Mild spoilers ahead for the Season 3 finale of The Expanse on Syfy.
Season 3 of The Expanse has been a wild ride for the characters on the show and fans watching from home alike. The critically-acclaimed show was cancelled by Syfy back in May to the despair of viewers who knew that there was plenty more story to tell as well as to the cast who were already looking toward Season 4. The good news came less than two weeks later when it was announced that Amazon had rescued the series following an intense fan campaign, and the characters would be back for Season 4 on the streaming service. Of course, after the deceleration resulted in hundreds of deaths in the episode before the big finale, not all of the characters survived to the end of Season 3.
Fortunately, Cas Anvar, who plays Alex Kamal on The Expanse, recently spoke with CinemaBlend about Alex's journey over the years, what the end of Season 3 means for him, and what could be in store for Alex in Season 4. Anvar had this to say about Alex after Season 3:
I think that Alex starts to take himself more seriously. He starts to believe in himself. I think he's really grounded himself and rooted himself as a man. He knows who he is, he knows what he's supposed to do, and I think he starts to realize in Season 3 just the impact and the mistakes that he's made back home and I think that the man that Alex is, he's not the kind of guy that can ever shirk responsibility. He takes his responsibilities really, really seriously. I think he would try in some way, shape, or form to make amends. Just try and find some kind of healing, some kind of closure. Undo the damage that he may have done with his family back home. Without being unauthentic. He has finally discovered who he is and he embraces that. So while not giving up who he is, he would want to try to figure out how to undo some of the damage that he may have done.
For as entertaining as Alex has been from the very beginning of the series, he hasn't always been the most standup guy to his family back on Mars. His wife and son weren't always as high on his list of priorities as they deserved, and Season 3 takes him the farthest in realizing that he needs to fix some of what he did. Of course, the danger of the third season combined with the devastating deceleration in the final episodes may have cast some doubt on whether he would live long enough to make amends with his family.
Luckily, The Expanse didn't end the Season 3 finale on Alex's death and therefore leave fans on a serious downer heading into Season 4. Cas Anvar did tease that The Expanse ending after the Season 3 finale would have been "tragic" and left fans "salivating and frustrated," so viewers had reason to expect a cliffhanger could be on the way. Fans can thank their lucky stars (and Amazon) that the show was rescued from cancellation. Healing for Alex and his family isn't out of the question for Season 4.
Cas Anvar went on in our chat to explain how Alex got from where he was in the beginning to where he ended up by the third season:
Over the series, Season 1 and Season 2, he becomes what he was meant to be, which is the best fighter pilot in the system. And as he becomes what he is meant to be and he starts bearing the responsibilities of that title and that role, and being kind of the heart and soul of the Roci crew, there's a whole bunch of new things that start coming up and a whole bunch of new pressures and a whole bunch of new challenges and he starts to realize and recognize things from his past that he was a failure at, as a husband, as a father, and as a Martian. He has to confront those things and he has to face those things. In Season 1, he would never have been able to do that, he avoided it. Season 2, he was just starting to figure out who he is and he started to actually realize and recognize that he's kind of screwed up and he's kind of made a mess of things back home. In Season 3, he finally mans up and he finally has grown and evolved and matured enough to be able to actually say the things that he needs to say and be the man that he needs to be.
Alex's growth definitely hasn't happened overnight, and he simply wasn't operating at his full potential at the beginning. Sure, he was fun and could usually be counted on for a quip to lighten things up at the right times, but there was so much more to him if he would simply take the steps toward evolving as a man. The responsibilities thrust upon him in Season 1 that continued to build throughout Season 2 and into Season 3 forced him to change in a positive way. He still has some big steps to take to make amends to his family and fix some of his mistakes. Still, he's made undeniable progress, and we can almost certainly expect more steps forward in Season 4.
There was one inciting event way back in the first season that kicked off Alex's journey of self-discovery and growth. Here's how Cas Anvar described that moment that changed everything for Alex and the rest of the Roci crew:
And then he gets thrown into the fire in the beginning of Season 1 and they all do, and as it results, these four very very exceptional people have to rise to the occasion and perform at their absolute and complete potential or they will all die. Each and every one of them has to realize their full potential almost instantaneously and become who they're meant to be or they will all die, and Alex is no exception. He sits in the seat of the Roci for the first time when they're fleeing the Donnager and everything is going to shit behind him. This huge Martian battleship is being destroyed and self-destructing and he's in the Roci chair for the first time, flying it for the first time, and he's overwhelmed with this euphoria, and he breaks out laughing in this kind of almost hysterical, maniacal laughter, which is not laughing at the circumstances and the situation that is happening, which are horrible. It's kind of that human being having that epiphany of discovering what he was meant to do in an instant. Who he's meant to be, what he's meant to do. Discovering that and hitting you all in an overwhelming second, and it just causes that hysterical kind of euphoric laughter as he realizes, 'Oh my God, this is where I was meant to be.'
All things considered, there's a lot to be excited about for Season 4 and Alex's role in whatever comes next. The only bad news is that there is currently no premiere date for the fourth season and we can only speculate as to when Amazon will have the next batch of episodes ready to go. Nevertheless, we can still be very happy that there will be a fourth season to pay off on the ending of Season 3 and give us more of the characters' journeys.
Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for the latest in TV news. If you're in the market for some other shows not that The Expanse has come to an end on Syfy, check out our summer TV premiere schedule. For some Amazon Prime options, swing by our 2018 Amazon guide.
