Amazon renews The Expanse for final season: release date, cast, more

The Expanse has been renewed for a sixth and final season on Amazon Prime, the sci-fi drama’s showrunners confirmed on Nov. 24. Here’s everything we know about Season 6, including a release date, and which cast members will be back.

The Season 6 renewal comes just three weeks out from the premiere of The Expanse’s fifth season. The Dec 16 release will be the second helmed by Amazon after the Prime streaming platform saved the series from cancellation back in 2018.

The Expanse will now come to a second, more final ending with its sixth season. 

Amazon Studios television co-head Vernon Sanders said he hopes fans enjoy a “satisfying conclusion to the series,” one the streaming platform believes “they deserve.” He added the production team has a feeling fans will “love how seasons five and six unfold.”

Here’s everything we know about the sixth and final season of The Expanse so far; including an Amazon Prime release date, the plot of the final episodes, and which cast members are expected to return for the show’s last hoorah.

Season 6 release date

While The Expanse Season 5 has a hard and firm release date ⁠— the season will begin airing on Dec. 16 ⁠— the final season may be a little harder to pin down. 

There’s “tentative” plans to begin a shooting run in late January, 2021, Deadline has reported, but the penciled-in dates, and an expected late 2021 release date, are all “subject to change amid fluid global conditions.” Amazon has yet to lock in a specific date.

• Read more: Why Kate Mara never returned to American Horror Story

If things go according to plan, however, The Expanse Season 6 should arrive a year after its earlier season. That should put the last season around mid-Dec. 2021.

Cas Anvar won’t be returning

The biggest news ahead of Season 6 production is that Cas Anvar will no longer be a part of The Expanse heading into 2021. The star, who played Martian pilot Alex Kamal, has stepped down following several allegations of abuse and harassment.

He will still be included in the show’s fifth season, however. It is not yet clear if his character will be killed off during Season 5, which was filmed pre-allegations.

The rest of the cast, led by Steven Strait (Holden), will all be back. This includes Wes Chatham (Amos), Dominique Tipper (Naomi), Frankie Adams (Bobbie), Cara Gee (Drummer), and Shohreh Aghdashloo (Avasarala).

• Read more: Bo-Katarn to return to Star Wars animation in The Bad Batch

Expanse showrunner Naren Shankar is also set to return for the final season, and will see out his tenure as the space opera’s leading helmsman in Season 6.

The popular Amazon series is based on a number of books by James S.A. Corey. The literary franchise’s last installment, ‘Leviathan Falls,’ is not expected out until mid-2021. It will be the ninth book in the series.

The second-last season of The Expanse is just a few weeks away. Amazon is expected to drop three episodes, as they do for most blockbuster launches on their streaming platform these days, on Dec. 16. Season 5 will run for 10 episodes.