On Feb. 6 at 4 p.m. PST, The Expanse is reportedly scheduled to leave Prime Video — not all of it, mind you. Just the first three seasons; those are the ones that aired on Syfy, before the show was rescued from cancellation by Prime. So while seasons 4-6 will stay on Prime Video, the beginning of the show will be gone.
This isn’t a sure thing. And there have been times in the past where streaming channels have totally reversed a show’s removal even when it seemed set in stone. The world of streaming library rights is bizarre and byzantine, and it’s a strange and confusing place to be in with a beloved show like The Expanse, particularly when it leaves half a show in its wake. It wouldn’t be alone, but that doesn’t make it easier to take. It’s just another reminder how helpless it can feel amid the carousel of content.
The truth is, for as much as they can feel interchangeable with archives, streaming libraries aren’t anything like that. It makes sense when shows that get rebooted or rescued by streamers go to live there forever (or the streaming timeline equivalent of it) — Gilmore Girls is still fully on Netflix after its revival, and Leverage is on Prime Video with ads after Redemption started up a few years ago. But even when it feels like the rights line up just as you’d expect, the capitalism of it all makes it slippery. Just like the old Hollywood practices they stem from, these shows are part of a business, an intersection of culture and commerce that pulls back the constant tension between those two sides. And at the end of the day, streaming services don’t owe us access, even when they’re the “home” of those shows.
So much of modern life is about chasing preservation in some way — what does or doesn’t get saved by the apps we use; what moments we can remember forever; what favorites we can maintain, for whenever the mood strikes. It’s no surprise there’s a similar sentiment among media: For every silent classic or TV icon saved from being forgotten, there’s a million more whose film was corrupted, or whose records got taped over, or that just never made it to DVD. There was a time when The Expanse was a darling saved by the goodwill of Jeff Bezos himself. Now it’s just another show that might hop between sites as rights agreements lapse and renew.
All we’re really left with is accepting that in and of itself can be a beautiful thing — not the part where it’s bandied about and you never know if someday will be the day you click over and it’s gone, but the fact that it existed at all. The Expanse is a delightful sci-fi epic, marrying intergalactic political intrigue with grounded characters stepping up in the void of the cosmos. As it goes on it keeps layering in more world, and more complication. You might think Jared Harris’ accent is weird and off-kilter — it is! Just in a very specific “the Belter creole developed from very specific Earth dialects” kind of way. The cast is great, tackling physical and verbal power struggles with equal aplomb. And for my money, Wes Chatham’s Amos is an all-timer muscle character.
There’s no wrong time to watch The Expanse, a show that rather elegantly metes out complicated book lore (and drastically improves its source material’s start by both immediately introducing more conflict among the Rocinante crew and giving us Shohreh Aghdashloo’s spectacular Avasarala right away). Whether it’s leaving next month, next year, or next century, there’s no time like the present to wade into the thoughtful science fiction of its world and ponder how we, too, can step up in the face of bureaucracy and say no to the easy answer in favor of doing the harder thing (in this case: ignoring a weird but promising alien fungus). After all, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
All six seasons of The Expanse are streaming (for now!) on Prime Video. The first three may be removed Feb. 6.
