The 100 lead male character Bellamy Blake (Bob Morley) has the fandom divided: Either you love him, or you really don’t.

As we near The 100‘s third season finale, we’re beginning to look back on what has been the most contentious season of the series so far.

One of the most divisive topics of discussion has been one mister Bellamy Blake, whom it seems you are obliged to take a stand on — and woe to those who pick the ‘wrong’ side!

Related: The 100 season 3, episode 15 review: Heeeere’s Jasper

We can’t deny that, for many fans, a major factor in deciding where your loyalties lie is based on who you ship Clarke with: If you see a happy ending for Bellamy and Clarke, you might be more inclined to cast Bellamy as the hero of the story, whereas if you would rather see Clarke with Lexa/another character, his faults might stand out clearer than his positive attributes.

But shipping preferences are far from the only reason fans can’t agree on whether Bellamy is amazing or hashtag the worst.

Right now, Bellamy is one of the few male characters in The 100 with real influence and agency, and with Lincoln and Kane gone, he’s now the only potential leader left to challenge (or support) Clarke. And Bellamy is a wild card, in a way few of the others are: While he ultimately does everything he does in the service of ‘his people,’ the lengths he’s willing to go — most recently joining Pike and assassinating the Grounder army — and the moral boundaries he’s willing to cross makes him unpredictable.

Credit: The Fandom

In Clarke and Bellamy’s conversation earlier this year, they established very firmly that “there are no good guys” on The 100. This is true for all the characters, not just Bellamy; everyone has had to make tough choices to support the people they are most loyal to. And yet, according to the viewer’s personal views and interpretations, some guys are clearly more good than others.

Are Bellamy’s actions justified, or are they not? This is a key question endlessly debated by The 100 fans, and every time the delinquents are up against a new enemy, this question is posed anew, forcing us to constantly re-evaluate our personal perspectives on morality and what it means to ‘cross the line.’ As Bellamy himself says, “who we are and who we need to be to survive are two very different things” — but do you judge Bellamy on who he is, or who he feels he needs to be?

As should be obvious by now, we’ve all got wildly different opinions — and despite how many metas we write, we’ll probably never be able to convince ‘the other side’ that we are right and they are wrong.

In fact, we’re gonna go out on a limb and say there is no wrong or right opinion here. Some The 100 fans genuinely love Bellamy, while others genuinely don’t. And that’s totally fine. We can all still be friends, right? (…Right?)

To that end, we are offering two contrasting perspectives on this divisive character. While our writer Kristen is going to be arguing in favor of Bellamy, fellow writer Kyle will be arguing against.

Who do you agree with? Vote in the poll and tell us how you feel about Bellamy Blake in the comments!

Why I love Bellamy Blake

Love him or hate him, Bellamy Blake is a vital character to the world of The 100. After hating him for the first half of season 1, his friendship with Clarke changed the very core of his character, and ultimately, my feelings toward the eldest Blake. The changes Clarke’s influence had on him were broadcast in every moment he had on screen in season 2, as he acted as Clarke’s most trusted ally and took on a solo mission in Mount Weather.

Many of those positive changes were stunted by Clarke’s abandonment at the end of season 2. Bellamy believed that by sharing the blame of irradiating the entire population of Mount Weather, he and Clarke could lean on each other to move past the guilt of that necessary evil. He counted on them getting through this horror together, just as they had before. When Clarke walked away from Camp Jaha, she also walked away from Bellamy, and left him without the guidepost he has used to keep himself on the right path since she first entered his life.

Nothing can excuse the poor choices Bellamy made in the beginning of season 3. He made each and every one of them and now has to live with the consequences of following Pike down the rabbit hole of vengeance. He was trying to be the strong leader that Clarke’s example set for him, but was doing so without her guidance. Not all of Clarke’s decisions were popular in the beginning, but she made them for the greater good. Bellamy convinced himself at the beginning of season 3 that following Pike was just one of those decisions, and that later everyone would see that, just like they all did with Clarke. Bellamy tried to stick by his decisions and be as steadfast as Clarke has always been. The difference is, he was wrong.

His poor choices don’t make him unlovable. They make him the flawed and broken character I have loved since season 1. Now that Bellamy has seen the error of his ways, he has to work to make them right. My love for this character isn’t blind admiration, and it doesn’t discount his many flaws and terrible decisions. In fact, my admiration for Bellamy Blake is largely based on his determination to not only atone for the things he does wrong, but accept the responsibility of his wrongdoings. You can rest assured that forgiving himself for the atrocities he committed under Pike’s guidance will be the hardest to achieve. It will be easier for him to earn Indra’s forgiveness than it will be for him to forgive himself.

Bellamy Blake is not always an easy character to love. In fact, he may be the hardest character to love on The 100 right now. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve it, and it doesn’t mean we should give up on him. In his own time and in his own way, Bellamy will find a way to right the wrongs that he committed. And I will love him for it.

By Kristen Kranz

Why I can’t stand him

I’ll be real here, folks. I never liked Bellamy Blake. From the moment the 100 arrived on the ground I felt like, for some reason, Bellamy was trying to be the leader he wasn’t. There was just something about him that made me dislike him, and I think it was mostly due to his attempts to lead everyone on the ground to violence. As soon as he started getting everyone into the idea of taking off their bracelets to avoid being detected by the Arc I knew he was bad news. I hated him from that point forward, really. And unlike Kristen my faith in him did not grow and I didn’t ever grow to like this mess of a human being.

I disagree with Kristen when she says that Bellamy’s poor choices don’t make him unloveable because I believe they do. He’s terrible at making decisions! Literally almost every decision he has made has caused people to die because he thinks he’s right, when in reality he is always wrong.

When given decisions between brute force/violence/strength and more long-term peace-making, he’s always going to go with the brute force. Yeah, maybe he is trying to be a good leader like Clarke but the fact of the matter is that he’s not. Some people were born to lead, and Clarke is one of them but Bellamy most definitely is not. I understand he’s “trying his best” but sometimes your best just isn’t enough.

As soon as Clarke left and Bellamy was on his own he had no idea what to do. He thought following Pike was a smart choice, and for that he’s an idiot. He did not see reason, he didn’t see how his friends were reacting, he just blindly followed Pike. That’s all Bellamy ever does — he follows blindly with his own self-righteous agenda, wanting to use the person he’s following to help him feel better and to help him feel safe. He didn’t want the Arc to know that he’s down on Earth so he forced everyone to rip their bracelets off; he didn’t feel safe with a Grounder army outside the camp (despite them never attacking) and so he felt he was right in killing all of them. When he feels threatened he lashes out, and that is not something a competent leader would do.

In the end I’ve always though that Bellamy Blake is all about saving his own skin and making people try to like him and trying to be a leader that he is so clearly, in the past three seasons we’ve seen him, proven not to be. Someone just shoot him already.

By Tariq Kyle

Now it’s your turn!

Now our writers have said their pieces, and we’ll leave the question up for you: Do you love Bellamy Blake, or do you not? Note that there is no middle ground — we want you to make a choice! So pick the side you most agree with, and tell us WHY in the comments.

Hit the comments and tell us how you feel about Bellamy — and please be respectful of others’ opinions.