What’s happening with The Expanse season 6’s Laconian dog, and how does it set up (what’s left of) the show’s future? Season 3’s grand Ring Gate opening changed everything for The Expanse – both in terms of the Sol system’s in-universe fate, and the TV show’s narrative trajectory. Suddenly, colonists from Earth, Mars and the Belt began flocking to fresh star systems. One such system is Laconia, and The Expanse season 5’s finale showed a fleet of Martian defectors making a bee-line in its direction, hoping to reignite the dying Mars dream on a planet untouched by their predecessors’ mistakes. The massive alien warship hanging in the sky just waiting to be reactivated probably didn’t hurt either.

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Every episode in The Expanse season 6 thus far has opened by keeping up the with Laconians. In episode 1 (“Strange Dogs”), Cara – the young daughter of two researcher colonists – played happily with the local wildlife, but accidentally killed a Laconian sunbird that fell from its nest. In episode 2 (“Azure Dragon”), Cara’s calamitous antics continued. First, she tried using a drone to restore the sunbirds’ nest, but only succeeded in crashing the device. Then she went to bury the dead creature from episode 1, only for a strange dog to whisk it away in its mouth, seemingly as a tasty snack. In The Expanse season 6, episode 3 (“Force Projection”), Cara returns to find the drone mended and the deceased sunbird miraculously revived… but different

Cara correctly deduces that the Laconian dogs “fix” broken things they come across. The drone she smashed up in episode 2 is perfectly functional again come episode 3, but Cara doesn’t question how the creature managed to patch up a machine. Even on Laconia, dogs don’t hold degrees in electrical engineering, but a telltale blue glow teases what really happened – the animal used Protomolecule to make its repairs. When James Holden and the Rocinante crew explored Ilus in The Expanse season 4, they discovered the Ring Gate’s builders had been there first, many millennia ago. As evidenced by the alien warships in orbit, Laconia is obviously another former Ring-builder settlement in The Expanse. Though likely not somewhere the Protomolecule is readily available (otherwise the Martians would be mining the stuff like hyperactive moles instead of bargaining with Belters), Laconia’s strange dogs are clearly connected to the Protomolecule in some way.

Previous seasons of The Expanse have shown how the Protomolecule bonds to biological hosts and seeps into ecosystems – just ask Eros Station. That might explain how Laconia’s dogs intuitively know how dead and broken things can be reactivated. Capable of recreating advanced patterns, reassembling matter, and improving upon the original design, the Protomolecule then does the rest, whether that be restoring a drone’s wing, or reinvigorating a bird’s dead body. Alterations in the bird’s physiology might indicate “enhancements” the Protomolecule is making of its own accord. In The Expanse season 4, the Protomolecule hidden aboard the Rocinante activated latent subterranean Ring-builder technology on Ilus. The sample Mars’ defectors received from Marco Inaros (stolen from Fred Johnson in The Expanse season 5) perhaps did the same thing for whatever the ancient aliens left behind on Laconia.

Julie Mao and Joe Miller both temporarily cheated death thanks to the Protomolecule, but neither was quite themselves afterwards. The Expanse season 6, episode 3’s Laconia sequence ends with Cara’s brother Xan dying in an accident, and given her recent sunbird experience, we can assume Cara will try having the Laconian Protomolecule dog perform its resurrection trick on her sibling’s body. Even though this process appears different to how the consciousnesses of Julie and Miller embedded into the Protomolcule, will Xan become another enhanced hybrid forever changed by a biological brush with the Protomolecule?

The Expanse season 6 airs Fridays on Amazon Prime.

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About The Author


Craig Elvy
(3630 Articles Published)

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Craig first began contributing to Screen Rant in 2016, several years after graduating college, and has been ranting ever since, mostly to himself in a darkened room. Having previously written for various sports and music outlets, Craig’s interest soon turned to TV and film, where a steady upbringing of science fiction and comic books finally came into its own.
Craig has previously been published on sites such as Den of Geek, and after many coffee-drenched hours hunched over a laptop, part-time evening work eventually turned into a full-time career covering everything from the zombie apocalypse to the Starship Enterprise via the TARDIS.

Since joining the Screen Rant fold, Craig has been involved in breaking news stories and mildly controversial ranking lists, but now works predominantly as a features writer.
Jim Carrey is Craig’s top acting pick and favorite topics include superheroes, anime and the unrecognized genius of the High School Musical trilogy.

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