Good news Beltalowda! The Expanse Season 4 has set a premiere date on Amazon. Sadly, it's at the very end of 2019. But consider it an early Christmas present.
The Expanse team was at 2019 San Diego Comic-Con, and revealed a bunch of new intel.
The Expanse Season 4 premiere date: Friday, December 13.
We also have the first teaser:
Here's Amazon's synopsis for The Expanse Season 4:
With the Ring Gates now open to thousands of new planets, a blood-soaked gold rush begins, igniting new conflicts between Earth, Mars, and the Belt. Meanwhile, on one unexplored planet, the Rocinante crew gets caught in a violent clash between an Earth mining corporation and desperate Belter settlers as deadly new threats from the protomolecule emerge.
Amazon also shared a full clip from The Expanse Season 4, showing the Roci landing on Ilus:
The Expanse Season 4 added some new cast members, per TVLine, including Lyndie Greenwood as Dr. Elvi Okoye, Rosa Gilmore as Belter refugee Lucia Mazur, Keon Alexander as a charismatic Belter faction leader, and Jess Salgueiro as a corporate security officer.
The Expanse has had a wild ride to this point. It's based on the novels by James S. A. Corey, the pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. There are eight novels so far in the series, so it was a shock to fans (and the cast) when Syfy cancelled the series after three seasons. The Expanse fans launched a movement to save the show, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos -- a fan himself -- got Amazon to pick up the show for Season 4.
The Expanse Season 4 started production in October 2018 and the first episode will be called "New Terra":
Last year, showrunner Naren Shankar talked to io9 about The Expanse moving to Amazon for Season 4:
I think we’re in real strong continuity at this point. Anybody who’s read the books know that the books change pretty radically, sort of season by season. We’re in book four now, and if you’ve read book four, that is set entirely on one of the alien worlds beyond the rings. We’re not going quite that far, to, just completely do that as the entire season. But I think one of the strengths of the show is that it keeps changing. But—hopefully we’re doing our jobs right.
Naren Shankar expanded more on that topic, giving fans hints of what's to come:
Without giving too many spoilers [laughs]—there’s so much that is juicy from this point on. One of the great frustrations when we thought we’d been canceled at the end of season three was that the end of the third book is really the end of the first big movement of the series. Which is, after spending a lot of time inside the solar system, this gigantically important thing happens that opens up an entirely new frontier for humanity. And that starts happening in book four. Yeah, the book itself is completely restricted to the storyline on this new planet, Ilus, and a huge portion of the new season [is based on] book four. But we’re also creating material [that takes place] back in the solar system, that reflects on the events on Ilus. It’s stuff that isn’t in the book, but it actually bridges books four and five going forward. There’s a whole bunch of things happening that are sort of referred to, obliquely, in the text, but we’re bringing them to life and actually playing storylines back in the solar system simultaneously.
There should be a lot more story to tell after The Expanse Season 4, so here's hoping it gets a big audience and Amazon renews it for however long it takes. The fun begins December 13.
