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The Expanse Season 4 Trailer Takes Humanity to the Stars
A new trailer has been released for season 4 of The Expanse. Set in the far future in a solar system completely colonized by humanity, the finite and dwindling resources are stunting the human race’s further development, and threatening to spark a war between the various factions of privilege and social positioning existing in uneasy balance throughout the various planets.
The Expanse is based on a novel series of the same name by James S. A. Corey (the joint pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), with each season roughly corresponding to the events of one book. Following such a structure, the upcoming season will be based on the fourth novel Cibola Burn, where countless new worlds are now ripe for exploration through a series of wormholes to which humanity was afforded access at the end of the third season. On a new planet, tensions mount between independent settlers desperate to leave their old lives behind, and greedy corporations eager to exploit the planet’s resources. Considered by neither side is exactly what happened to the civilization that once claimed the planet as their own, but has since been utterly destroyed.
The trailer was released on the YouTube channel of Amazon Prime Video, and gives fans a little more idea of what they can expect from the season. Like the previous trailer, no plot points are revealed and little context is given for what's shown, but it’s made clear that there will be just as much drama and action as fans have come to expect. All of it is juxtaposed by JFK’s famous 1962 speech at Rice University, often referenced as “We choose to go to the Moon,” calling for unity among US people in support of the Apollo program and the potential of scientific advancement.
An independent production by Alcon Entertainment, the series previously aired on Syfy, who last year chose to not renew the series due to a restrictive licensing agreement only giving the network first run linear rights, meaning people needed to watch the show live for it to be successful, an increasing challenge in a world where people increasingly view TV shows via digital and streaming means. It was picked up by Amazon a couple of weeks later, and finished filming earlier this year.
Since The Expanse is produced independently and then sold once complete, the series itself its quality will remain unchanged despite the change in the network on which it will be initially showing, which the trailer goes some way to confirming as a part of what we can expect from season 4. The use of JFK’s speech is simultaneously fitting and ironic, since while the optimism it calls for is seen in the potential of humanity having access to countless worlds across the galaxy, the advancement the speech promised started to fizzle out after the achievement of the Moon landing, to likely be paralleled in the human race’s tendency to turn on itself and squander the opportunities it's been given.
