The Expanse Showrunner Explains the Major Character Death In the Season 5 Finale

The Expanse's fifth season comes to a close today in the season finale episode "Nemesis Games," now streaming on Amazon Prime. The show had more than one surprise for fans before wrapping up its penultimate season. SPOILERS for those surprises follow. "Nemesis Games," taking its title from the fifth book in James S.A. Corey's popular Expanse series of sci-fi novels, sees the Rocinante crew racing to save Naomi Nagata's life. James Holden rides headfirst into battle against the Free Navy forces of Marco Inaros while Alex Kamal and Bobbie Draper race to Naomi's location. Alex and Bobbie manage to get to Naomi in time to save her life, but it comes at a cost. The hard burn causes Alex to suffer a stroke that kills him in the pilot's seat.

Fans following the news around the show likely knew that The Expanse would write Alex off of the show somehow. In 2020, The Expanse production studio Alcon Entertainment hired an independent firm to investigate Cas Anvar, who played Alex, after he was accused of sexual misconduct. At the investigation's conclusion, Alcon decided not to bring Anvar back for the show's upcoming final season.

That left The Expanse's writers and producers with the challenge of finding a way to bring Alex's story to an end that serves the overall plot and satisfied fans. Speaking to ComicBook.com, The Expanse showrunner Naren Shankar says that killing off Alex allowed them to solve a problem they'd been discussing.

"We started talking about it very early in season five, actually, because as we were developing the story, what we realized is that we're telling a story about war and people who do very violent things and a group of people that we care about struggling to reconnect with each other and help each other and find each other in the midst of this tremendous cataclysm all around them," Shankar says. "And it started to dawn on us that we were telling a story about all of those things with no consequences. And it felt like we were running into that same old issue in science-fiction -- not only, but often -- this idea that certain characters have 'plot armor,' that danger to them isn't real, that consequences don't occur, that they don't really experience loss. And so we started talking about losing a major character on the show.

"And so they are tough decisions to make, but what it does is, at the end of the day it's a creative choice to really give context to what the characters are going through. And the loss of this character is so important, with the show at five seasons, in this way, saving the life of somebody else is something that hangs over the show going forward. And this is something that, dealing with that loss, dealing with how to continue and fight through it, that's part and parcel where you find our people in season six. So it's a tough thing to do. It's always a tough thing to do, but there's an honesty to it."

In that way, Alex's death builds on the themes this season first broached with Fred Johnson's surprising death in an earlier episode. Fred's death caught fans off-guard since he perished during an attack on Tycho Station that he survives in the novels. When Fred dies in the novels, it's in a manner similar to Alex's television death, suffering a stroke during a hard burn against the Free Navy.

"Those are changes from the novel," Shankar notes. "In the novel, Fred does not die in that raid on Tycho. And actually, Alex's death is how Fred dies, a book later. But again, we felt like a great opportunity to really make a really strong and poignant point about the kind of story that we're telling."

You can read our conversation with Shankar in full here. The Expanse's fifth season is now streaming in its entirety on Amazon Prime.