The 100 has come a long way from the, well, 100. Of the original 100 delinquents sent down to Earth in the pilot, only four survive into season 6.
“You’re being sent to the ground.”
It was a pardon, a death sentence and a second chance all wrapped into one dropship-shaped package for the 100 underage criminals that were sent to a presumed-to-be uninhabited Earth in the pilot episode of The CW’s The 100.
On the Ark, every crime was punishable by death. Underaged criminals were locked up in ‘sky-boxes’ for the remainder of their childhoods, to be tried at the age of 18. Some were executed, while others had a chance to re-enter society.
Related: The 100: How one of the darkest shows on TV harnessed the power of a happy ending
Safe to say that the 100 children chosen for the obligatory suicide mission were severely psychologically scarred even before landing in what would turn out to be hostile Grounder territory, treated as invaders, and killed, tortured and terrorized for this involuntary act of trespassing.
Perhaps it is not surprising then, that, after five brutal seasons, the titular ‘100’ have been whittled down to just four: Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor), Octavia Blake (Marie Avgeropoulos), John Murphy (Richard Harmon), and Nathan Miller (Jarod Joseph).
(And of course we can’t forget to mention Bellamy Blake (Bob Morley) and Raven Reyes (Lindsey Morgan), who weren’t delinquents, but are nonetheless counted as honorary members of ‘the 100.’)
While Clarke and Octavia are main characters — and The 100, for all that it is famed for its death count, has not yet killed a main female character — Murphy and Miller making it five seasons and counting is much more surprising, especially considering that they both started as guest stars.
Certainly, back in season 1, if someone had asked me to predict who would be the last delinquent left standing, those two wouldn’t even have been in my top 10.
Originally a season 1 guest star built to be despised, John Murphy has truly lived up to his cockroach reputation by proving practically unkillable (uh, not to jinx it or anything).
Murphy has had one of the series’ most impressive character evolutions to date, going from a truly despicable ‘bad guy,’ to someone who would do whatever it took to survive, and again to someone who would do whatever it took for the people he loved to survive.
Murphy and Bellamy have gone from friends to enemies to family; Murphy has found love with the Grounder Emori (Luisa d’Oliveira), and he has even made amends with Raven, whom he accidentally shot and disabled back in season 1.
Grudgingly, he has found himself part of something bigger than himself and, despite still struggling with his demons, seems to truly value the human connections he has made.
Nathan Miller’s continued survival is, if possible, even more impressive. Despite not (yet) being a main character, Miller has been on the front lines of every battle and somehow made it through unscathed.
Like Murphy, he began his journey as Bellamy’s lackey in season 1, but soon found narrative agency of his own, rising to prominence in season 2 along with the recently departed Harper (Chelsey Reist).
Miller is one of The 100’s LGBTQ+ characters, and in season 3, he reunited with his boyfriend Bryan (Jonathan Whitesell), only for the two to realize that their ideological differences were too great.
Bryan disappeared into the Beyond, and in season 4, Miller and Eric Jackson (Sachin Sahel) formed everyone’s favorite ship Mackson.
Never straying far from home, in The 100 season 5, Miller joined Team Blodreina, his loyalty for Octavia blossoming from (and eventually surpassing) the loyalty he had previously felt towards Bellamy.
In fact, although there are only a handful of original delinquents left, the ones that remain have (almost) all stuck together, keeping the memory of ‘the 100′ alive by virtue of this being what initially bonded them.
While Octavia and Miller grew closer in the bunker, Murphy, Bellamy and Raven were among the seven characters exiled in space for six years while the Earth (theoretically) rebounded from its most recent apocalypse.
Shooting off from the five delinquents+’ existing bond, SpaceKru would become what is essentially the delinquents 2.0, with Harper, Monty (Christopher Larkin), and the Grounders Emori and Echo (Tasya Teles) forming their own little micro society which continued to dictate their behavior and loyalties once back on the ground.
Going into The 100 season 6, the only former delinquent who does not appear to feel much lingering effects of their shared beginning is Clarke, who spent six years on the surface alone, separated from everyone she loved and forming a brand new family with the Nightblood child Madi (Lola Flanery).
This is hardly surprising: despite her leadership role (or maybe because of it), Clarke is the delinquent who has perhaps always been the most emotionally distant from her peers, at least beyond her relationship with Bellamy.
It isn’t that Clarke doesn’t care about Raven, or Monty, or Jasper. But while the rest of the delinquents tend to share storylines with each other in various constellations, Clarke has not only been repeatedly been physically and emotionally distanced from them, but she is also the only delinquent who still, arguably, has stronger and more long-lasting familial ties outside of that group.
While the rest of the delinquents seem to consider each other the baseline of their post-Ark family, Clarke has never had to do that: she still has her mother Abby (Paige Turco), along with her semi-big brother Jackson, her semi-stepfather Marcus Kane (Henry Ian Cusick), and now of course Madi. And most of Clarke’s significant bonds since landing on the ground have also been with non-delinquents (eg. Anya, Lexa, Roan).
Not since season 2 has Clarke acknowledged the delinquents as a faction she feels like she has any significant affiliation with, and over the seasons, the other delinquents — despite their habit of flocking together — have also become part of various new, more permanent and clearly labelled groups. Skaikru. SpaceKru. Wonkru.
In many ways, The 100 is about the transitory nature of ‘us’es and ‘them’s, and so it is only fitting that the show’s first ever constructed unit of people should be effectively dissolved and rendered a distant memory over the course of the first few seasons.
Any grouping on this series — Grounder, Arker, Wonkru, Azgeda, SpaceKru, delinquent — only exists as long as its members continue to acknowledge its existence, and any grouping can disband or transform into something new if the characters stop believing in or affiliating themselves with it (indeed, we have seen Wonkru flicker in and out of existence before our eyes, and that lasted a lot longer than the 100 were anywhere close to 100).
At this point, between the new groupings taking its place and Clarke’s disassociation from anything resembling a delinquents-adjacent unit, it seems impossible that the six remaining characters that represent the title of the show should ever find themselves calling each other ‘the 100’ again. And thus, there is no more the 100.
And yet.
‘The 100’ is the future
In The 100 season 5 finale, we lost two prominent members of the original 100 when Monty and Harper chose to stay awake on the Eligius ship rather than go into cryo sleep, raising their son Jordan (Shannon Kook) and working on a way to save the human race when it turned out that Earth had become permanently uninhabitable.
While The 100 season 5 finale wasn’t the end of the series, it nonetheless served as a thematic full-circle moment: how fitting, that two members of the original 100 should save what remained of the human race by propelling them to a life-giving planet, when that was the exact function the 100 were originally meant to serve.
New life, in the form of Jordan, has now also sprung from that original 100, exactly as was intended. Monty and Harper became an embodiment of that “second chance” Theloniuous Jaha (Isaiah Washington) promised the delinquents in the pilot episode.
Despite their bittersweet ending, they got to live full, peaceful lives, carrying on the human race in more ways than one and becoming the cosmic Adam and Eve that Marcus Kane (Henry Ian Cusick) predicted.
And thus The 100 has opened the door for ‘the 100,’ as a concept if not a physical group of people, to stay relevant even as the delinquents continue to die off and/or forget that this label once bound them together.
Because it was the fellowship of that original group, and Monty’s belief that it meant something, that spurred him to keep fighting — not just for his new SpaceKru family but for Octavia, and for Clarke, and for everyone else.
It was some latent memory of that brief time on the ground, and everything that sprung from it, that made Harper and Monty decide to wake up Clarke and Bellamy before everyone else to prepare them for what was to come.
Despite the fact that Clarke and Bellamy hadn’t been co-leaders — had hardly even been friends — for over half a decade, and then only for a moment; despite the fact that Monty and Harper had been alone together for a lot longer than that, it was in the unity of these two characters that they envisioned the future of the human race.
Because it was these two people that led them when they were the delinquents, which was perhaps the only time in Monty and Harper’s lives where it truly felt like humanity had a future.
So let us not be so quick to eulogize ‘the 100’ just yet. Because as long as Clarke and Bellamy survive, and as long as there is some indication that their shared leadership is what might one day bring lasting peace (whether or not that ever actually comes to pass), the memory of what the delinquents stood for lives on, enforced by Monty’s unwavering faith in them.
After all, it wouldn’t be the first time humanity was saved because Monty Green believed in ‘the 100’ when no one else did. Throughout the series, Monty consistently stood by his fellow delinquents whenever possible, even when he believed their actions were wrong.
Before Raven ever landed on the ground, Monty was working to keep the 100 alive, even as they fought and nearly killed each other around him.
Inside Mount Weather, without their chosen leaders, Monty and Jasper (and Miller and Harper) continued to fight for the surviving delinquents.
In season 3, when Octavia claimed she had no people and nowhere to belong, Monty told her, “you’re one of the 100.” And then he killed his own mother to save her.
Monty saved his friends, but he also judged them for betraying the trust he put in them. When Clarke lied about the list; when Octavia became Blodreina; when Clarke and Bellamy killed Cooper. Because somewhere deep down, he still believed in the 100. He believed that they could be better.
“I hope we do better,” Monty told Clarke and Bellamy as he left them to inherit the new world. Until the very end of his life, he believed that these people, his people, could do better than those who had come before. He believed in the power that these particular people held to break the cycle of violence that had caused them to become delinquents in the first place. He believed in their second chance.
And even though Monty is gone now, along with most of the delinquents, that doesn’t mean the spirit of the 100 has been abandoned. As long as there are still members of the group who not only survive, but who continue to carry forward Monty’s hope for what they could be, ‘the 100’ and what they originally stood for still matters. And right now, it looks like that is exactly what will happen in The 100 season 6.
Whether or not they ever speak the word “delinquent” out loud again, the unity that will hopefully re-manifest between Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia, Raven, Murphy and Miller will prove that ‘the 100,’ as an aspirational ideal, is still at the heart of The 100.
Why is ‘The 100’ still called ‘The 100’ if there no longer is a 100?
Regardless of ‘the 100’s’ potential continued symbolic significance, there is a question I’ve seen repeated on social media, with increasing frequency as the delinquent headcount has dwindled: why is The 100 still called The 100, considering how far removed we are from that inciting storyline?
There are of course two obvious answers to this question: 1) television shows rarely if ever actually change their name halfway through their run, because that would be a logistical nightmare, and 2) ‘The 100’ is a franchise name that covers all related licensed properties, including the novel series of the same name by Kass Morgan.
(Not to dismiss the underlying point made by those asking the question: why has the narrative chosen to abandon the delinquents and their bonds with each other, when that is what the show initially seemed like it would be all about? But that is not my question to ask, because I’m not sure I believe that the show has abandoned those bonds.)
Beyond any symbolism the writers and/or the audience might endow it with, ‘The 100’ is, at this point, just a name that represents the initial premise of a story that has long since expanded beyond that premise (much like, say, 12 Monkeys was never really about the monkeys). Besides, The 100 was never just about the 100; it was also about the people who sent them to the ground, and the people they encountered there.
That said, the series has certainly made several valiant attempts to keep the number 100 relevant over the seasons: Clarke’s list of chosen survivors had 100 names on it; each clan got to select 100 members for the bunker. And just maybe, The 100 will end up having 100 episodes.
‘The 100’ can also be read as a veiled reference to the infinity (∞) sign at the heart of the show’s mythology: this is the symbol Becca Pramheda imprinted on the ALIE technology, including the Commander chip currently interfacing with Madi Griffin’s brain.
It would take very little hand-waving for the show to suggest that the title of the series has in fact been a misdirect all along — or, alternatively, for the story to end with a different group of 100 people, in another cycle, beginning another journey.
Or perhaps the story of The 100 is simply the story of Clarke, Raven, Bellamy and Octavia, and the title of the show refers to where and how their journey began. After all, whether or not the show ever acknowledges it again, and whether or not this particular group of people ends up having any larger significance to humanity’s endgame, each of them will always be ‘one of the 100.’
Who will be the last member of ‘The 100’ left standing?
With only four (plus two) out of the original 100 remaining, it’s not a stretch to imagine The 100 as one very long and elaborate Hunger Games, with one delinquent eventually declared the ‘victor.’
Obviously main character Clarke has the clear advantage, being the main character and all, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll live through the series finale.
In fact, unless The 100 eventually puts the entirety of humanity out of its misery, John Murphy still has pretty good odds of outliving them all — it’s just the kind of ironic twist this show would pull.
Or maybe Octavia, having survived several actual death scenes already, is fated to be the last delinquent left standing?
What do you think? Vote in the poll and tell us in the comments who you think will be the last member of ‘the 100’ left standing at the end of the series.
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