures that come with increased colonization will wreak havoc in later books.
