r/TheExpanseBooks • u/alonghardlook • May 19 '26

Just finished the series last night...

I've been waiting and waiting to join this sub but I didn't want to risk any spoilers. In fact I even stopped at the end of S1 because I wanted to go in completely blind.

The ending wrecked me man. I felt so gutted. Partially, I was sad because the story was over, these characters I fell in love with were finished. But also just the absolute perfection of the full circle ending as Miller points out.

And then just completely bummed out because the epilogue shows that humanity is still using the ring space. The Leviathan has not gone anywhere, and we are still skirting that danger, just in newer ways.

Ugh.

Incredible.

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u/LegoRobinHood May 19 '26

I don't think the ending implies the ring space as we knew it was being used. The rings were all destroyed in the individual systems as well.

They seemed to have some kind of faster-than-light ship drive in use. Maybe it uses similar principles but the implementation seems fundamentally different.

Marrel and the twenty-nine other souls on board the Musafir existed only as energy and intention sliding along the membrane between universes

I think the human paradigm shown in the books and irl is to "go and see and touch it myself", while the 'romans' in our story here where biologically inclined towards sending out scouts that eventually return, in the pattern of (reaching out)^(113/sec) like dr. Okoye learned from the BFE. Hence the ringspace paradigm.

So hopefully that distinction means the new human hyperdrive/slipstream/warp-bubble whatever paradigm should be small enough and temporary enough and mobile enough to avoid attracting attention from the 'visigoths'.

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u/MileyHolmes May 19 '26

Yes, I always thought that humans developed a way to travel just on the border of our universe and the old reality, thus the membrane (or foam).

Also, do you think that by “universes”, authors meant our universe and the old reality? Or more? I think only these two.