The Expanse 1x05
Added 2026-01-08 23:58:15 +0000 UTC
Comments
"Rocinante" is the name of Don Quixote's horse. There are a lot of references to the Cerevantes novel throughout this story. Holden is sort of a Quixote-like figure, or at least he sort of imagines himself as one, the noble paladin always in pursuit of truth and justice. And also like Don Quixote, James Holden finds that his quests don't always go well. The word "Rocinante" doesn't exactly translate as "workhorse" as Amos says, though the horse in the novel is, in fact, an aging workhorse. I don't speak Spanish (not much, anyway) so I can't attest to this directly, but I've read that the name Rocinante is a literary Spanish language pun of sorts, implying that the horse is revered as Don Quixote's noble steed despite actually being a broken-down "old nag." (I also always thought it was odd that Amos claimed that "he knew a lady named Rocinante" once who was good to him. I mean, sure, nice story, but why would any parent name a child after a broken down horse?) As to Fred Johnson, you're right to wonder exactly what happened there. Here is a guy who was once a colonel in the UN Navy, famous for his heinous genocide of Belters, yet now, a little over a decade later, he is running a space station in the Belt and is widely considered to be a leader of the OPA, a Belter resistance organization. So it appears that at some point he switched sides. Why? That's something the show will eventually have to answer. In the meantime, feel free to spin your conspiracy theories about it. π
Tony Camas
2026-01-09 02:06:35 +0000 UTC
