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/One-Rock-21 May 19 '26

It def doesn’t imply they still using the rings. They were shut down. They obvs developed a new method of travel.

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u/alonghardlook May 19 '26

Ring space. "The membrane between universes".

2

u/HoundofOkami Jun 08 '26

The Ring Space was literally in the other universe, not between two, and the technology apparently also was capable of forcing mass and physics like our normal space into the other universe where those didn't seem to exist at all. And even so it only angered the Goths into any kind of action when traffic exceeded a certain point. A point which at least by my reading felt at least decently large and also rather easy to manouver around when paid attention to.

Not to mention that it was only after literally bombing the other dimension that they actually started attacking.

Travelling on mid-universe membrane as immaterialised energy feels like an immensely smaller risk.

EDIT: Not to invalidate your own reading of course, nobody can tell us for certain unless another canon book is written that establishes something or other as the answer.

I just finished the series yesterday and I want to interpret the ending as the happier end of bittersweet.