13 Essential Early Expanse Episodes to Stream While You Can

Is Prime Video shoving The Expanse‘s first three seasons out of the proverbial airlock on Friday? io9 has been unable to independently confirm whether or not this is true, and a message previously appearing on The Expanse‘s Prime Video home pages for seasons one and three, warning that the content would soon be removed, is no longer visible. So perhaps, hopefully, this is a false alarm—or rather, a potent reminder to never take your streaming selections for granted. Even if The Expanse sticks around for now, there’s always a Willow scenario waiting to happen.

Fortunately, at least, there are a few more days this week you’re guaranteed to find all of The Expanse on Prime (the Amazon-released seasons four through six are presumably safe from any potential purge), and there’s also a Blu-ray set available for fans who’ve been scared into newly appreciating physical media. And it goes without saying that you should really watch all the episodes in order to fully let all the details of this wonderful sci-fi series, based on the books by James S.A. Corey, sink in. The action is fantastic, yes, but so are the little moments between characters, and the ongoing jokes, references, and details (Holden’s eternal search for decent coffee, Avasarela’s glittering wardrobe and colorful vocabulary, Amos’… Amos-ness).

But we’ve done our best here to narrow down the 13 essential episodes to keep you dialed into the plot’s biggest moments and twists, at least as far as the first three seasons go. Hopefully you won’t end up needing to refer to it, and the end result of all of this will just be a reminder of why The Expanse rules so much.

Season 1, Episode 1, “Dulcinea”

Obviously, you gotta start at the very beginning with “Dulcinea,” a well-calibrated introduction to the world of The Expanse and its characters—as well as the central mystery that drives season one’s intertwining plot lines. As tensions simmer between Earth (along with the Moon, it’s ruled by the UN), Mars, and the Belt, Earth-based heiress Julie Mao goes missing, and Ceres-based Belter detective Miller takes the case, a side job that escalates into a full-time obsession. We meet ruthless yet glamorous Earth politician Avasarala. We get an early glimpse of the protomolecule, something that will become so important in shaping The Expanse in this and future seasons. And most crucially, we meet the ragtag team that will become the crew of the Rocinante—Holden (from Earth), Naomi (the Belt), Amos (Earth), and Alex (Mars)—as they leave the ice hauler Canterbury to investigate a distress call, and are then forced into the first of many, many dangerous adventures.

Season 1, Episode 4, “CQB”

Now aboard a hostile Martian ship that picked them up after the Canterbury was destroyed—by ships of unknown origin, cloaked in highly advanced stealth tech—Holden and company are dismayed to realize those same stealth ships are now firing on the vessel where they’ve taken refuge. Also dismayed: the Martians, who evacuate Holden and his crew in the hopes that he’ll spread the message that the ships going around blowing up random targets aren’t from Mars. It’s in “CQB” that we first see the ship that will become the Rocinante (previously known as the Tachi), and we visit the massive Tycho Station, run by the controversial Fred Johnson—he’s from Earth, but he has ties to the Outer Planets’ Alliance, seen by some as a terrorist group—and home to another ship that will become important as The Expanse progresses, an enormous generation ship called the Nauvoo. 

Season 1, Episode 8, “Salvage”

The dominoes start to tumble as season one enters its final episodes. In separate yet connected storylines, Avasarala and Johnson pull on threads regarding the stealth tech mystery. The Rocinante follows the trail of the only known survivor of that ship that sent the distress call in episode one—it was Julie Mao, though they don’t know it yet. Their quest leads them to populated asteroid Eros; Miller, still conducting his own search, finds his own way there and encounters the Rocinante team for the first time. The search for Julie ends in a seedy hotel bathroom, where the realize she’s succumbed (horribly) to a strange blue radioactive substance that’s suddenly started popping up everywhere.

Season 1, Episode 9, “Critical Mass”

The curtain lifts on Julie’s journey as we get a flashback tracing her final (horrible) days—and her role in inadvertently becoming Patient Zero for the protomolecule, which her rich father Jules-Pierre and his cronies are hoping to weaponize. We also learn that Daddy Mao is behind the stealth tech that destroyed the Canterbury, part of a greedy scheme to spark a war between Earth and Mars. Despite learning of Julie’s death, her father instructs the scientists on his payroll to “proceed” with whatever their grand plan is, something we’ll learn a lot more about. “Critical Mass” is an exciting, satisfying episode that connects a lot of dots and fills in a lot of blanks—being based on a book series does a lot to help The Expanse avoid plot holes—while setting the stage for much more to come.

Season 1, Episode 10, “Leviathan Wakes”

The season finale is named for the first Expanse book, and while not a lot of forward momentum occurs, it positions several cliffhangers ahead of season two. The Rocinante escapes the protomolecule-infested Eros, with Holden and new passenger Miller receiving urgent treatment for radiation poisoning. Miller’s metaphysical connection with Julie Mao and the protomolecule itself begins to show itself here—and Avasarala begins to understand that Jules-Pierre Mao’s plan has infiltrated the highest levels of Earth’s government. Both situations may seem unrelated… but the protomolecule soon reveals how inescapable it is, no matter who you are or where your alliances lie.

Season 2, Episode 1, “Safe”

After the events of Leviathan Wakes, The Expanse logically plunged forward into the events of the next book, Caliban’s War—key word being “war,” something season one teased but season two nudged from Cold War Tension into We Are Now Destroying Our Enemies’ Stuff on the Regular. In this opening episode we meet Bobbie Draper, a young Martian soldier who brings a welcome blend of badassery to the show’s action; at first, she’s very pro-war, though her arc throughout the show offers a strong argument that even the most fanatical patriot—once exposed to other points of view—can become far more nuanced. (While still being a total badass, of course.) “Safe” also brings the flashpoint moment of Phoebe Station—the secret research facility where the protomolecule was developed—being destroyed by Mars during a skirmish with a UN ship, as well as the Rocinante crew deciding to stash the last protomolecule sample in a deep-space hiding place.

Season 2, Episode 5, “Home”

After Fred Johnson, Miller, and the Rocinante crew realize Eros needs to be destroyed—for one thing, they don’t want any curiosity seekers going there and expanding the protomolecule’s spread; for another, it’s been evolving in eerie ways, including learning to communicate. Their plan, so crazy it just might work, is to commandeer the massive generation ship Nauvoo, scorching the colonization plans of many Mormons, and use it to nudge Eros into the sun. This plan offers the biggest, earliest example of a lesson The Expanse underlines over and over: the protomolecule cannot be controlled. The team realizes their old pal Julie has somehow fused her undead consciousness with the asteroid and is steering it toward Earth. Miller must tap into his unique psychic link to her and convince her not to head “Home,” but instead to Venus—where its smashing impact spares billions of lives, though Miller sacrifices himself in the process. (He returns… sort of… with the protomolecule’s help, but that’s a story for a later season.) 

Season 2, Episode 6, “Paradigm Shift”

Three big takeaways from this one: first, we get a flashback to the inventor of the Epstein Drive, the technology that allowed humanity to greatly expand its space travel—and thereby colonize Mars and the Belt. We saw it used in the very first Expanse episode (complete with a cry of “Here comes the juice!”, a catchphrase from the show referring to the drugs used to help humans cope with the extreme speed), and now we know its origins. (It doesn’t further the current plot, but the background is important, and it’s also a nifty example of how The Expanse is always delighted to put the “science” in “science fiction.”) Elsewhere, we see Naomi only pretend to destroy the last protomolecule sample… and we see Bobbie, the sole survivor of an attack on her military unit, come face-to-face with a humanoid protomolecule soldier.

Season 2, Episode 13, “Caliban’s War”

Season two caps off a pair of arcs, one involving Bobbie and Avasarala (who become unlikely allies after being ensnared in Mao’s sinister plan, and their respective governments’ involvement in it), and the other involving the Rocinante’s attempt to track down a scientist doing secret protomolecule work on Ganymede, a former agricultural station that’s now in a state of chaos. Along for the ride is Prax, a biologist who believes his young daughter may be with the shady scientist. Again, we get some juicy cliffhangers to wrap up the season: an Earth-backed research ship trying to see what’s happening on Venus (strange things are afoot after Eros smashed into it) disintegrates in a very odd fashion; Bobbie and Avasarala make a dramatic escape from Mao’s baddies; Prax helps the Rocinante crew fight off a protomolecule creature that’s hitched a ride from Ganymede; we see yet another secret lab, this time on Io, where Prax’s daughter is one of many children being prepped for protomolecule-enhanced transformation; and Naomi ‘fesses up that not only did she not destroy that protomolecule sample… she handed it over the Belt, in the care of Fred Johnson.

Season 3, Episode 4, “Reload”

Amid a lot of political machinations at the start of season three—will Avasarala be able to get the truth out about Mao before full-on war between Earth and Mars breaks out? Will new character Anna, an old friend of the corrupt UN leader, be able to positively influence his actions? Will the rest of the Rocinante crew ever forgive Naomi for sneakily giving Johnson the protomolecule?—we see creepy experiments taking place on the kidnapped young subjects on Io. We also see one of those “this is gonna be huge later” moments when Drummer, Johnson’s fierce second-in-command, tracks down the wayward Nauvoo and appropriates it for Belter use.

Season 3, Episode 6, “Immolation”

This thrilling entry picks up the previous episode’s space battle between hostile UN and Martian battleships closing in on Io. The UN’s villainous head is finally removed from power, and even that slippery billionaire Mao is arrested. The kids, including Prax’s daughter, who have yet to be transformed into glowing blue lab rats are saved. We also see something lifting off the surface of Venus, which is both worrisome and intriguing. But you can’t leave “Immolation” off any Expanse essentials list, because it contains maybe the greatest fan-favorite moment from the entire series: Amos preventing Prax from killing the scientist who kidnapped his daughter, then telling the scientist “I am that guy”—as in, “I am that guy who’s going to end you.” The moment became so iconic that Expanse co-author Ty Franck and actor Wes Chatham, who played Amos, named their sci-fi podcast after it: Ty & That Guy.

Season 3, Episode 7, “Delta-V”

Forget the semblance of comforting familiarity you felt watching all Expanse episodes previous to “Delta-V.” Earth, Mars, and the Belt are still around, but there’s a whole new player now: the Ring, formed from that peculiar protomolecule structure that propelled itself off Venus. Naturally, all three sides hustle their ships to see what it’s all about—and as season three opens a new chapter, we meet some fresh characters, including a saboteur named Melba Koh, and scrappy OPA captain Ashford, who joins Drummer and Naomi (still estranged from the Rocinante crew) aboard the Behemoth (the rechristened Nauvoo). We also see a Belter zip his little ship through the Ring impulsively and immediately die in a ghastly splat of viscera. And aboard the Rocinante, visible only to Holden… somehow, Miller returns.

Season 3, Episode 13, “Abaddon’s Gate”

The season finale is, once again, named for the book that helped inform its plot. It takes several suspenseful episodes full of potentially devastating lapses in judgment for everyone to figure out the only safe way through the Ring is to enter very slowly—and even then there are massive injuries. The Expanse takes awhile to reveal that “Melba Koh” is actually Julie Mao’s sister, hellbent on destroying Holden to impress her father; she fails, but by “Abbadon’s Gate” everyone is looking at Holden very sideways for his claims of being able to communicate with Miller—or at least, a version of him created by the protomolecule—and having glimpsed an apocalyptic vision of the future.

However, Miller’s guise as “the Investigator,” as he later comes to be called, ends up saving the whole solar system when he tells Holden the Ring is well equipped to defend itself. In the nick of time, humanity puts its weapons down and thereby prevents its own extinction, and—thanks to Amazon’s intervention, perhaps ironically—The Expanse got to have three more seasons.

As season three ends, the danger has been diffused but the adventure has opened up… way up, as the Ring reveals portals to hundreds of other systems. There’s also a new mystery, as Miller tells Holden that the beings that created the protomolecule were annihilated by an unknown enemy. With an uneasy peace among humanity, the Rocinante shifts into exploratory mode ahead of season four—which, as fans already know, mostly takes place on an alien planet.

Share your favorite Expanse seasons 1-3 episodes (or moments, why not? There are so many good ones!) in the comments below.

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