Marco's secret weapon is revealed: a set of railguns on the Ring Station, ensuring that a traditional naval attack on the ring space will fail.
Tropes:
- An Arm and a Leg: Poor Josep gets hit with this again when the biogel graft doesn't take. Not only does he have to lose the graft, he has to lose the entire arm to dig out all the toxic tissue and will have to get a prosthetic.
- Attack Backfire: Discussed regarding the new Free Navy railguns. The Free Navy was able to skirt the station's defenses by having the entire system rest on the station without physically interacting with it, but any attempt to destroy the railguns might be perceived as an attack by the station, so they'll have to be careful about disabling them.
- Back from the Dead: The repair drones resurrect Cara's brother. He seems mostly the same, but with his eyes and bits of skin blue from protomolecule, which has also altered his eyesight. Lastly, his movements are very odd & robotic.
- Call-Back: Avasarala recalls how she hung a Belter on hooks to torture him all the way back in the first season.
- Continuity Nod: Last season, Sauveterre gave a lecture on symmetric vs asymmetric warfare in regards to the ring space, explaining how a small force could hold the space as a choke point because all the rings have to pass through it. Marco puts that into practice here with his centralized railgun array, which not only prevents access from the Sol ring, but can fire upon every single ring and thus allows him to dictate travel to and from all 1300 systems.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The MCRN attack on Medina Station goes horribly wrong thanks to a Superweapon Surprise that destroys all six ships within seconds.
- Enemy Mine: Avasarala and Drummer may not directly be enemies, but they're hardly allies, either. Nevertheless, Drummer is talked into a rough alliance with Avasarala to stop Marco.
- Evolving Credits: The credits throughout the season show the construction of the Free Navy railguns on the Ring Station. It also shows the two Free Navy sentries that the MCRN blows up.
- I Choose to Stay: Josep is benched due to his bad graft and Michio chooses to stay with him on Ceres.
- Idiot Ball: Why would the MCRN waste time asking Medina Station to surrender instead of just blowing it away? There's nothing to suggest that anyone on the station wanted to surrender or that they wouldn't fight. At the very least, if they had launched their torpedoes they could have knocked out Medina Station before the railguns blew up the fleet.
- Inertial Dampening: The protomolecule station is used for this purpose. Whatever force anchors it to the center of the ring space completely nullifies the recoil of the Free Navy railguns.
- Internal Reveal: Amos tells Bobbie about Holden disarming the warhead that would have killed Marco. She gets a good laugh out of it, as it's the sort of thing she's come to expect of Holden.
- Messy Hair: Amos first shows up drunk and with messed up hair after a tour in the brothel.
- Not of This Earth: The Free Navy railguns are noted to be of Martian design but with an unknown type of metal used to construct them, presumably whatever the Laconians were able to mine on their new world.
- The Reveal:
- The ships Laconia supplied Marco with are actually a series of enormous and sophisticated railguns mounted directly on the protomolecule station. With six spaced across the station, they can cover the entire ring space, creating an almost impenetrable defense that can wipe out a warship in a single shot.
- The hyperspace aliens devour ships whenever something transiting the ring exceeds a certain mass/energy threshold.
- Sadistic Choice: Drummer can either spend the rest of the war on the run from Marco and his bounty hunters, or join forces with Earth and Mars and probably get double crossed the moment the war ends. She and Naomi wrack their brains for a third option but can't find one, and she reluctantly throws her lot in with Avasarala.
- Ship Tease: Amos offers Bobbie to join him after he announces he's going to find another brothel on Ceres before heading back to the Roci.Bobbie: With you? Or with you?
- Stone Wall: The purpose of Marco and the Free Navy falling back to Medina Station and installing the Martian railguns onto the Ring Station. They effectively control 1300+ solar systems (minus Laconia, which has minefields and guards) from which to mine resources for shipbuilding and eventually completely outgun the Inners.
- Superweapon Surprise: Mars mounts a surprise attack on Medina Station, taking out the escorts guarding the ring and having the station dead to rights. Then they notice strange devices mounted on the protomolecule station, realizing too late that the Free Navy has turned the station into a massive railgun platform.
