The Expanses Book Time Jump Could End The Show Early

The Expanse’s Book Time Jump Could End The Show Early

The Expanse book series contains a massive time jump that will surely be challenging to adapt on TV. Will this bring the story to an early end?

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The Expanses Book Time Jump Could End The Show Early

Last Updated: November 24, 2020

How will The Expanse’s impending time jump affect the future of the show? Currently cruising towards its fifth season, The Expanse adapts the series of novels by James S.A. Corey set in a 24th century where humans have outgrown Earth and stretched out across the solar system. The first three seasons of The Expanse aired on Syfy, with the fourth and fifth streaming on Amazon Prime, and each installment has approximately covered one of the eight available novels (a ninth and final book is set for 2021), staying relatively faithful to the source material. While the core story remains untouched, The Expanse has made several notable deviations, incorporating Chrisjen Avasarala into the narrative more heavily and combining Camina Drummer with other, unused characters from the books.

The Expanse has been on a nice, steady burn since 2015, gathering in popularity and becoming a favorite with critics. The series has gradually developed its intriguing crop of characters and built upon its central Protomolecule mystery one bright blue brick at a time. But as the prospect of The Expanse running to a sixth season looms, the books throw up a potential live-action hurdle. Assuming The Expanse season 5 covers Nemesis Games and season 6 adapts Babylon’s Ashes, the story then jumps 30 years into the future for its next installment. Effectively, this means The Expanse season 7 would have to age its central characters by a full three decades in order to keep true to the books.

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Naturally, this conundrum has been put to the brains behind The Expanse, and showrunner Naren Shankar responded (via EW) only by revealing he was confident in the series’ ability to pull off the time jump. Obviously, a 30-year gap would be tricky for any TV series to bridge. Digitally de-aging the entire cast would surely be too expensive, while makeup and prosthetics might risk looking inconsistent over the course of multiple seasons. Perhaps the most logical solution would be to shorten the time jump from the novels from a hefty 30 years to a more manageable 10. With only a single decade between seasons 6 & 7, The Expanse would have a much easier time making their cast look older, while still creating the sense that a significant amount of time has passed.

UPDATE: In November 2020, Amazon Prime confirmed that season 6 will indeed be the last for The Expanse, proving this theory correct. On the bright side, fans still have two full seasons to look forward to before it’s over, with season 5 coming on December 16.

Of course, the other option would be for The Expanse to bypass the time skip altogether in live-action, bringing about an earlier conclusion to the story. On its current trajectory, The Expanse would run for 9 seasons – quite an impressive milestone for any original streaming series to hit. Following the currently-in-development season 5, Amazon would need to renew The Expanse for a further four seasons, and although this isn’t entirely unheard of, such a lengthy run is a rare occurrence on the platform. The likes of Amazon and Netflix don’t make their viewing figures readily available, so it’s hard to gauge exactly how well The Expanse season 4 performed, but the numbers would have to be very strong indeed to carry the Rocinante all the way through to season 9.

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With The Expanse’s chance of getting its full nine seasons hopeful at best, and a troublesome time skip to negotiate, could the show conclude earlier compared to the books? When it became apparent that Syfy might not be renewing The Expanse, the season 3 finale was written to act as a potential ending, with the Protomolecule Ring Gates opening up a whole new world of hope and opportunity. Fortunately, The Expanse was thrown a lifeline, but if Amazon decide to call time on The Expanse with season 6 or 7, the time jump might work well enough as another contingency exit point. At least the series then wouldn’t have to worry about how to realistically make their characters look 30 years older.

This strategy would suffer the drawback of changing the ending of the books after following the source material so closely for most of its run. An early, pre-time jump ending would either mean condensing the remaining books into only one or two seasons, or neglecting to answer some of The Expanse’s big mysteries surrounding the species that built the Protomolecule and the assailants who wiped them out. No doubt The Expanse, as well as its loyal following, would much rather see a full nine seasons, with writers finding a workaround for the time jump ahead of season 7 so that the Rocinante crew aren’t lumbered with fake wrinkles, nostril hair and bad backs.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/expanse-season-6-end-book-time-jump-why/

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