The Expanse's Marco Inaros Isn't the Villain You Think He Is

The Expanse's fifth and penultimate season debuts this week and brings with it Marco Inaros, the charismatic and compelling Belter leader who has big plans to shake up the balance of power in the galaxy. Introduced in the show's fourth season, Marco is a freedom fighter or terrorist, depending on whom you ask, running a militant splinter faction of the Outer Planets Alliance. He also has a history with Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. The drastic and deadly actions he takes make it easy to consider him a villain, and many fans think of him as are a reflection of modern politics. ComicBook.com spoke to the series's creators, who say they were taking a longer view of things when they came up with Marco.

"There have been a lot of folks who have looked at Marco Inaros and thought we were making some pointed comment about contemporary political leaders," says Daniel Abraham, co-author of The Expanse novels and executive producer of the television series. "But in point of fact, we were drawing from pre-classical history. It's just that this guy keeps showing up, this charismatic, charming, ambitious, audacious, immoral leader."

Co-author and executive producer Ty Franck adds, "I kept bringing up the power of audacity, that people like Alexander the Great won battles against much, much, much superior, numerically, forces just because he was audacious. He would do things that nobody else would do. He would take risks nobody else would take. And so he was constantly surprising these larger forces. You pull that forward, and you create that character who's just more audacious than everybody else. He's willing to take risks nobody else will take, and people go, 'Oh, that seems like this current thing.' And no, that guy existed 3000 years ago. But, but I think more than anything else, you have to understand why people follow him, and I think the trick of the season was crafting a character that does what we consider terrible things, but you absolutely understand why he has followers. You understand why people are loyal to him. That's the tricky part."

Keon Alexander brings Marcos Inaros to life in The Expanse television series. He says he didn't connect Marco to Alexander the Great, drawing on more recent but not contemporary political figures instead. Based on what he told ComicBook.com, it seems like he was born to play the role.

"I didn't make the link to Alexander the Great then, but I personally already felt a link to Alexander the Great and already had an affinity with that storyline from when I was young," Alexander says. "Having that mythology already in the backdrop for me, as an actor, was super, super-rich. And then I sort of woke up to social injustice at a pretty early age, and when I was young, I used to write mock speeches and things. At that point, I drew inspiration from a few different sources, from Martin Luther King Jr for the oration, from Malcolm X, for the fire, and even a bit of Mandela for the heart.

"Having those figures, those powerhouses of human beings whose voices, even their voices alone resound with us, in my system, it was very easy to drop in when the time came to click all those pieces in place. But a part of my research especially was Malcolm, for sure. In that, I think there's a fire in Marco. There is a willingness to be the taboo, to put your neck out, to break through the currently existing boundaries, and not play along, in a way. I think there is a fire in him that I really could connect to in listening to a lot of the beautiful recordings that we have from Malcolm."

He goes on to say that painting Marco as a villain may be too simplistic. He sees it as a symptom of modern political discourse.

"I think that one of the struggles we're facing as a human race right now is being able to accept others who have differing opinions, without villainizing them," he says. "We get really black and white when it comes to differing opinions when it comes to different tacks, I feel like there's a huge and growing divide between left and right, and I think that one of the feats of this season is to really take somebody who is a big figure, who is a big personality, who takes a very, very strong stance and is willing to do whatever it takes to break through the structures of injustice that exist in the world and really show the multidimensionality of him, show the heart of him, show the pains of him, show the father that is so deeply committed to his son's future, that he wants to make sure that his son doesn't have to suffer in the way that he and his family had to.

"I think in any of us, if we were to look deeper into somebody that we use that V-word on -- and no, I don't see [Marco] as that -- if we were to look deeper into anyone that we've villainized, anyone that we've decided to see two-dimensionally, we could, if we were willing, see the human heart and the human needs behind it that are driving them. And even within our own families, differing opinions exist there because humans are different and choose different avenues. But at the heart of it, we are all humans trying to get by and do the best we can in this life, and I think that viewers are going to be really surprised about the different layers to Marco, as a father, as a leader, as a human, as a lover. And I hope that people will really question the use of that word, even though he is willing to take certain measures that we may not agree with. And I keep thinking back to the different heroes that we have in our history books and how we really focus on what they were able to achieve and what repercussions those achievements have for us as a society. But we don't often get taught about what it took them to get there, what sacrifices they had to make, and how dirty it got, or how violent it got. And so I think if we were to take a more 360 approach to our history and to human beings, we would probably see that it's not just black and white."

The Expanse returns to Amazon Prime Video with new episodes on December 16th.