The 100 5×08 “How We Get to Peace” delivers some of the most gut-wrenching confrontations of the entire series, including the final, fateful showdown between the Blake siblings that has been five seasons in the making.

Full disclosure: I first watched The 100 5×08 “How We Get to Peace” on an iPhone screen in an airport, half of my attention on the boarding announcements. This is not the way to watch any episode of The 100, but especially not this one, in which every moment is layered with depth and emotion. Don’t try this at home!

Luckily I’ve been able to watch it a second time and properly take it all in. And I will probably end up rewatching this episode a lot, because it is chock-full of satisfying payoffs and absolutely stunning dialogue.

In fact, “How We Get to Peace,” written by Lauren Muir (who also penned the powerful “God Complex” last season) and directed by Antonio Negret, is possibly my favorite episode of the season so far (apart from “Eden,” which will always stand out because of how it broke form).

Related: There are no good guys: The 100’s villains are the heroes of their own stories

It builds on the equally excellent “Acceptable Losses” from last week, and pushes several main characters to long-awaited breaking points. After several episodes’ worth of buildup, this is the episode in which Bellamy, Emori, Abby, Monty and Diyoza all snap in one way or another, and as soon as she wakes up, Octavia will definitely be snapping as well… into a snazzy new outfit, at the very least.

Let’s discuss the outstanding The 100 episode “How We Get to Peace,” in which everyone, uh, snapped.

The road to peace is paved with… murder?

I have noticed that on The 100, there are three main ways in which characters try to get to peace: either they try to remove themselves and their loved ones from conflict, they to use words and ideas to inspire others, or, as is the case of most of the show’s leaders, they attempt to enforce ‘peace’ through harsh laws and brute force.

In this episode, various characters make their cases for all three ways. Monty and Harper are opting for the first, having decided that their way to peace is to literally let the war rage on around them. Kane is still desperately trying to make peace by inspiring leaders, as he has always done. And Octavia, Clarke, Bellamy and Diyoza (to a point) are all striving to enforce peace in each their own murderous ways.

Diyoza claims this week that she is “planning for peace,” and I think that is the excuse that all four of them are telling themselves (but in Diyoza’s case, it might actually start to be true) to justify their horrific actions. All four of them are ultimately acting in the interest of saving their own people, fully believing that their actions are justified because their enemies are the ones in the wrong.

Clarke’s people is only one person and Bellamy’s is six (or eight, including Clarke and Madi), but in this episode they prove themselves just as willing to maim and kill and deceive to keep those people safe as Octavia and Diyoza have been for Wonkru and Eligius, respectively. The idea of breaking the cycle is all well and good, but it isn’t going to get them anywhere as long as nobody is willing or able to see the big picture.

In this episode, Bellamy and Clarke are arguably as ruthless in their methods as Octavia. And, heartless as it seems, Octavia — like Jaha before her — is at least equal opportunity-murderous, as willing to kill her own people as the enemy, while Clarke and Bellamy are still making qualitative judgement calls in terms of which characters they are and are not willing to sacrifice. Indeed, Monty calls them out on this when they stage an elaborate plan to kill Cooper all in order to avoid killing Octavia.

Is it ‘better’ to treat all lives as equal regardless of your personal affiliations, both when it comes to saving lives and taking them? Or is it more sympathetic to let your feelings guide your judgement, leaving you willing to brutally murder strangers to avoid hurting the people you personally care about? Would we respect Octavia more or less if she was willing to sentence Bellamy for the same crime she sentenced Clarke for? Do we respect Bellamy more or less for being willing to put his sister in a coma, after he already killed Cooper in cold blood? Mo’ seasons, mo’ trolley problems.

As with most moral questions on The 100, the series isn’t positing one way as superior to the other, but instead leaving it to the audience to decide for themselves.

And as always, rather than make a snap judgement and ‘side’ with one set of characters over another, it can be valuable to examine why you judge their actions the way you do, and think about what your feelings on these storylines might say about how you view the world.

While the current leaders are all busy poisoning and/or double-crossing each other, it is also important to have characters like Monty and Kane on the sidelines to represent the alternative, non-violent ways of getting to peace.

Monty’s unwillingness to engage in yet another war should serve as a reminder that this current conflict is a choice that everyone could choose to opt out of it they wanted to. Similarly, Kane’s beautifully articulated vision of peace reminds Diyoza that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for humanity beyond the endless cycle of war and conflict.

Diyoza, unlike Octavia, isn’t interested in repeating the mistakes of the people that came before her. And Diyoza, unlike Octavia, listens to reason when she hears it. By now, she has recognized that Kane is one of the most reasonable people on Earth, and what started out as a very one-sided relationship has turned into something like a genuine friendship.

“From where I’m standing, it looks like we’re trading one dictator for another,” Kane tells her — one of his many important lines in this episode — and you can see the wheels turning in her head as she genuinely takes in his words.

Is the partnership between Diyoza and Kane, in fact, how we get to peace? It’s too soon to say, but I like to think that Diyoza’s unique insight into how the world used to be, her first-hand experience with history, and her genuine ability to listen to alternate perspectives, is the one key advantage that the show (or indeed humanity) has never had before.

Let’s call it hope.

RIP Cooper, we hardly knew ya

The 100 has an uncanny ability to make you care about any character right before they are killed off. I really didn’t think they’d pull it off with Cooper, because she was very hard to love, but damn it, that final scene with Monty really got me. Whatever else she was, didn’t deserve that fate — and to have it delivered by Clarke and Bellamy, no less! That was STONE COLD.

We didn’t know Kara Cooper very well, and had no real reason to be on her side, but we can still feel bad that she had to suffer such a horrific death.

Octavia, on the other hand, knew her VERY well, to the point where it seemed like Cooper was the closest Octavia had to a real friend, and yet she hardly seemed phased by her death at all (nor by the prospect of killing Clarke!). That, more than anything else, should tell us how far gone she is.

It should also tell us how desperate Clarke, Bellamy and Indra are, that they would take such drastic measures to avoid going to war. Indra, in particular, is more defiant than we have ever seen her before, maybe as much as she ever can be considering how committed she has always been to following her leader, and it is at once unnerving and satisfying to see her so willing to risk everything for what she believes to be right.

But while they might think their methods are justified, Monty is right: this isn’t just sacrificing one life to save the many, this is specifically sacrificing the life of Cooper to avoid having to kill Octavia.

And sure, nobody liked Cooper, and it is a kind of sick poetic justice that she should die by the same means she used to torture and kill the defectors. But they all knew her, and she was not directly a threat to them. This is neither self-defense nor ‘the only way’ (whatever Clarke and Bellamy tell themselves); this is premeditated torture and murder to manipulate Octavia into maybe changing her mind. It really is amazing that we can watch Clarke and Bellamy do this, and still mostly be on their side, isn’t it?

And the worst thing is that it all ended up being for nothing. The worms were not the plan. Did Octavia not tell Indra because she didn’t trust her, or because she didn’t want to disappoint her? I like to think it’s a bit of both, though the fact that she gave Indra’s first battalion to Miller suggests that it is the former.

In fact, the only person in the whole world that Octavia seems to have a sliver of genuine affection left for is Bellamy. Or, I guess, was.

Et tu, Bellamy?

Despite her chilling warning to him in “Shifting Sands,” Octavia continues to try to win Bellamy over to her side, and has so far done everything she can to avoid actually making him an enemy of Wonkru — although she obviously knows that he is just as guilty as Clarke.

She shows no such leeway where Clarke is concerned; Octavia is as quick to sentence Clarke to death as she was to put Kane in the arena, and, just as Clarke thinks getting Octavia out of the way will solve all of their problems, Octavia probably thinks that killing Clarke will make her life a hell of a lot easier.

With Clarke dead, Octavia not only has someone to blame for Cooper’s murder that isn’t her brother — blood must still have blood, apparently — she also rids herself of a potential contender for her throne, and leaves Madi even more vulnerable to her influence. (Clearly Madi would never follow Octavia if she had Clarke killed, but Octavia is probably too blinded by ‘love is weakness’ to realize this.)

And, while it is obviously horrible that Octavia is so willing to kill Clarke, it’s not like Clarke hasn’t been contemplating doing the same to her for the entire episode, so in a twisted way, this actually makes them even. But damn it, I just really wanted them to be friends, you know? At least we got Clarke/Monty!

Instead of pleading for her life, poor Clarke uses what could very well be her final moments to make sure Bellamy will take care of Madi. And not only does he assure her that he will take care of Madi, but Clarke’s imminent execution is ultimately what finally makes him snap (!) and make a move against Octavia.

Because it seems that where Octavia draws the line at killing Bellamy, Bellamy draws the line at letting Clarke be executed. He basically does a complete 180° from “We are not killing Octavia, no matter how crazy she is” to flat-out poisoning his sister in the span of one episode!

It is nice to see that, despite how alone Clarke might have thought she was in “Exit Wounds,” Bellamy clearly considers Clarke and Madi a natural part of his people, automatically including them in his initial escape plans and being as willing to take drastic action to save Clarke’s life as he would be for any of SpaceKru.

And as devastating as Bellamy’s actions are in terms of the Blake sibling dynamic, it always warms my heart when other characters genuinely care about Clarke as a person, mainly because it so rarely happens. (Give Clarke more friends 2k19!)

The next episode is called “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (‘thus always to tyrants’), but it might as well have been the title of this one, considering that Bellamy basically pulled a Brutus and stabbed his Caesar in the back.

Every part of Bellamy is struggling against what he knows he has to do. He might feel that he has no other choice, but this is still Octavia to him. His sister. His whole world for most of his life. The one person he has spent the last six years yearning to get back to.

And of all the people to betray Blodreina, it is poetic and tragic and terrible that it should end up being her brother. Since we know how Octavia tends to turn heartbreak to vengeance, I can only imagine her wrath once she wakes up from her coma!

Left with no good choice (there never is), Bellamy poisons her food, a symbolic act in so many ways. All of me for all of us. This is his sacrifice.

His anguish throughout this entire scene is palpable as he makes a desperate, last-ditch effort to dig Octavia out from the rubble of Blodreina. That he can’t snap her out of it, that she doesn’t feel their bond like he does, destroys him.

Of course he isn’t actually killing her. His intention is to leave her in a coma, like Murphy was in a coma, until they’ve negotiated the surrender. But he is ‘taking her out,’ as Clarke promised Diyoza they would, because that is the only way (in Bellamy’s mind) that they can get to peace.

Thus the words “my sister, my responsibility” come back around in such a twisted, unexpected way. It is no longer his responsibility to save her, but to save others from her. To save her from herself.

This is one of moments that could have been planned from the very beginning — it probably wasn’t, but that doesn’t matter, because the effect is the same — book-ending the tragic tale of these two characters that have come so far and grown so much in separate directions, and whose love and shared trauma have shaped them in completely different ways.

And I wonder, particularly after seeing the promotional pictures for “The Warriors Will” (unless they are from flashbacks!), if this is not in fact the ‘death’ of Octavia Blake as we knew her. The poisoning, the cinematography, the fact that she is essentially headed for ‘resurrection’ makes me think that she will wake up as a fully evolved Blodreina with no hope of recovery or backtracking, Bellamy having killed the part of her that was still his little sister.

But then again, that might be too much of a black-and-white way to look at it. So much of Octavia’s development is circumstantial, and no character is ever ‘stuck’ at one level of development for very long. So maybe the show will surprise us! Maybe this will actually be her wake-up call and she’ll realize that she’s gone too far (lol, yeah right).

For now, I can’t even imagine what the next move will be for Bellamy. Especially if Monty and Harper are making good on their promise to excuse themselves from the war. Will Indra stand by him? Will Gaia? What will Octavia’s most devoted supporters — including Nathan ‘The 100? I don’t know her’ Miller, and Niylah — do when they find out what happened?

Whatever happens next, I struggle to see how the Blakes can ever get back to any kind of familial relationship after this.

Let’s show them how to live

“I know it doesn’t look like it, but this is how we stop the war.” -Bellamy
“I was stopping the war!” -Monty

Is anyone else having major déjà vu to The 100 season 2, in which Jasper believed he was about to save their people from Mount Weather, and then Clarke and Bellamy barged in and irradiated the mountain, killing Maya and irrevocably destroying Jasper’s faith in humanity in the process?

Hopefully this time, Monty’s alternate way to get to peace actually pans out, because while he has proved himself extraordinarily resilient to trauma in a way that Jasper wasn’t, everyone has a limit. Monty has clearly reached his.

Right now, it seems like Monty is just tired of war and doesn’t want any part of it. He and Harper pretty much decided to just leave the warriors to their war, regardless of the consequences. But I hope that isn’t actually how their story goes, because Monty’s algae plan is a good one, and actually provides a viable solution to Diyoza and Octavia’s land dispute (in lieu of them actually figuring out a way to share the valley).

Leaving the possibility open that humanity can survive outside of Eden, living off the algae farm until the land is arable again (however long that takes), definitely feels significant in terms of this season’s endgame.

And I would just absolutely love it if Monty’s algae was eventually how they got to peace. Like I said in my last review, having some kind of tangible peace indirectly be Jasper’s legacy through Monty would be such a beautiful tribute to the character, and a perfect full-circle moment for Jasper and Monty’s friendship.

“I don’t wanna be a killer anymore. I don’t want to take lives to save them.” -Monty
“Then don’t.” -Harper

Of course we shouldn’t gloss over the fact that Harper and Monty have a unique opportunity to excuse themselves from the war which hardly anyone else has. Their lives aren’t directly on the line right now; they aren’t Wonkru, and no one is demanding their loyalty. They have the privilege of ignoring the sirens, and the consequences that might bring for their loved ones.

And yes, some part of me wishes they would show some inclination to fight for (at the very least) the rest of SpaceKru’s lives. But it is also a strong choice to have them both draw the line and actively choose pacifism over tribalism. Enough is enough. “Everybody dies.”

And maybe this is the answer. After all, ‘fighting for peace’ is an oxymoron. Has anyone tried not fighting? Maybe it works!

I know, I know, the world doesn’t work that way. Evil doesn’t go away just because we look the other way, and “those without swords can still die upon them.”

But Harper and Monty’s choice is still a valid one. We all wish that we could devote our lives to fighting for justice at every turn, but the truth is that not everybody is willing or able to make constant physical and emotional sacrifices for the greater good.

Harper is essentially telling Monty to put his own well-being first for once, which is perfectly good, healthy advice.

And while it doesn’t fix the world’s problems or make things better for anyone else, choosing not to engage with conflict can at least show others that peace is a valid life choice. “Let’s show them how to live” isn’t so much a ha-ha suckers se ya never as it is a promise to lead by example.

Right now, most people alive on The 100 know no other reality than that of war and conflict; someone needs to show people that it doesn’t have to be like that, and that the cycle can be broken even in some small way. Hopefully it will inspire others to follow their lead.

Miller and Bryan didn’t end up going off to raise those chickens, but Monty and Harper just might, and I would be very okay with that. (And not just because I am a shameless Mackson shipper.)

Let’s call her Hope

“I’ve seen the horrors we inflict on each other in the name of survival, Colonel. God knows I’m as guilty as anyone. But we’re on the brink here. On the edge of an abyss I’ve stared into before, and I can tell you, having sacrificed the few to save the many more times than I care to admit: eventually, the few becomes the many. The ends don’t always justify the means, and if you don’t know that by now, after everything you’ve been through, then you’re just as bad as Octavia, and we’re already lost.”
-Marcus Kane

If any line of dialogue has ever had the power to turn the tide on The 100, surely it’s that one. CHILLS.

Marcus Kane is not the character I usually think to name as my favorite (it will always be Clarke!), but that doesn’t mean I don’t love him. He is definitely the character whose worldview most closely aligns with mine, and possibly the character whose arc has been most beautifully executed.

Even though ostensibly season 1 Kane and season 5 Kane are like night and day, there has not only been a very smooth evolution of his character from point A to B, but I would argue that the core of who Kane is really hasn’t changed at all.

In season 1, Kane was making hard choices to ensure humanity’s future peace. He was ultimately loyal to his leader, and didn’t seek power for himself; when it was offered to him, he explicitly turned it down.

And in season 5, he is still doing what he did in season 1: looking for a leader that he can inspire to bring peace. Except for a brief stint where he himself was Chancellor (and he couldn’t hand off the pin to Abby fast enough), Kane hasn’t sought power for himself.

Instead, he has sought to advise every leader he believed could bring peace, including Octavia, who — for a brief moment in time — really seemed like she could usher in a new and better age. Clearly, that did not pan out, so now it has to be Diyoza. She is literally Kane’s last hope.

“Until you recognize that we’re all just people, all this will ever be is a battlefield.”
– Marcus Kane

Lucky for Kane, he isn’t a completely terrible judge of character, because despite their inauspicious beginnings, the more time she spends with him, the more she begins to share his vision.

There are a lot of emotional moments in this episode, but the scene in which Kane and Diyoza share their dreams of a genuinely peaceful future actually legitimately made my eyes well up.

Is is at once heart-warming and heartbreaking to hear Kane articulate his hope for humanity, and to realize that the future he describes here — the trading post and the medical center and the little houses for them all to live in — is the future he has always been fighting for.

The look on his face is the same look he had when he walked through Polis for the first time, and when he convinced Jaha to back down in “The Chosen”; it is a look of unshakeable faith and optimism that it is indeed possible to get to peace.

And Diyoza, significantly, gets that same look on her face when he describes it to her.

Diyoza might be a terrorist who won’t negotiate with terrorists, but she is also a freedom fighter who wants to follow through on her mission, which is to save her people — regardless of who those people happen to be.

“Thank you, Kane. Until I met you, the thought of raising a child in a world like this… you give me hope.”
-Charmaine Diyoza

She wants to, in the words of Actual Best Dad Papa Miller, rebuild the world. And she sees in Kane a hope for that world which nobody else has inspired in her yet. Kane is basically the anti-McCreary in Diyoza’s eyes, a much-needed antidote to the poison that is spewed at her from the murderers she calls her friends.

And speaking of McCreary: what about that EPIC STAREDOWN between Hope’s parents when McCreary returns with (let’s be real) the world’s most short-sighted schemers? She was hoping he would die! And now she is hiding the cure from him! Draaamaaaa.

Considering that Diyoza herself said “the only thing that can defeat us is us,” I think Eligius is about to have as big of a leadership issue as Wonkru. Which will be interesting, because it might force the captured characters to pick sides, and potentially end up opposing each other in the Eligius Civil War™.

As for Memori, I have to admit that as much as I genuinely love this relationship, Emori putting her foot down with Murphy is kind of a relief.

I initially had a lot of hope that the relationship could recover once they were on the ground, but now I’m not so sure. Emori is certainly right in recognizing that if their relationship can only ever work in war times, then it is not a relationship worth fighting for.

As she told him last week, Emori found her way to some kind of peace on the Ring that she never had before, and this ultimately pushed them apart, because Murphy couldn’t let her have it. And until (unless?) Murphy finds a way to his own peace, their relationship is never going to work.

Of course right now they are both very far from peace, having allowed McCreary to take them prisoner and all. Sure, Emori has the ability to disable the collars, but this still has to be the most self-destructive plan Murphy has ever come up with.

How could he think for one second that McCreary would honor their deal once he was back with his people and they were in chains? (Of course he still might, but come on.) The only hope Murphy and Emori have is that McCreary will somehow find them useful in his power struggle against Diyoza. But even that is the kind of hope that Indra would call “folly.”

Tl;dr: I am high-key stressed about Murphy and Emori right now.

Fool me once

The emotional gut punches of this episode just keep coming.

I admit that I was initially confused by Raven’s intense reaction when she found Abby unconscious with the pills. It was scary, sure, but I really didn’t get the magnitude of it until that final scene with Shaw, in which Raven mentions her mother, and it all clicked into place.

We already knew that Raven’s mother was an alcoholic who used to trade her rations for moonshine. But the trauma of that — beyond how devoted it made her to Finn — really never came up in her story until now, so I didn’t even think to make the connection.

(I also can’t believe I never once thought to make the connection between Raven’s season 3 struggles with taking the chip, and then wrenching it out of her head, and her mother’s addiction. Of course the show didn’t vocalize the connection at the time, either, but having this knowledge in mind suddenly gives Raven’s whole arc and the significance of her scrubbing her brain ‘clean’ in season 4 a whole new meaning.)

While it is not vocalized, we can probably gauge by Raven’s reaction that finding Abby unconscious and not being able to wake her up echoed how she must have found her mother, as so many people have found their loved ones in real life.

Even though it happened many years ago, and Raven has endured many more traumas since then, something like that obviously isn’t something you forget or get over. And clearly, seeing the closest thing she has to a parental figure now in the same position makes it all come rushing back.

So whoever on the writing staff thought to connect Abby’s addiction story to Raven’s past trauma: kudos. These are the kinds of deep cuts that I love, that take the characters’ whole history into account and make everything that happens to them in present-day feel so much more significant.

And drawing the connection between Raven’s mother and Abby’s addictions, and how they both end up hurting Raven in an effort to get their next fix, not only adds a new dimension to Raven and Abby’s relationship, but makes Raven’s breakdown with Shaw feel like it has been five seasons in the making.

Here is finally someone she can connect to on this level; someone who can not only sympathize with her situation, but who can directly relate to this very specific pain that she has been carrying inside for so long.

I am really feeling this relationship. I love how they’re building it up, and how despite Raven and Shaw trying to be antagonistic to each other, they are drawn to protect and support the other. Hashtag I ship it.

…Too bad that, you know, Raven just agreed to let Echo kill him! Hashtag unship it?

And oh, Abby. Lying to Raven and shock-collaring her to make sure she gets her pills, after already alienating Kane last episode? This is so painful to watch. Everyone who said Paige Turco deserves an Emmy for her work this season were absolutely right.

This is just a gut-wrenching journey for Abby. It is also a huge storyline to throw in the mix of an already packed season, but all things considered, I think the writers are doing a really great job in terms of letting the story breathe. And I really appreciate how the show continues to let its characters grapple with realistic, complicated psychological issues rather than simplify the human condition in favor of a cleaner narrative.

I’ve said before that Octavia and Abby’s storylines this season are very similar, and so far, they’re also following the same trajectory. They are both addicts out of control (Octavia’s drug is power), and they are both rapidly approaching their breaking point.

Is there hope of recovery for either of them? Since The 100 is rarely linear in its character development, should we even think of it in those terms? There is no status quo or ‘return to normal’ for anyone on this show. Even if they ‘recover,’ Abby’s addiction and Octavia’s Blodreina persona will always be a part of them, for however long they live.

But of the two of them, I do think that Abby is more likely to attempt to detox of her own free will. Especially because she clearly knows what she is doing is wrong, even as she does it. Right now, that remorse is adding to her pain, but it might also be the thing she can cling on to if she makes the choice to go clean.

There is of course also the possibility that Diyoza will cut her off, but I hope it will ultimately be Abby’s own choice. Either way, something has to give, and I hope that — if she makes it to the other side — the people she has hurt will be able to recognize that she was acting under the influence (and that she will be able to make amends).

I wonder if her breaking point will come through Clarke, somehow, and that is one of the reasons they have been separated for most of the season.

After hurting and alienating both Kane and Raven, Clarke is both the most important and the only person left that might still matter more to Abby than her addiction. And if she is faced with a choice between Clarke and her pills, I still believe that Abby will ultimately choose Clarke. (Or maybe I am just as desperate in my hope as Kane is.)

For your consideration

In 2 weeks -1 hour on ‘The 100’…

There is no new episode next week (that is the final break of the season!), so 5×10 “Sic Semper Tyrannis” airs Tuesday, July 10 at 8/7c.

Yes, I said 8/7c!

PLEASE NOTE THE EARLIER TIME. The 100 has been pushed to the 8pm slot for the rest of the season, with new series The Outpost airing in its old time slot. (Sidenote, I actually recommend you all stick around for that one, since its pilot shows a lot of promise.)

So make sure to re-set your DVRs, change your calendar alerts, etc. NEW TIME STARTING JULY 10. Don’t make me shout at you again.