The Women of The Expanse ep. 14 - “Babylon’s Ashes”

Let’s find out what the girls, women, and non-binary people of The Expanse did in season six, episode six, the series finale, “Babylon’s Ashes”.

Transcript: 

The Women of The Expanse podcast, ep. 14 - “Babylon’s Ashes”

Introduction 

Welcome to The Women of The Expanse podcast. I’m your host, Didi. 

So, the series finale of The Expanse aired last week and already the fandom is discussing whether the show ‘stuck the landing’. I’ll leave the whole ‘stick the landing’ conversation to people who get paid to talk about TV. It’s not really interesting to me. But I will say that I felt more satisfied by this finale than I did after watching the finales of all them other shows y’all love to compare with The Expanse. The show that’s been called “Game of Thrones in Space”, managed to wrap things up fairly well for this book reader. I hope that maybe now we can stop making these comparisons when one show is clearly better. 

As for the much-maligned cold opens in Laconia, I see them as a follow-up to the mass exodus of Martians and their technology during seasons four and five. Where were those Martians going? Well, they went to settle planets beyond the Rings. Laconia is one of the settlements where the Martian way of life is taken to the extreme. That, plus the protomolecule experimentation leads to dangerous consequences for the entire solar system, as shown in books seven through nine. So for me, the cold opens served as a bridge that connected the Martian storylines from seasons four and five to the final sixth season. It also introduced us to Admiral Duarte, a character we’d only previously heard Sauveterre talk about. And we needed to know who he was before he hammered one of the last nails in Marco’s space coffin. It can make narrative sense whether you’ve read the books or not. But people like to complain. That was gonna happen either way. 

Now let’s find out what the girls, women, and non-binary people of The Expanse did in season six, episode six, the series finale, “Babylon’s Ashes”. 

Cara

We start the episode in Laconia with Admiral Duarte gazing up at the protomolecule monstrosity of a ship. There’s a sense of success on his face as he watches the ship flash its blue lights on the planet. 

Cara’s parents, Gary and Dot, are waiting restlessly in their home. Cara comes back finally and the parents’ postures sag with relief. Cara apologizes for being gone so long and taking Xan’s body with her. But she didn’t know “how long it was gonna take to fix him”. Then the reanimated Xan walks in the door asking for a hug. Gary is freaked out by Xan’s black eyes with no iris or pupil, the paleness of his skin and the twitchy movements he makes ever so often. He pulls a knife off the kitchen table and cuts Xan’s hand. Black blood drips onto the floor. The wound heals right away. 

Gary locks Xan up in a cabinet and calls the soldiers on his hand terminal. They look around and Cara’s gone again. Dot goes out looking for her. They find her hand terminal in the woods with a recorded message. Meanwhile, Cara has gotten Xan out of the cabinet and is headed into the woods with him. Xan reminds Cara that she can’t eat anything in the forest. She’ll die out here. But that’s okay with Cara. She tells her brother that if she dies, “the dogs will fix her”. We see Cara through Xan’s eyes, shot through with protomolecule. One last look at the protomolecule ship above Laconia before we leave this story.

 It’s pretty much beat for beat what happens at the end of the Strange Dogs novella. 

ChrisJen Avasarala

Leaders from the UN, MCRN, the Belt, and the Rocinante are with ChrisJen on UNN One to make plans to engage with Marco before he gets to Medina Station. The Roci’s going to hit the rail guns at Medina while the other ships go after Marco. 

Avasarala meditates in her quarters until she gets a message about locating the Pella. She tells a nervous junior UNN soldier that she will not stay in the rear guard. She needs to be up front