With everyone regrouping, Season 5, episode 7 of The Expanse, ‘Oyedeng’, focuses in on the past, and a mother’s attempt to save her son from fanaticism. *Warning: Spoilers Lie Ahead!*
Throughout The Expanse’s run, the show has tended to mainly follow one character, with sections where the narrative goes off briefly into someone else’s back story for a while. In the past we have seen the story revolve first around Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) and James Holden (Steven Strait), and then in later seasons much more of Holden, with everyone else sort of secondary elements.

This season it seems like the storylines are much more diverse and we are spending far less time with one protagonist, and Holden especially is very much in the background. Given the quality of writing in The Expanse, it should be no surprise that this approach works extremely well still, and doesn’t feel like anything is being forgotten or that it is focusing on weaker characters. If anything it shows the amazing depth that exists in this universe, and just strengthens the investment you have in the story.
In ‘Oyedeng’, the smaller stories involve Bobbie (Frankie Adams) and Alex (Cas Anvar), who only have brief scenes where they relay information to Holden, Chrisjen (Shohreh Aghdashloo), and Holden himself. After last week’s episode where there was a lot of attention on Amos (Wes Chatham) and Clarissa (Nadine Nicole), they do not even appear this week, so presumably are recuperating on Earth.
Despite their brief scene, Bobbie and Alex continue to be a great double act, and show that there is so much more to come from this pairing. At the moment they are merely an informational conduit for Chrisjen and Holden, passing on the scans they took of the Belter fleet, but it does bring these groups up to speed as to what is going on in the other plotlines. Obviously, Amos and Clarissa are the most in the dark, but they will surely arrive with a bang pretty soon.

Holden for his part, along with Bull (José Zúñiga) and the crew, do inject this episode with its dose of ‘space battle’ as the Rocinante finally catches up with the Zmeya. Desperate to stop Marco (Keon Alexander) getting his hands on the protomolecule, they engage with the Zmeya, but don’t quite get the result they were expecting. There is clearly more to the Zmeya’s story than we’ve seen, and Marco must have layered in a contingency.
At present, Marco seems to have to use a number of contingencies, as much of ‘Oyedeng’ deals with the thorn in his side, Naomi (Dominique Tipper). Despite her earlier effort, and failure to kill Marco, she is still trying desperately to save her son Filip (Jasai Chase Owens). Throughout much of this episode the focus is firmly on Naomi and her pain, as well as some more backstory to the early years of Filip’s life. These events have been mentioned, but never fleshed out entirely, so there were some interesting elements that we learn here that really give it some depth.

Tipper is excellent and adeptly shows the heartache and depth of her suffering as she had to make hard choices in her youth. Her scenes with Cyn (Brent Sexton) are especially wrenching and Sexton equally delivers, painting a vivid picture of their individual pain they have carried for so long. They also then deftly weave the details of Naomi’s mental state and actions back then into a plot twist that mirrors them, leading to tragedy for Cyn. No doubt this will haunt both Naomi and Filip, who witnesses it.
If there’s one flaw here, it’s that we don’t know enough about Filip’s psyche, and he is still relatively painted with a broad brush. He is clearly under the influence of his narcissistic father, and has so far failed to break with that. While over the past few episodes we have seen some depth from him, most of his scenes with Naomi have focused on her past actions, and haven’t revealed too much of his pain yet. Hopefully this will become more apparent and we’ll get to see the full extent of his emotions and his motivations at this point.
That is a minor quibble though in what was yet again an extremely accomplished episode, and ‘Oyedeng’ leaves you in no doubt that The Expanse is firing on all cylinders. It seems that whether they rely on one central character, or go off on tangents, the overall story of the solar system is still incredibly engaging. With only 3 episodes left, this is bound to come crashing together into an equally impressive finale.