WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for The Expanse Season 5, Episode 6, "Tribes," available now on Amazon Prime Video.
Amos' arc in Season 5 of The Expanse has been exciting and revealing, but perhaps the most surprising part was his decision to visit Clarissa Mao in prison. Amos and Clarissa always had an implicit understanding of one another, and when the prison Clarissa is being held at is demolished by one of Marco Inaros' asteroids, that understanding enables them to easily work together as they respond to their suddenly changed circumstances. As soon as the crisis starts, Amos demonstrates how his unique perspective gives him the ability to deal with problems in a way others can't, adding even more layers to the character fans know and love.
Actor Wes Chatham, who plays Amos, sat down with CBR to provide insight into his character's thought process, including why Amos' lack of attachment to his identity is his superpower and why he relates to Clarissa Mao.
CBR: This season, Amos has several moments of wisdom. He discusses the churn, but also tribes and other things. He seems to understand people well and yet isn’t really comfortable with them. Is that a weird line for you to walk as an actor?
Wes Chatham: Well, yeah. So what he has went through in his past, which has also kind of become his superpower, is that he doesn't have an attachment to his ego or an attachment to his identity in a certain way. So it allows him to do the math faster than other people.
So you look at Season 5, and one of the scenes that was really interesting to me is the process of us getting out of the prison. And you start to see all these prison guards not willing to let go of their role as prison guards. They don't know that the rules have changed, the world has changed, so what they were holding onto is now irrelevant. At the end, [Amos] was saying, "Go find your daughter." And [the prison guard]'s like, "I got to stay with the prisoner." What he's saying is, "That is dead. That identity as a prison guard, that doesn't live anymore. It's gone."
And the reason that [Amos is] able to [let go so easily] is because it was ripped away from [him] at such an early age, [he's] never had it. So, in a way, it gives him more clarity because he can't connect, because he doesn't have the ego, the false self, the identity that we all crave. He's lost that, and so it gives him clarity, but he also has a problem with empathy, connecting in certain situations.
At the same time, this season, Amos spends a lot of time with Clarissa Mao, who a lot of other people would have written off. What, for you, made that connection work so well?
Well, first, we had to transport Clarissa back to Earth. And she was on the Roci for six months, and she worked in the machine shop with me. So as she worked with me, we got to get to know each other. And I realize that she's just been messed up by her father. She's just confused and that she's not really a bad person. The things that she was doing she was doing because she thought she was protecting her father. And also, Amos has done a lot of bad things and a lot of things that I could be written off [for] as well.
And so when he goes back to Baltimore and he's had the conversation with Erich and his work there is done and he's about to leave, he's sitting and overlooking the skyline and overlooking the bay, and he has the vision of Lydia with Amos as a young kid, and he realized how dark his life would have went if he didn't have Lydia in his life, how messed up he could have been. And in that moment, he realized, "Maybe I can be something for [Clarissa]. Maybe I can share some of this [with Clarissa]." So he didn't know how to articulate it, he didn't know necessarily how that was going to manifest, but he knew that he had to see her.
And he called Chrissy and he went to see [Clarissa], and the first thing he says is that the world is messed up and sometimes it messes you up. And so her body is paying for the sins of what she's done. She's in prison. She's paid that price. And what he's trying to do is free her soul and basically, say, "You did what you did. You're going to pay for that, but you don't have to live in this guilt and shame and regret. Let it all go and realize that we're not in complete control as we like to think we are, and there's a lot of things that happen to you and you were just reacting out of that. Doesn't mean that you don't suffer consequences for your actions, but what it does mean is it's not who you are."
An adaptation of the novel series of the same name by James S.A. Corey, The Expanse stars Steven Strait, Cas Anvar, Dominique Tipper, Wes Chatham, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Frankie Adams. New episodes of Season 5 premiere Wednesdays on Amazon Prime Video.