Fair warning: this recap includes spoilers for The Expanse, and they’ll go off if you don’t keep pressing the touch screen every minute—don’t say we didn’t warn you ahead of time!

Whoooooooooooaaaaaa. Okay. Deep breath. Let’s do this.

After the last episode sent the universe’s largest ship/religious institution on a collision course with no collision, “Home” had a monumentally difficult task on its hands. Eros was (somehow) moving, loaded with bombs, playing host to lovable old salt Miller (Thomas Jane), and holy hot damn did The Expanse nail this to the frakking wall.

After some initial confusion and a sciency-wiency explanation as to how the Laws of Thermodynamics are still totally in tact, Eros took off toward Earth. The UN scrambled in desperation, questioning whether AI tech from Mars was propelling the asteroid and crunching some quick numbers to decide that it was three times larger than the rock that killed off the dinosaurs. The people of Earth were not having a great day.

Errinwright (Shawn Doyle) called an MIA Mao (François Chau) to shout with furious impotency. The diplomat was backed into an impossible situation where he had to talk through the situation in the war room while pretending not to know exactly what was going on and who was behind it, even as Martian paranoia and saber rattling intensified. Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) handled the situation with far more grace, guiding the dozen minds with mankind in their hands through the hopscotch of changing scenarios.

The biggest change? The asteroid. Disappeared. From radar. This thing has some moves.

Naturally, Mars refused to help. Ice cold, Mars. Ice cold.

Meanwhile, Miller’s day was even worse. Trapped with a bomb that required babysitting, he took on the task of lugging it through the station to find the heart of the infection. The whole trek was delivered in arduous detail as Holden (Steven Strait), Naomi (Dominique Tipper), and the rest of the crew cheered him on from the Rocinante. She was key to this moment—imploring her compatriots to risk their asses for the guy willing to risk his, guiding him through the rougher parts of the journey even when the communicator was fritzing.

Inside Eros, Miller climbed a trillion ladder rungs (without planning his bomb/strap situation very well) and crawled deeper inside the belly of the beast. That included the casino, where a machine reminded us that “everyone’s a winner on Eros!” This did not seem to be true.

Miller dropping the nuke with a thud and his calm “Aw, crap,” was peak Miller. It was perfect timing, all things considered, to give us the best line reading of his entire run on the show.

Back on earth, Avasarala had the presence of mind and moment to convince her counterparts to hand over control of the ridiculous amount of nukes to Colonel Johnson, a.k.a. “a mad terrorist,” so that he could guide the missiles to their destination using Rocinante’s laser painting. As long as the ship had direct visual, everything was gonna be fine.

So…that didn’t happen. “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly,” right?

Eros sped up, forcing Holden to choose between failing earth and keeping his crew alive, or saving earth but flying the Roci at potentially fatal speeds. With Miller’s sacrifice on his mind, he made the call to juice them up to a 15 G burn. (This looked like it hurt a lot.)

With an evacuation looming, Avasarala’s recognition of the Rocinante’s crew’s sacrifice embittered her own desire to save herself by leaving the planet. Her husband Arjun (Brian George) wasn’t surprised by her decision, and they shared a sweet, tear-less goodbye with doom hanging in the air.

This whole episode was a ping pong match of failed plans and narrowed options. By the end, Miller was hearing the voices of the “dead,” and following a swarm of electric blue Will o’ the Wisps. The digital icicle effect was incredibly cool—the show never fails to impress visually—and we ended up finding good ol’ Julie Mao (Florence Faivre) herself at the very heart of the Protomolecule mass. The rock’s speed and continual echoes about her ship “the Razorback,” made Miller wonder if maybe she was the seed crystal. What if she also infected the thing infecting her? What if the key to saving billions on earth is to do the exact opposite of what they’re doing?

So, acting on instinct, he asked the Rocinante to back off, and we watched the flower of Miller’s season-and-a-half-long quest start to bloom.

The thriving, active center of the Protomolecule resembled brain activity with its pulsing blue nodes and connective strands all connecting to Julie. It’s insane. To be a human locked inside a God’s consciousness.

Miller woke Julie and tried to get her to change the course of the Eros with wavering results, but it was clear from his first words that he knew he was meant to remove his mask, breathe deep, kiss Julie, and make sure that she wasn’t alone. It was a graceful, beautiful sacrifice that perfectly capped a grueling, shifting journey for the soused detective with a hipster haircut. I cannot imagine a better ending to Miller than what the show gave him. It was the kind of moment that you’re lucky to have an acting talent like Jane on your roster. He ate up every line with a sympathetic compassion that never scratched the hardened leather exterior held together by snappy comebacks and witticisms. In other words, it was harrowing and beautiful and still quintessentially Miller.

So they headed to Venus. They were heading in that direction anyway, right?

With the crisis averted, we had to time to collectively catch our breath as the implications for what happened landed on Avasarala, the Rocinante crew (that toast!), and then on the Venetian atmosphere as Mao and Miller started something new together.

SOME STRAY THOUGHTS:

• Oh my God.
• Oh my God.
• Oh my God.

Make sure your CAPS LOCK is off (or on, who are we to judge) and tell us what you thought of that ending in the comments section.

Images and GIFs: Syfy