Expanding Your Horizons

THERE’S A WHOLE NEW UNIVERSE TO EXPLORE AS THE EXPANSE FINDS A NEW HOME. SFX VISITED THE SET OF SEASON FOUR TO FIND OUT MORE...

- Bryan Cairns

FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE AN ETERNITY, The Expanse ceased to exist. In a startling move, the SyFy Channel axed the futuristic science-fiction drama after its third season in 2018. Devastated viewers protested, gathered signatures for an online petition and raised funds for a plane to fly a ‘Save The Expanse’ banner around Amazon Studios.

Well, all that noise worked.

A few weeks later, Amazon Prime swooped in and rescued the critically acclaimed, beloved TV series. In fact, Amazon not only picked it up for another year but recently greenlit a fifth season as well. On the Toronto set of The Expanse last December, humbled showrunner Naren Shankar praised the dedicated fanbase for the show’s new lease of life.

“I’ve been on a lot of science fiction shows over the years,” Shankar says. “One of the things that happens when any sci-fi show gets canceled is fans say, ‘They should continue the show’. It almost never happens. What occurred when SyFy canceled The Expanse was remarkable. It was a fan community that we had engaged with. On Twitter, we would do live tweets with each episode, so there was a relationship – the extent to which people put their arms around the show and really banged the drum and got people to notice.

“From the banner over Amazon and sending a model of the Roci up into space, that was an amazing thing,” he adds. “It really got things snowballing. Cas Anvar and the rest of our cast, they jumped into it, too. It finally got to the voices of the people who could make decisions, who loved the show as much as all of us did. To have a really great outcome, it was a remarkable, remarkable thing.”