The 100 season 2, episode 2 was (in our opinion) even better than the premiere! Read our recap, and help answer our biggest questions!
Wow. We don’t know which storyline was most epic this week, as The 100 yet again proved that it does female characters better than any other show on television.
It’s becoming more and more like Battlestar Galactica every episode, and not just because it continues to make its way down the cast list (this week we had both Rekha Sharma and Ty Olsson). The tone is darker, the images are more visceral, and the characters approach their problems with a primal ferocity which would make Commander Adama proud.
And then of course there’s that touch of spirituality, which we’ll touch on later. Let’s tackle the storylines character by character:
Octavia: Current frontrunner for the ‘badass of the year’ award
Could we love Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos) more? When she’s not passed out – which, okay, happens a lot – she’s kicking ass and taking names.
She is given the antidote by one of Lincoln’s Grounder friends, Nyko (played by Ty Olsson). When he refuses to help her save Lincoln, though, she knocks him out and takes him captive, and proceeds to march him straight into the Grounders’ camp. Let’s face it, this was probably the episode’s best scene.
She makes a deal with one of the Grounder leaders, Indra (Adina Porter), who agrees to trade prisoners. But just as it seems our favourite couple-that’s-actually-a-couple have made it, Lincoln is captured again! This time by Reapers.
Seems like Octavia is off on another rescue mission… as soon as she wakes up, that is, because she appears to have fainted again.
Raven: Another strong contender
Yeah, Octavia, you better wake up fast. When Raven (Lindsey Morgan) is told by Abby (Paige Turco) that she can either live, paralysed from the waist down, or risk having a surgery which not only might kill her, but which she’ll have to endure without anaesthesia, guess what she chooses?
Finn (Thomas McDonell) stays with her the whole time, and this sequence was so grim, we can’t even make a joke about it.
Raven pulls through the surgery. Unfortunately The 100 doesn’t deal in happy endings, and her lower left leg is paralyzed. She’ll have to walk with crutches, and is devastated.
Then she continues to equal Octavia for badass of the year, and tells Finn that he needs to stop being there for her, and go save their friends.
Finn proceeds to rescue Bellamy (Bob Morley), whom Kane (Henry Ian Cusick) has been keeping locked up. They bring Murphy (Richard Harmon), who confided to Bellamy that he’d been taken to the Grounder camp and tortured.
They meet up with Abby in the woods, who gives them guns and sends them off on their quest. Yeah, that’s not gonna go over well with Kane, who is desperately trying to keep Ark laws enforced on the Ground.
Aaaand speaking of the Ark…
Jaha: What a baby (!)
We’ll admit it: we’re both relieved and disappointed that the baby turned out to be a hallucination.
When Jaha (Isaiah Washington) first heard the baby’s echoing cries, right at the moment he had given up all hope, it seemed just a little too convenient. Finding it locked in a cupboard, Octavia-style, and deciding that he needed to find a way to the Ground for the baby’s sake, would have seemed like a very contrived way for the writers to keep Jaha alive.
But still. Jaha’s story was done. He spent most of season 1 trying to find a way to sacrifice himself, and now, he’d finally succeeded. He lost his son, and saved his people and he was done.
The baby was a second chance for him, and literally a new beginning. (Think about it: he could have named it Noah. NOAH! It would have been so perfect.)
Jaha with the baby was a man with a purpose. Jaha without the baby is a man trying to give himself a purpose.
“You’re not done yet,” ghost-Wells tells him. “Our people still need you.” Then he tells him that he’s always with him, like a good ghost should be. But was that really Jaha’s subconscious, trying to convince himself that he’s still relevant? Or did ghost-Wells somehow know that Kane is screwing it all up?
Whether we believe that ghost-Wells (nice to see Eli Goree again, by the way!) was a sign from above or an image Jaha conjured up himself, it felt a little bit cheesy compared to the rest of the storylines. After all, characters are dying like flies on the Ground, but Jaha can’t die no matter how hard he tries.
All that aside, seeing Jaha move across space as his helmet cracked was awesome, and we’re very glad he made it to the Ground… even though it appears that he’s landed in the middle of a desert.
Clarke: Not to be outdone
Compared to Octavia and Raven’s arcs, Clarke (Eliza Taylor)’s story this week felt a little weak until the end. Although she did pull out her own stitches, so… your move, Raven.
To Jasper (Devon Bostick) and the others, her actions must seem ridiculous. They’re saved, they’re done fighting, yet Clarke seems intent on proving her crazy theory that the Mountain Men are not what they seem.
She’s right, of course. When she sees how quickly a radiation-poisoned guard is recovering, she gets herself into the medical center, where the truth about the Mountain Men finally comes to light: as we suspected, they are keeping Grounders locked up, tapping their blood and using it to treat their own people.
Our guess? They’re working with the Reapers. And that’s why they captured Lincoln; they’re taking him to Mount Weather like the other Grounders they’ve captured.
This would also explain the carts full of dead and dying people that Clarke and Finn discovered down in the Reapers’ lair last season. They probably get chucked out again once they’ve been tapped dry.
In the final shot, we learn that one of the captives is Anya (Dichen Lachman)! Oh hell no, patriarchal society, you ain’t gonna take down this badass lady leader.
Looks like Clarke has a new mission.
Our biggest questions:
– Will Raven ever walk again? Abby’s face said no, but if Jaha can have a miracle, why can’t Raven?
– Where is Jaha?! Will he be able to communicate with the other Ark survivors?
– If the Lincoln statue is meant to indicate that they’re near the overgrown Washington, D.C., why do the intro credits show a toppled-over Statue of Liberty?
– What do the Mountain Men want with the Ark survivors? Are they fattening them up, Hansel & Gretel style, only to use them in their medical experiments?
– How long before Murphy betrays the group? He may be one of them, but he will never be one of them.
– Will anyone stand up to Kane? We know he’s the de facto leader, but he’s reverting to his jerk ways. His strict Arc laws aren’t gonna fly on the Ground forever.
– When are the Others gonna show up? Not Penny’s boat.
