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Season 3 of The Expanse will begin streaming free for Amazon Prime members starting Feb. 8, Variety reports. The announcement has been confirmed on Twitter by the program’s writers. Fans can expect season four to premiere later this year, also on Amazon Prime.
The Expanse began its life on SyFy in 2015, but was canceled in May of last year, mid-way through the run of its third season. That’s when Jeff Bezos swooped in to pick it up, transporting the entire production over to Amazon Prime.
Polygon caught up with the creators of The Expanse, Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham, who both write under the pen name S. A. Corey, at last year’s Gen Con tabletop gaming convention. They were on hand to promote the series’ new role-playing game from Green Ronin Publishing, which raised more than $400,000 on Kickstarter last August.
The pair had nothing but good things to say about working with Amazon. They claim the company has given more freedom than ever before. In fact, fans should expect some episodes to run slightly longer than they normally would have on cable.
“Some of the rules change when you go from a network to a streaming service,” Abraham told Polygon. “We’re not locked into an exact time the way that they were. If an episode runs a couple of minutes long, that’s not a deal breaker.”
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“We had to deliver a 42-and-a-half minute episode every week irrespective of what the story was,” Franck said. “Whereas like you’re saying with Amazon, if we deliver a 50 minute episode, Amazon’s like ‘Great!’ [...] And we don’t have to bleep out Avasarala, which is really nice.”
Fans of The Expanse are partial to Avasarala, played by actor Shohreh Aghdashloo, whose smokey epithets are a highlight of every episode. Fans of Destiny 2 might also recognize her as the voice of Lakshmi-2.
“It is a beautiful thing, when she unleashed on somebody,” Franck said. “It makes me happy every time.”