If you loved For All Mankind's "Mars is ours" rallying cry, then The Expanse's "Remember the Cant!" should be your next chant. The two shows take place at very different stages of humanity's journey into space. For All Mankind depicts the early days of establishing life beyond Earth, while The Expanse presents a future where entire colonies have flourished, new civilizations have emerged, and fleets regularly travel to parts of the Solar System that the astronauts of For All Mankind have yet to explore.
What both series share, however, is the understanding that space colonization is not solely about technological progress. Moving humanity beyond Earth does not erase social inequality; if anything, it makes those issues even more urgent. In a realm where essentials such as air and water are limited resources, society becomes vulnerable to unrest when basic needs are not met equally. For viewers invested in Season 5 of For All Mankind and its struggle for Martian independence, The Expanse offers an even deeper exploration of what can happen when the needs of the working class are sacrificed in favor of those in power.
The Expanse begins in 2350, when space colonization is massively successful across the Solar System. Earth is now governed by the United Nations, while Mars remains an independent military power. Because of their differing missions, Earth and Mars are constantly at odds with each other and are secretly engaged in an arms race to secure as many resources as possible. However, Earth and Mars do not carry out the resource extraction themselves. In between them are the Belters, a community of working-class people living in the Asteroid Belt who are tasked with mining the resources Earth and Mars require.
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You're a systems thinker who can't help but notice the seams in things.
The wasteland doesn't reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That's you.
You'd survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn't have it any other way.
In the beginning, The Expanse is told through the experiences of three vastly different people across multiple storylines in the early episodes of the series. Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) is a private security detective investigating a billionaire’s daughter's disappearance. James Holden (Steven Strait) is a former Executive Officer of the Canterbury, an ice-hauling ship destroyed by a mysterious stealth ship. The destruction of the Canterbury worsened tensions between Earth and Mars, each blaming the other, while Belters protest over the loss of their people. UN Deputy Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) believes it may be Mars or Belter terrorists, but suspects a hidden third party. Together, they are bound by the destruction of Canterbury and uncover a larger threat lurking in the shadows of the Solar System as well.
Despite having advanced spacecraft, both For All Mankind and The Expanse highlight socioeconomic divisions between laborers, intellectuals, and governing bodies. As a refresher, Season 4 of For All Mankind first explores this divide at Happy Valley through former oil rigger and Helios worker Miles Dale (Toby Kebbell). Instead of the stable, well-paying job he expected that would support his family, he finds himself reduced to a glorified, underpaid repair worker. He and the other Helios employees living in the lower bunkers are also denied the same privileges as astronauts, facing poor communication with Earth, limited meals, and overcrowded living conditions. Together, these inequalities reinforce a rigid class structure even in space.
In The Expanse, the Belters function in a similar role to Helios workers. They are largely confined to dangerous manual labor, mining asteroids for ice and other essential minerals, even as their output is exported to sustain Earth and Mars. Having grown up in the Asteroid Belt under overcrowded and resource-scarce conditions, long-term exposure to low gravity also results in physiological weakening and a range of chronic health issues. However, unlike the Helios workers in For All Mankind, whose basic safety is still partially prioritized despite poor morale, Belters endure even harsher deprivation, with air and water supplies strictly rationed.
Where there is oppression, there is resistance. In Season 4 of For All Mankind, Happy Valley experiences two major protests, both stemming from dissatisfaction with work on Mars and governing bodies like M-7 prioritizing the asteroid Goldilocks for Earth, despite it being mined by workers living on Mars. This Earth-Mars conflict escalates in Season 5, where it is revealed that M-6 plans to replace 98% of the Martian workforce with automation, triggering the “Mars Is Ours” protests led by Martian residents. The Mars Peacekeepers aggressively respond as an aggressive police force, enforcing order with questionable tactics.
The Expanse scales this resistance outward through the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA). To the Belters, the OPA is a unionised voice of their own kind, but to Earth and Mars, it is branded as a terrorist organisation seeking to retain resources for itself. The OPA is also subjected to heavy policing, from security forces operating within the Asteroid Belt, "to maintain peace," to repeated accusations of sabotage and attacks on Earth and Martian fleets. Yet the OPA — and the Belters as an extension — are fundamentally people fighting for basic living rights in the Asteroid Belt.
This is where The Expanse becomes a kind of spiritual sequel to the latest Season 5 of For All Mankind. In the latter, the residents of Happy Valley have already built a strong, self-sustaining Martian civilization. However, it is still at the early stages of space governance and continues to struggle to establish equality. Meanwhile, The Expanse is set centuries later, where those same struggles have been left unresolved, and inequality has become fully entrenched and normalized. In that sense, The Expanse is a harsher and hypothetical “what happens next” scenario if the conflicts in For All Mankind Season 5 are left unattended — one where the promise of post-space-race unity fails, and human rights are continuously sidelined in favor of political and economic interests.
The disappearance of a rich-girl-turned-political-activist links the lives of Ceres detective, accidental ship captain and U.N. politician. Amidst political tension between Earth, Mars and the Belt, they unravel the greatest conspiracy.
