The Expanse is one of the best sci-fi shows in recent years, from its original three-season run on SyFy to the next three seasons that played out on Amazon Prime. As great as it is, though, the fervor for the show really doesn’t come anywhere close to that of the biggest sci-fi franchises like Star Wars or Star Trek, which is why there’s a notable lack of merchandising for fans of the show to splurge their obsessions on. That could change soon with Nacelle’s The Expanse Action Figures.
That’s right, they’re making six-inch action figures of the main characters from The Expanse, allowing you to enjoy articulated scale models of everyone from James Holden and the Rocinante crew to MCRN Special Forces Bobbie Draper and the master politican Chrisjen Avasarala to Detective Miller and the Protomolecule hybrid that killed Draper’s entire unit at the Ganymede Station. Whether you were cheering for the United Stations, sympathizing with the plight of the Belters, or admiring the resilience of the Martian people, these action figures should help you relive the amazing stories that made The Expanse such a cult favorite.
The initial run for Nacelle’s The Expanse Action Figures will include eight of the show’s most memorable characters. Naturally, you’ll get main protagonist James Holden in his everyman-looking outfit, with a backpack, an MCRN rifle, a Star Helix pistol, and a coffee mug in tow. Yes, he’s meant to be holding the coffee cup 90 percent of the time. You can also get a Naomi Nagata action figure in her red space crew onesie, with two swappable heads: one standard and one wearing a helmet for when she needs to step out of the ship to fix something on the exterior. She also gets a swappable right hand, a bone density kit, a water bottle, and, of course, a wrench for when you need her to do any repairs to the engine.
Transport Union president and Naomi’s good friend Carina Drummer is included in the set, bringing with her a pair of grenades, an MCRN-issue assault rifle, a 1st-gen Martian rifle, and a bottle of scotch. Truth be told, we weren’t expecting Carina to be part of a small eight-character lineup, but we guess she has more pull than her former boss Fred Johnson, who is arguably the most notable omission.
Nacelle’s The Expanse Action Figures also gives us Amos Burton, Naomi’s loyal protector, who gets a backpack, a glass of tequila, an MCRN assault rifle, a Star Helix Pistol, and an automatic shotgun for accessories. Martian badass Bobbie Draper is also here, of course, decked in her full-body space marine outfit, with a swappable head (one with helmet, one without), a welding tool, standard MCRN weapons, and multiple cucumber sandwiches, along with Detective Miller who’s looking dapper in his blue suit, with a swappable head wearing a fedora, a hand gun, a hand terminal, and a hamster wheel (with a hamster, of course). For those who appreciate sly political maneuvering, there’s a Chrisjen Avasarala figure, who shows up in one of her signature regal-looking multi-layer outfits, along with a medicine kit, a hand terminal, an office nameplate, and a whiskey decanter. Lastly, they round things off with a figure of the Protomolecule hybrid that Bobbie encountered during the early part of the series.
All characters get 18 points of articulation, so you can have a lot of fun posing these figures. While we don’t know what the final models will look like, the current renders look pretty amazing, so we’re hoping they can retain the quality when they do release the final sets.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for Nacelle’s The Expanse Action Figures. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at $39 (one model) or $320 for the entire eight-figure set.