Babylon's Ashes (The Expanse episode)
The series finale concludes the Free Navy conflict.
"Babylon's Ashes" is the title of the sixth episode in The Expanse's sixth and final season. It aired on Amazon Prime on January 14, 2022. Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck, and Naren Shankar wrote it, with Breck Eisner directing. The name comes from the sixth novel by James S. A. Corey. The episode follows the Rocinante crew and their allies in a final battle against Marco Inaros.
Quick Facts
- Series
- The Expanse
- Season
- 6
- Director
- Breck Eisner
- Writer
- Daniel Abraham
- Ty Franck
- Naren Shankar
- Photographer
- Jeremy Benning
- Released
- 14 January 2022
- Length
- 65 minutes
Facts from the source article.
Plot
Cara's parents are horrified to discover she used strange, dog-like creatures in the wilderness to resurrect her dead younger brother Xan, who returns home visibly infected by the protomolecule. After her father confirms his fears by watching Xan immediately heal from a knife wound, he decides to notify the soldiers. Cara and Xan flee into the woods, with Xan pondering why his parents were afraid of him. Aboard the Pella, Marco Inaros fools Camina Drummer's Belter attack fleet into attacking the wrong ship, crippling Drummer's fleet.
As the Pella moves away, Liang Walker crashes his ship into it in a suicide mission, badly damaging the Free Navy flagship. Inaros flees to the Ring and contacts renegade Martian Admiral Duarte on Laconia, but Duarte denies the Free Navy refuge, saying he has gods to kill. The Rocinante uses a remote-controlled ice freighter, the Giambattista, to deliver strike teams to the Ring Station amid decoy cargo containers. Bobbie Draper destroys the power source for the rail guns, rendering them inert.
Naomi Nagata suggests awakening the entities dormant within the Ring. She detonates the Giambattista's energy core, awakening the Ring entities, which obliterate Marco Inaros and his ship. Nagata is overcome with guilt, believing she has killed her son Filip.
Production
The episode was written by show creators Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck, and Naren Shankar, using the same title as the sixth book of the novel series, and directed by Breck Eisner. It is the sixth episode and 62nd overall episode of the series, serving as both the season and series finale. The episode draws upon both the sixth book and the 2017 novella Strange Dogs, and was filmed at the same time by Eisner. During a New York Comic Con panel, Shankar noted the difficulty of adapting the amount of detail from the sixth book and the novella, which translated to each episode being intense.
Franck and Abraham noted that every script was written with no fat, no extraneous material. Wes Chatham noted that the addition of Nadine Nichole's character Clarissa Mao serves as a way for Amos to reflect on his own growth as a person. Craig Elvy of Screenrant noticed a pattern of using the name of the novels from which each season was drawn as the title for the last episode of the season. Elvy believes that season 6's investment into the development of the Laconia plotlines will extend beyond the series' conclusion, noting that the camera's final focus on the Ring, with red flashing increasing, seems to confirm Holden's fear that the alien presence would keep growing stronger.
Polygon writers presumed that since season 5 covered the fifth book, it made sense for the series to conclude, otherwise the show would need to cover books seven through nine and account for a thirty-year time jump.
Reception
The episode met with significant positive response. Michael Ahr from Den of Geek noted that the finale delivered a satisfying but open-ended conclusion to the series, arguing that the series ended in the only way it could, with the looming threat represented by Duarte's alien shipyards on the other side of the Ring. Adam Park of CBR considers the final episode a bittersweet ending for the fans, recalling a panel discussion where actors stated the final season was a love letter to the fans.
Craig Elvy of Screenrant points out that frequent comparisons to Game of Thrones are not entirely undeserved, but notes that The Expanse adapted one book per season and told the story in a reasoned, paced manner, unlike Game of Thrones. Gary Catig of AIPT Comics considers the battles and expected tactics make for a first-person perspective with the intensity of a video game, and finds the quiet family meal scene heartwarming, but expresses frustration at the unresolved protomolecule plotline and the renegade Martians.
Vanessa Armstrong of /Film calls the finale satisfying but bittersweet, commenting that while the audience knows Filip left his father before the ship's destruction, Nagata believes her son was doomed by her own hand.
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