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I loved the look on Avasarala's face when she was talking to Monica. Slight smile, being pleasant, then the moment she turned around the smile was off and a bit of an eyeroll came through. Alternatively have a "Rocks fall, everyone dies" scene and end it. When the girl came home to find her brother(?) dead(?) I literally did the "oh no! Anyway" meme. Given how short this season is, they should have just skipped that shit entirely. For a second when Bobbie fired that last missile, I thought they were going to take him out quickly like GoT did with the Night King. Unfortunately, it looks like we're stuck with that pompous asshole until the end. That last scene implied that the Laconians are supplying them with RSR-G6, like a new kind of ship or a weapon? I couldn't really tell. I hate to say it, but introducing a new element at this stage of the game is kind of bad writing. If we're starting a pool on who finally kills Marco, I'm betting on Filip.

Exactly! Marco is a ideological revolutionary. As shown with the administrator of Ceres, he has no aptitude or concern for governing. He's glad that the fleets will be attacking now since fighting is the only thing he knows how to do. He thinks he's Napoleon, but he's really... who, Napoleon III? Trotsky?

Steven Strait looked very gaunt. His jumpsuit and tee-shirt were hanging off him, and his beard looks really patchy. I kind of wonder if the actor is doing this to both show the stress of the current situation and to hint at maybe the character's massive radiation dose back on Eros is coming back to haunt him. I was really hoping Marco would space Filip, though second-in-command's suggestion of making him swim in shit for a few hours sounded good too. Especially if they forgot to give him any breathable air. Marco's out and hair continue to look ludicrous, but I really dislike the eyeliner. How could anyone mistake him for a charismatic leader? Same here. Until the Azure Dragon assault, I was getting the impression that this episode was another move-the-chess-pieces setup like Ep 1. It was giving me Game of Thrones S8 conniptions. I'm still concerned they'll try to wrap up too much shit in the remaining 4 episodes. I mean, kill Marco and Filip but leave some of the other stuff open for the inevitable Expanse: The Motion Picture that Amazon will put out in a couple of years.

Poor Filip, developing a guilty conscience and acting out... I so don't care. You murdered millions, I want you to die is a painful and undignified waste disposal accident. Same with Marco. I thought his clothing last season was ridiculous, but I see they've upped the ante. Honestly, how are they going to resolve both this Marco BS and whatever is happening on Laconia in 5 more episodes? We're also waiting on some follow up to the final scene of the previous season where the rebel Martian warship got smeared into goo after entering the Laconia gateway. [I haven't read the books past Cibola Burn so this is speculation not based on source material] I'm concerned that whatever is going on in Laconia will become a Bigger Threat (tm) that Earth, Mars, and Teh Free Navy have to band together to fight.

I'm glad this show is back! I realize they have to keep Marcos to be the Final Boss, but couldn't they have killed Filip off-screen between seasons? The character is awful and the actor isn't the best. Have him die of something fitting, like choking to death on his own vomit while on a spacewalk, or a lethal yeast infection.

That whole thing was such an anticlimax. I thought the set-up for his mysterious activities was done really well, but the resolution was very "that's it?"

Sharon being the Power Broker has some logical inconsistencies and plot holes in-universe. I think that most people who guessed she was the PB did it for Doylist reasons: with both F&WS and WandaVision, they've taken two main-line characters from the MCU movies, but otherwise limited themselves to tertiary characters (Darcy, Jimmy Woo, Sharon). They weren't going to introduce a new character for the Power Broker, or bring in anyone major from the movies, so Sharon wins be default. Wildly speculating that she realized Super Soldiers were more trouble than they were worth? I don't know. I don't remember if she was there for Zemo's "yes but there was only one Steve Rogers" speech about Super Soldiers, but maybe she believed that. More likely, it was poor writing in an effort to cover up the twist. A failed effort. I read that scene differently -- the bounty popped up immediately after [name I can't remember] died -- I assumed she had it preprogrammed as a sort of fail-safe. None of the Madripoorian criminals would want to kill her because they'd know they'd become the target of an instant bounty hunt. Of course, our heroes were unaware of it so shit hit the fan. I kind of wish they'd spelled it out though.

My immediate reaction was "Teddy Kennedy wearing a neck brace". I thought the arm in a sling was for show to the press/congress, but he was still wearing it at Lemar's family's house. That was so random. I thought it was a hook for season 2. Hopefully she's NOT the Power Broker, because (as I mentioned last week) introducing your main villain with 20 pages left to go in the novel is bad writing.

Great episode! I loved Zemo's comments on Super Soldiers. Also loved Sam telling Karli she was behaving like a supremacist. She seemed to be processing it, like maybe considering he had a point, before Walker barged in. I'm about 58.3% (roughly) convinced that Sharon is the Power Broker. Barring that, it'll be one of the following: Not revealed at all A Big Deal reveal at the end of Ep 6, either as a cliff hanger or post-credit. Shows up next episode and plays a part in the conclusion of the Flag Smashers' arc Kevin Feige has stated that you don't need to watch the TV shows for the movies to make sense, so I doubt it's (2). It'd be really bad writing to reveal the Power Broker in ep 5 -- that's like having a character introduced in the last 20 pages of a whodunnit turn out to be the murderer. The show is going for the Robert Carrow angle on power: That's basically a paraphrase of what Erskine said.

Given the current status of nobility in Germany and most of eastern Europe (i.e., virtually irrelevant), it is quite surprising that he has loyal staff, money and access to both. Exactly. He's sitting on a fortune and it hasn't been confiscated to pay for, I dunno, reconstructing the buildings he blew up in Geneva? All of the stuff with "Baron" Zemo is such an implausible retcon I'm having a hard time swallowing it. Even his motivation of hating super-soldiers is a retcon. His motive in Civil War was to get revenge on the Avengers. The super soldiers were a means to an end.

Wow, what an episode of conveniences bordering on contrivances. Zemo happens to be wealthy and able to fly them where ever they need to go. Zemo knows who to start with in Madripoor despite having spent several years in prison. Sharon happens to be in Madripoor and happens to be in the area to save their asses when things go south. Zemo again happens to have a place to go in Riga. Bucky happens to see the Wakandaball lying on the ground and knows to follow the breadcrumb trail. Having lived in Indonesia for 2 years, every single scene set in Madripoor took me out of the story. Does the costume department not have access to Google Maps? Indonesia is on the equator. It's freaking HOT and WET there year 'round. No way is any bounty-hunter for hire wearing a leather coat and wool cap. Everyone was way too layered; hell, our intrepid threesome wore the same clothes there as they did in Riga, Latvia. I realize the scenes for both were probably shot in Prague, but still that was LAZY costuming. Also, no inhabited city in Southeast Asia would have an empty highway for them to drive in on, no matter what time of day. Should have been wall-to-wall traffic on their way into Lowtown.

I'm much more interested in the Flag Smashers than the main protagonists. My guess is they'll turn out to be actual Robin Hoods, stealing from the Power Broker (?) and giving to the refugees, and our good guys will have to team up with them at some point. The moving trucks fight made no sense to me. Bucky jumped onto the lead truck, opened the back, and had a good look around inside, and the trailing truck had NO REACTION. Did the driver of the second truck not see anything? Also, Walker and his buddy should be dead. Neither is a super soldier, so falling off a truck moving that fast would have killed them both. Certainly Walker wouldn't have been able to walk it off.

I was having a hard time following the sequence of events with Drummer's betrayal: She pulled a gun on [Smug Marco Toady whose name I forgot] and fired a torpedo hitting another ship. Not sure which one. She blamed it on a malfunction and requested immediate help. Another crewmate tried to free Smug Toady, who then got cracked in the skull Drummer lured another ship (the MCRN frigate I think) in close and blasted it with all weapons, destroying it. The Roci attacked the heavy destroyer, and with assistance from another Belter ship destroyed it. Right? I think the Martian's mined the exit from Ring-space to the Laconia system. So Marco has control over every other ring gate including the one to/from Sol. Clarissa's tentative "Hi" to Holden sold the scene. He looked utterly baffled.

Second to last episode of the season and I'm wondering how they're going to wrap any of this up. Then I remembered how lazy the last episode of S2 of The Boys, was, so now I hope they don't wrap very much up at all. Filip's ignominious death in a space-toilet related accident will be sufficient. I noticed in this episode that the aspect ratio kept changing, so Earth / Luna was in wider screen than the belt. Have they been doing that all season, and if so, why? Artistic reasons or budget? That scene surprised me, since I had assumed that Filip knew Naomi made it to the other ship and had been covering for her. I was also surprised by Marco's popped collar and belted jumpsuit combo. He looked like a really bad Elvis impersonator and it was very distracting. Me neither, for different reasons. Only 3 rocks hit the planet., and from the scenes where Marco and crew were covering them with stealth tech, they didn't look that big. The K-T asteroid was 10-15 km wide; the one's Marco used only seems a couple of hundred meters, so I figured the damage would be more localized (except for tsunamis). I just think their goal should have been more realistic, like getting to Chicago or Denver. No matter how well developed Luna is, it' won't have the capacity to take many refugees. I previously thought he was getting a redemption arc because he let Naomi go and lied to Marco about it. Apparently he was just too dumb to realize she escaped, so that's not going to happen. Now I'm just hoping that he gets food poisoning and dies a pointless death.

Out of universe, they put the tampering sensors on there to increase the drama, since otherwise Naomi would quickly retake control of the ship. In universe, I don't get it. Why put anti-tampering sensors on what was supposed to be an unmanned ship? It's set to have the reactor explode when another ship is in proximity, so there wouldn't be any opportunity for someone to get inside.

I get what they're doing with Marco / Filip, the emotionally abusive parent who thinks the child is just an extension of himself. Add that Marco is leading a murderous cult (I keep thinking of that group that set off sarin bombs in the Tokyo subways), and it could be an interesting story. Unfortunately, the acting is sub-par and it's just gone on WAY too long. I am glad we got to hear why Naomi abandoned Filip -- she really didn't, which is much more in keeping with her character. Marco reacted to the destruction of the Zmeya like they really lost the protomolecule, so I'm guessing that threat is gone. At least I hope it is; protomolecule = doomsday weapon has been used enough on this show.

That had to have been a deliberate visual reference, right?

I saw this on Twitter so I can't verify because I don't speak German: “Do you remember the day Frederick, Chloe put her hands out of the car window. we found the perfect place at the river, in the shadow of an apple tree. it was the first time that Chloe ate fresh apples.” So, flashing back to when she and Fred Vought went for a drive with their daughter.

Also, where did she keep her phone? In a previous episode Stormfront complained that Vought didn't let them have pockets in their costumes, and her costume has twice as much material as Maeve's.

Up until the denouement, the entire episode took place in one day. Hughie and Annie visited Maeve, got the info from A-train, returned to the lair and published it during the "gearing up" montage. Simultaneously, Homelander and Stormfront were taking Ryan to Planet Vought then to the cabin. While at the cabin, the shit hit the fan about Stormfront. The show itself never showed any of Stormfront's supporters expressing those views. They did show that she was immediately and universally despised. You can assume it was a lot more divided than that but the show didn't include any subtlety.

Did they bring in Benioff and Weiss to write this episode? That was just a little too pat and vaguely unsatisfying. Too many resolutions felt convenient and unearned: In a few hours, A-train stole the files, got them to Starlight, they got published, everyone on the face of the planet read them, believed, them, and turned on Stormfront. Maeve turning up out of the blue to beat up Stormfront. How did she find them? I guess she could have found out from someone at Vought, but how did she get there? She doesn't fly nor have super speed. Maeve turning up again, with perfect timing, to blackmail Homelander. At least that one was set up with the Go-Pro footage in an earlier episode. Edgar blaming everything on Stormfront, and the public immediately buying it. There were a few parts I enjoyed. I liked that the congresswoman was the head-asploder, though I'm not getting her motivation. If her goal was to get the president to create the Office of Supe Control and putting her in charge of it (separation of powers be damned), how did her attack on the hearing further that goal? It was counterproductive, and she only achieved her goal by sheer luck. When Starlight, Maeve, and Kimiko were kicking the shit out of Stormfront, I thought to myself "I get it, 'girls get it done'." Then I rolled my eyes when one of the characters actually said that because the writers didn't trust the audience to put it together on their own.. I enjoyed Homelander's story to Ryan about flying away. It gave him a nice bit of humanity. I also thought that Butcher had inadvertently turned Homelander against Edgar / Vought when H started interrogating the Vought security guys. They could still go that way but it doesn't look like it.

Agreed. Also, she might not have much choice. Becca and Ryan are living inside a well-disguised laboratory. The Vought people in charge of it can decide to limit Becca's access to the internet, computer games, and pop culture in general. She couldn't show Homelander: Origin to Ryan even if she wanted to without approval from Vought. She's as much of a prisoner of this gilded cage as Ryan is.

I got a chuckle out of Stormfront (or might have been Homelander) suggesting taking Ryan to the Vought theme park. They're like an evil version of Disney. So, Disney.

I wonder how many of these plot threads are going to be resolved next week and how many are hooks for next season. Right now I'm seeing NOTHING getting resolved. Maybe Maeve will escape but that's it. I like that they set up long-term plot lines but I wouldn't mind if they had a few short term ones also. Oh, I know: Starlight will forgive her mother. A plot line that I don't really care about.

It was really weird to hear the C word coming out of Mrs. Patmore's mouth. She's a long way from Downton Abbey. I need to insert that meme of "when someone you don't like makes a good point" here. Homelander wasn't wrong when he told Becca that they were making the same mistake with Ryan that Vogelbaum did with Homelander. Granted, Ryan has a mother, but he's still being reared in almost total isolation. Homelander and Stormfront certainly went about it the wrong way, but they weren't completely off base. Speaking of Vogelbaum, I was surprised to see him alive. I figured Homelander killed him last season after squeezing the truth about Ryan from him. "My daughter looked like that 80 years ago. It seems like yesterday." Stormfront is the queen of manipulation -- she had to already know about Ryan, so she just conned Homelander into introducing them to each other. Ryan will be one more way for her to control him. Who is making the heads asplode? I don't think it's Cindy from last week's episode. Whoever is doing it is working to keep the government off of Vaught. I'm guessing it's an undisclosed power of Stormfront's. Regardless, it's going to be damn difficult to blame this incident on foreign terrorists. Maeve attacked Black Noir -- did she kill him? It looked like she kicked his epi-pen away. If he's not dead, then he can rat her out for helping Starlight escape. I guess she just doesn't give a shit about anything any more. Starlight only blasted Noir once. I guess they were saving the VFX budget for the head game in the last scene. She should have blasted and blasted and blasted him until he was a cinder.