Arctic Light

From that earlier post about holiday wishlists, leesa_perrie created stocking_wishlist. I am IN NO WAY prepared to organize anything like this right now or even really deal with it, so THANK YOU LEESA, because life fell on my head in a major way this week. (It's not bad. Things are fine. It's just ... there is a lot. Of family. And stuff.)

holiday_wishes is also a thing that exists!

Oh, and by the way, my pear tree is up. :D in_a_peartree works differently from other holiday gift-fill things in that "trees" are not open for posting 'til Dec. 24, and then will remain open 'til Jan. 6; here is the how-to post. But just in case you wanted to see what I'm asking for! If you have a tree, feel free to link to it too.

Orion has been trying to get me to watch The Expanse for years. YES I KNOW IT'S GOOD. I do want to watch it! However, apparently season 4 is coming out in a few days and since there's no time for me to marathon the rest of the show beforehand (plus, I'm not really up for something large and heavy right now anyway), he's switched to trying to get me to skip straight ahead to season 4 and watch that first. I'm resisting because I've always gotten the impression that this is the kind of show where things develop over time and it's more fun watching from the beginning not knowing where it's going and watching the characters blossom (and I've been actively avoiding spoilers because of this). Orion claims that it is not actually like this, that most of the setup in the first season is ditched because it goes in a different direction anyway, and that by this point there are few enough of the original characters left that it'll be easy to pick up everything you need to know about them from the beginning of season 4. He also claims that season 4 is an unusually good jumping-on point because there was a near-total change of premise at the end of season 3 (which I now know; good job helping me avoid spoilers, Orion).

So here's my question: knowing that I do like being surprised and I really love the whole trope where characters start out as strangers and become close, do you think I'd be happier starting from the beginning? Or do you agree that season four is a pretty good jumping-on point and the previous 3 seasons are not really necessary to understand and enjoy it?

With minimal spoilers, please! Actually, let's have a poll. You can elaborate in comments if needed.