WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the first three episodes of The Expanse Season 5, available now on Amazon Prime Video.
These first three entries of Amazon Prime's The Expanse Season 5 are filled with gripping character development and a catastrophic rise in stakes as Marco Inaros' plans to unite the OPA against Earth and Mars has begun to come to fruition. But even with all that going on, the creative team managed to drop in subtle homages to other great pieces of pop culture, including Stanley Kubrick's classic adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining.
Season 5 finds the Rocinante's pilot, Alex Kamal, returning home after being absent for years. He was serving as the pilot of the mining vessel The Canterbury before getting wrapped up in Holden's mission to uncover the protomolecule conspiracy. He initially refused to contact his family back on Mars, mostly out of fear of how they would respond, but finally reached out in Season 4.
His estranged wife made it clear he was no longer welcome, but his son claimed he was proud of his father. Out of a sense of obligation, Alex to leave to finally return to Mars while the Rocinante went under massive repairs at Tycho Station following the damage it incurred during the Ilus incident in Season 4. Unsurprisingly, Alex was met with hostility from his wife, but a video chat with his son revealed that he wasn't interested in Alex's presence in their lives, either.
This led Alex to reach out to the only other friendly face he still knew on Mars, ex-marine Bobbie Draper. However, Bobbie was wrapped up in her espionage work for former U.N. Secretary-General Chrisjen Avasarala. She eventually let him in on her work and Alex agreed to help her investigation if only to prove her suspicions about his former superior incorrect.
To his dismay, Alex figured out something was, in fact, amiss with the Martian military and attempted to gather intel under the guise of a dinner date with Lt. Babbage. It was clear to both of them that they were using the other for information, though neither would outright admit it, playing through the act of spending a charming evening together.
After the date, Alex went back to his hotel room, where he was jumped by former Martian military in league with Babbage. They dosed him with truth serum and interrogated him before Bobbie came to the rescue. The moments before his ambush were filled with a tangible sense of dread, and this was in no small part due to the choice of carpet in his hotel hallway.
Eagle-eyed viewers will recognize the carpet's pattern as the same one that featured prominently in the haunted Overlook Hotel in The Shining. In the classic horror film, young Danny Torrence rode his tricycle down halls covered in this seemingly innocuous pattern as he was tormented by the lost souls of the Overlook and eventually, his own deranged father.
This was absolutely an intentional choice. The episode where Alex got jumped was directed by former castmate, Thomas Jane and he deliberately used the Overlook's carpet in the hallway to subconsciously signal the imminent danger Alex was in. To people familiar with The Shining, it was like an alarm bell going off, but even to those who haven't seen the film, there is something inherently eerie about this retro carpet pattern.
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.