Review: 'The Expanse' Aims for Epic Finale in Season 6

The sixth and final season of "The Expanse" premieres Dec. 10 on Amazon, and it makes you grateful all over again to Jeff Bezos for rescuing the show after SyFy was ready to drop it. (Gripe all you want about billionaires gallivanting off to orbit; salvaging "The Expanse" and giving it the budget it needs to shine was a gift to this terrestrial world.)

About five months have passed since the end of Season 4 and the surprising, out-of-nowhere death of Rocinante pilot Alex. (Actor Cas Anvar was jettisoned from the show in the wake of multiple allegations of sexual harassment.) Jim Holden (Steven Strait), the commander of Rocinante, takes over piloting duties, but he's also got to hold the crew together –�no easy task, given that new member Clarissa Mao (Nadine Nicole) has a hard time coordinating with the others. Naomi (Dominique Tipper), Holden's romantic partner, struggles with PTSD after the events at the end of Season Five, and she isn't concealing her dislike for Clarissa.

The ship's internal social dynamics are almost as fraught as the political turmoil of the solar system, which is now in a state of war. The "belters" (denizens of the outer solar system), enraged and resentful after centuries of privation and exploitation at the hands of the resource-rich "inners," have thrown themselves – and a series of asteroids – at their longtime oppressors. As rocks from the depths of space rain down on Earth in strike after devastating strike, the planet suffers a "nuclear winter," leading to crop failures and increasing pressure on UN Secretary-General Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo).

The leader of the belters' Free Navy, a charismatic and ruthless strongman named Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander), is the sort of con man who dresses up his aggression as being for the benefit of his followers, but as his tactics begin putting belters in danger (or outright leaving them behind), his son Filip (Jasai Chase-Owens) – who also happens to be Naomi's son – begins to have doubts about the righteousness of his father's cause.

Filip is far from the only belter Marcos has alienated with his authoritarian ways. Camina Drummer (Cara Gee), captain of her own ship and head of a polyamorous family, pits herself against Marcos in open revolt. Drummer has no love for the inners, but can she survive having made herself a foe of Marcos without creating some sort of alliance?

Marco, meantime, has a passionate hatred for Holden and the Rocinante, and Holden, as ever, is compelled to get himself into the thick of things, so it's inevitable that the two alpha males are going to end up at each others' throats, with the fate of our solar system –�and thousands of others, now made available for colonization thanks to dangerous alien technology – in the balance.

With only six episodes to wrapt things up, Season Six sometimes feels rushed and tends to rely on genre and narrative cliches. Disappointingly, the aggressive form of alien life that made a shocking appearance at the end of Season Five and seemed to signal a whole new chapter of revelations don't play as large a part in this final season as the build-up would have suggested: The main dramatic thrust rests on the enmity between Marco and Holden, who stand in for their respective cultures.

Not that that's a bad thing to focus on. The season's full-speed intensity, and some excellent character work, means that the series is poised to finish up in a blaze of glory. For a hard sci-fi show that's so consistently smart, politically savvy, and technically scrupulous, that's saying a lot. "he Expanse" remains one of the best... of not the very best... of a too-small set of high-quality, serious small-screen sci-fi.

"The Expanse," Season Six, premieres on Amazon Dec. 10.