The Captive’s War Is Repeating The Expanse’s Biggest Villains, But In Reverse

James S.A. Corey’s The Captive’s War and the Prime Video adaptation will borrow one of the biggest enemies of The Expanse, with a few key details being reversed. While many phenomenal sci-fi books have come out in the 21st century, few are as critically celebrated as The Expanse by James S.A. Corey, the pen name of Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham. The stories are gritty, character-driven, and deep political conflicts. SyFy and Prime Video adapted six of the nine books for the small screen, bringing the story to an entirely new audience.

Consequently, the authors were propelled into fame, and they’ve used that to secure another space opera book deal and a Prime Video adaptation, which is currently in development. Their new book series, The Captive’s War, is also a space opera, but it is on an entirely different part of the spectrum. The series follows a group of humans from a foreign planet of Anjin who get enslaved by the Carryx Empire. They might seem like they’re cooperating from the outside, but inside, a rebellion is brewing. The plan for the book series is three novels and two novellas.

So far, the novels The Mercy of Gods and The Faith of Beasts have released, as has the first novella Livesuit. For the most part, The Expanse and The Captive’s War are more different than they are similar. The new series contains slow pacing and a cerebral writing style, plus a ton of alien species. That said, The Captive’s War is borrowing The Expanse’s Ring Gate entities, aka the Dark Gods, but they’re switching two major details around in the process.

The Deathless Enemy In The Captive’s War Has Shades Of The Expanse

By the end of The Captive’s War book series, the “deathless enemy” might appear less grand and all-powerful than it seems at the moment. Based on the first two books and the Livesuit novella, the deathless enemy has many similarities to The Expanse’s Ring Gate entities. At the moment, they both seem like the mysterious boogeyman lurking in the shadows.

In James S.A. Corey’s first book series, the dark gods killed the protomolecule creators millions of years earlier, and there’s no known way to kill them. They aren’t inherently violent, but they are ruthless when it comes to their goal of destroying the protomolecule. Similarly, the deathless enemy are older than humanity and nearly impossible to kill. They don’t seem to be a threat to every alien race, but they are relentless when it comes to the Carryx.

The Ring Gate entities are technologically advanced enough to destroy all the ships going through the rings, and the deathless enemy are on par with the Carryx when it comes to technological advancement. In fact, they have enough power to be resurrected when the ship comes back to life in The Faith of Beasts, though the exact mechanics of this are unknown as of the second book. Both species’ knowledge seems endless, as well, with the deathless enemy knowing how to use the Swarm to possess others and spy on the Carryx.

By the end of The Expanse, there’s no explanation of where the dark gods came from or how old they are. I’m sure they will reveal this information about the deathless enemy by the end of The Captive’s War, as they’ve taken a very different narrative approach from its predecessor. However, at the moment, the deathless enemy have been around for millions of years, and we don’t know what they are, let alone where they came from.

The Captive’s War Is Flipping The Script

Although the Ring Gate entities and deathless enemies feel like they’re cut from the same cloth, The Captive’s War flips the script on who’s working together. The Ring Gate entities are very much the enemy of humanity in The Expanse because the humans traveling through the Ring Gates are stealing energy from the other realm. They also oppose any humans in favor of using the protomolecule. If the humans gave up the rings and protomolecule, everything would most likely be copacetic. Or, at least, they wouldn’t be directly against each other.

In contrast, the deathless enemy is an ally of humans because of the phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” They have allied with the greater human civilization long before the Carryx discovered the humans on Anjin. Now the Swarm is helping the humans enslaved by the alien species. Interestingly, the deathless enemy and The Captive’s War have biochemical parallels to humans, and some of

The Biggest Difference Between The Deathless Enemy & Ring Entities

After The Faith of the Beasts, there are a lot more questions about the deathless enemy than there are answers. The books contain so much ambiguity that different theories have emerged about who the deathless enemy really are, with most of them falling into small groups.

One group thinks the Carryx’s enemy is an ancient AI. Much of this comes down to the ability to possess other species and come back to life with the power of the ship. Another group thinks that the deathless enemy are actually another group of the Carryx, with the two sides fighting against each other. This would explain why both are equally technologically advanced and have existed as long as the other. A similar but separate group believes that the Carryx created the deathless enemy so they could take brutal actions. The last major group, which I’m a part of, thinks that the deathless enemy are the livesuits.

Regardless of the correct answer, though, the deathless enemy will end up very different than the dark gods. The Captive’s War confirms that the deathless enemy have bodies. The corpse on the ship looked like a human. The series also describes their appearance as having a hard, crusted epidermis, a blackened look, and a fivefold radial symmetry. These seem to be proxies. However, we will more likely than not have a direct reveal in either the second novella or final book. From start to finish the Ring Gate entities were an unseen force, which felt more like an inevitable part of nature, like gravity or humans breathing.

Cast

Steven Strait, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Thomas Jane, Cas Anvar, Frankie Adams, Cara Gee, David Strathairn, Keon Alexander

Created by

Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck

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The Expanse