Some significant changes are coming in Season 4 of the hit science-fiction series, The Expanse. The show follows a colonized solar system in the distant future that has pitted the people of Earth, Mars, and The Asteroid Belt against one another.
After years of fraught peace between the three groups, Season 4 is about to witness a clash of people and ideas. With the terrifying protomolecule on the loose, and the discovery of thousands of Earth-like planets like Ilus — the Rocinante crew is about into run into a world of trouble.
This season, Holden (Steven Strait) and his crew are going to find themselves colliding with Adolphus Murtry (Burn Gorman). Murtry is the violate chief of security for Royal Charter Energy (RCE), who has his own reasons for being on Ilus. Ahead of the Season 4 premiere of The Expanse on Amazon Video — blackfilm.com visited Toronto to chat with Gorman and series creator, Ty Franck (co-author of The Expanse novels with Daniel Abraham under the name James S.A. Corey). We discussed Murtry’s devious motivations and why this season of The Expanse echos the Western expansion in North America.
“The best characters have grey areas,” Gorman reflected on Murtry’s dark nature. “Even the leads on The Expanse are morally complex. It’s a beautiful thing to come into, particularly on an established show where people aren’t like ‘I’m the good character, and you’re the bad character.’ It was an exchange of ideas and actions. As somebody coming in to visit, I was very welcomed, and it was effortless to start exploring the character.”
If you’re a fan of The Expanse novels, then you know what obstacles Murtry is set to confront in Season 4. For Gorman, it was all about unpacking the military man’s motivations. “I knew that Murtry was head of security for the Royal Charter Energy (RCE) from Earth,” the Game of Thrones alum explained. “The Ring has opened, and they’re going to go through and start exploring new worlds. Murtry is going in with a personal agenda and a military agenda. He’s there to take care of business.”
More than just taking care of business — Gorman was tasked with understanding the roots of Murtry’s dark side. “There is one particular scene where Amos (Wes Chatham) and Murtry are in a bar,” Gorman recalled. “Amos recognizes that kindred spirit — he recognizes the fact that Murtry gets off on death and certainly on violence. As a military man, he’s in charge of men, and he will do anything to complete the mission. There is a numbness about Murtry. He’s willing to dispatch someone very quickly. Life becomes slightly cheap, and I think Murtry’s numbness makes him the most dangerous type of person.”
Watching Amos and Murtry see themselves in one another on-screen was particularly gratifying for Franck, who created these characters. “The first person we see Murtry kill on film, there is a satisfaction to it,” the novelist and executive producer explained. “He has been looking for someone to punish for what happened to his shuttle. That’s the thing that Amos recognizes — that satisfaction that comes from that act of violence. I think very early on Amos is the one who recognizes how dangerous Murtry is before everyone else.”
Though Gorman has an extensive filmography that includes everything from Dr. Who to Pacific Rim, it was still exhaustive work to step into Murtry’s boots. “It really helped that Murtry’s story begins with this great catastrophe,” he reflected. “There is a massive wreck, and he loses lots of people, and he’s injured pretty badly. I started from that point. I thought, ‘What does a man who is ostensibly in charge do when he’s lost men and women?’ He’s already failed as a military man because he’s not bringing everyone home. Where does it go from there? To me, it’s get better, find out who did it, get retribution, and take control of the situation. That’s how I examined Murtry’s motivations. Then, Holden and his team turn up, and it’s not ideal. Murtry is still a wounded animal at the point. His leg is still shattered, and he’s not actually firing on all cylinders. It was quite interesting to play somebody that is a little off-kilter.”
For Franck, having the series moved to Amazon after it’s cancellation at Syfy, has enabled fans to connect with book characters like Murtry that we wouldn’t have otherwise met. It’s also served an opportunity to watch seeds planted in the early seasons of The Expanse blossom.
“We’ve always been playing a long-game with the show,” he explained. “Naren Shankar, our showrunner, very early on wanted to know the long arc of the story. He’s always been excited to lay in hints that aren’t going to pay off for episodes or sometimes even seasons later. It’s exciting to start paying off some of that stuff.”
Season 4 of The Expanse has an overarching theme. “It’s pretty evident that we pull from the Western expansion in North America,” Franck said. “It’s a reflection on how damaging it was for the people who already lived there. We talked about manifest destiny and imminent domain. There’s this idea that it doesn’t matter what you have —if you think you have a good enough reason to take something, you take it. It’s like the railroad going across the West. It didn’t matter that you had a farm or whatever, they plowed through, and they just owned it. That plays out with RCE and the government charter that they have. That’s what Murtry continues to say — ‘We have a government charter.’ It doesn’t matter who was there. That’s the colonization conflict played out over and over throughout history.”
The Expanse Season 4 debuts December 13, 2019. Keep following blackfilm.com for our extensive coverage.
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