The Expanse season 3 finale recap: Congregation/Abaddon’s Gate
By Drew Koenig
The Expanse ends its third season with blood, betrayals, and darkness and opens up the next season for some truly exciting possibilities.
This is it. The end of The Expanse‘s third season has arrived and in a drawn fashion perfectly befitting the rather solid season that it has led up to.
“Congregation” begins with everyone still reeling from the speed change from the previous episodes, but in better spirits now and more well off now that all of the injured have evacuated to the Behemoth with Ashford in charge as the captain as Drummer recuperates.
On the Rocinante, the crew, plus Reverend Anna, have captured Melba Koh before she could do any damage to the ship and are now trying to decide what to do with her. Amos wants to shoot her; Anna wants to bring her to justice. Ultimately, they bring her to the Behemoth to be locked up.
Once there, they hand her over to the OPA, UN, and Martians and swiftly move onto other pressing business. Naomi wants to know what happened to Holden and Ashford would love to help her but first he needs her to fix critical sections of the ship. She reluctantly agrees and goes to work.
In the brig, the Martians and the OPA are trying to get information out of Holden. Ashford agrees to tell him what happened to the Roci if Holden explains what has been going on. Holden tells him everything that’s happened since Miller appeared to him and Ashford leaves, assuming that this is all the ravings of a madman.
After Naomi gets finished with the repairs, she goes to visit Drummer, who should be in a coma so her spine can be repaired but is instead retrofitting a brace that will allow her to walk around the station and help. Naomi explains the situation to her and Drummer agrees to help her see Holden.
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On the bridge, the UN offers to detonate a nuke within the ring in the hopes that it will unwedge the ships from the ring and let them return to the solar system, which of course only serves to illicit a reaction from the station and put them all at risk.
Ashford, thinking back on his conversation with Holden and what he saw in the station, realizes that the only way forward is to completely destroy the station and them along with it so that no one else from their universe can provoke it in the future.
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“Abaddon’s Gate” picks up from that point with Ashford putting his crew to work on enhancing the power of the emitter and ultimately puts Melba to the task, who has been let out due to her technical expertise in these matters.
Back in the brig, Naomi and Holden have met back up and are trying to find a way out of this.
Holden tries to get back into contact with Miller again and finally seems to, although we don’t see this. It is enough to form a plan, however. Ashford soon finds out that they’re talking to Holden and Drummer warns that people will soon be coming after them.
Holden lets Amos and Alex know their side of the plan and Amos recruits Anna into it. They rush off to enlist Monica, who was filming the documentary on the Rocinante, into broadcasting something for them.
Ultimately, their job is to get Anna to make people feel comfortable with turning the lights off in the ship while Holden and Naomi do their side of the plan. Bobbie and her team of Martians arrives soon after and tries to get them to stop. The Martians open fire and Bobbie is forced to turn on them to save Alex and Amos.
Elsewhere, Holden, Naomi, and Drummer are making their way up to the bridge to reset the systems when Maneo drops in on them in a Martian suit and attacks them. Drummer stays behind to take them out, along with herself, and almost does before Naomi drops an elevator on him from high above.
Making it up to the deck, Holden and Naomi beg Ashford to shut down the emitter. Ashford calls out an order to have them shot. Melba, wanting to do something good for once, attacks Ashford and the other OPA soldiers and resets the system, but not before being shot herself.
With the ship no longer as a threat, the station reacts in a completely different way from before, now opening up portals all around to different worlds.
Holden suspects this was the plan all along, but now has to wait to see if humanity is actually part of that plan.
Next: The Expanse recap: Fallen World
The Expanse returns with season 4 on Amazon. Let us know what you thought of the finale and the season as a whole below in the comments.