When you hear about The 100, it’s usually about Clarke or Lexa or Bellamy or some combination of the three, but what about Jasper? That kid has had a seriously tough time since the drop ship landed.
Life on the ground hasn’t been easy for any of The 100. They’ve all escaped death and conquered one fear or another since the drop ship landed in the middle of the forest, but there’s one of the hundred that has had a surprisingly difficult journey than the rest. He’s been speared, drugged, held hostage, and broken in more ways than you can count. We’re, of course, talking about Jasper Jordan.
If you think long and hard about Jasper’s life on the ground, you’ll see why we just never stop feeling badly for him. Especially after this week’s season 3 premiere.
Let’s start with what we know about Jasper’s life on the Ark. Things don’t seem to have been too bad for him there, as opposed to others’ plights that we know weren’t wine and roses. Jasper and Monty were locked in the Skybox for stealing drugs for recreational purposes. Jasper makes a comment about Monty not “replacing what we used,” to which Monty responds, “Someone has apologized, like, 1,000 times.” His supposedly cushy life on the Ark aside, we’re more focused on what happened after the drop ship hit the ground.
The fact that he may not have had it as difficult on the Ark prior to being locked away as a criminal only makes the things he’s endured on the ground that much more devastating.
Yes, everyone else has had it rough, too, but when you consider the lack of control Jasper has had in his own life, there’s a certain amount of leniency for him that the others just can’t have. Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia, Raven, and even Finn were firmly in control of their own destinies. They have had an active hand in what has happened to them while on Earth. Jasper has tried to harness control, only to have it stripped from him time and time again. With that said, here’s a few of our reasons Jasper’s time on the ground has been worse than anyone else’s.
In less than a year on the Ground, Jasper has suffered through…
Being speared
In the pilot, Jasper joins Finn, Clarke, Octavia, and Monty on an excursion to find Mount Weather and raid the supply depot there for food and other necessary supplies. Unfortunately, none of them got to their destination because when Jasper crossed the river safely, the other four members of his scouting party watched as a spear was thrown across the river and through his chest. He was then dragged off by someone and tied up in a tree as both a warning and bait for his friends to fall into the booby traps around the base of the tree. Not a great start to life on Earth.
PTSD
After he returns to camp courtesy of Clarke, Bellamy, Wells, and Finn, he suffers through PTSD. None of them names his struggle to leave the relative safety of the drop ship camp, but he is definitely fighting the effects of his traumatic spearing. He only overcomes this fear when Octavia is in trouble and needs his help.
Being drugged by nuts
Shortly after leaving camp for the first time post-spear, the entire camp gets drugged by some hallucinogenic nuts they mistakenly gather in the woods to use for food. The nuts get mixed into the rations, and the majority of the camp starts seeing things. Since this happened to everyone, you may want to leave this out of Jasper’s list of horrible happenings, but it did happen to him on top of everything else. Plus, he relives at least part of his experience with the Grounders who abducted him, thus traumatizing him just a little more.
Being held hostage by Murphy
It may have only been temporary until Bellamy switched places with him, but when Murphy needed a hostage, Jasper was in the wrong place at the wrong time. No matter how long it may have been for, there’s nothing trivial about being held at gunpoint, so we can add hostage to Jasper’s resume of horrifying things he’s survived.
Figuring out that Mount Weather isn’t the safe haven he thought it was
Going from the Ground where pretty much everything and everyone has tried to kill him, Jasper found safety (and yummy pie) in Mount Weather. He met a girl. He was hanging with all his friends. There was even music! It was pretty much as good as it gets for Jasper. Clarke may have never trusted them, but Jasper was convinced this wasn’t too good to be true. It was just good.
Then Clarke disappeared, his girl Maya was exposed to radiation in front of his eyes, and finally Maya showed him the Harvest chamber, sick with worry that his people would be next. Illusions shattered. There really is no safe place for Jasper and this must have been a real shot to his morale. Just when everything felt back to some sort of normal for Jasper, it all blows up in his face.
Monty in a cage
After Harper disappeared, the surviving members of the 47 started investigating what was going on, and Monty got himself locked in a cage next to Harper in the process. When Jasper realizes Monty has been taken, it’s just one step too far for him. He loses a bit of his mind and takes his fight to Dante. He holds him at sword-point and demands to know what is going on. As Dante didn’t really know, he took Jasper to find out. They discovered Dr. Tsing’s secret harvest chamber and found Monty in time, but the damage was already done to Jasper’s spirit.
Learning he can’t save everyone
After rescuing Monty, Jasper thinks they’re all getting out of there, but thanks to a change in leadership, the 47 aren’t going anywhere. Realizing they are officially prisoners of the Mountain, Jasper does everything in his power to save his people. You can almost see him visualizing Clarke and Bellamy’s leadership styles and trying his best to emulate the strength they’ve displayed since the hundred landed on the ground. He tries to inspire and encourage, but no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t do enough to save them. It isn’t until Clarke shows up that everything escalates quickly, resulting in the final straw for Jasper’s sanity.
Maya
Maya made major sacrifices to help the 47 in the Mountain. Jasper believed that somehow, someway he would be able to save her even if the rest of the Mountain Men had to die. He was devoted to his plan to kill Cage, but before he could act, Clarke pulled the lever and killed everyone in Mount Weather, including Maya. The final piece of his sanity died with her.
When we saw him in last night’s season 3 premiere, he was a broken man. Life on the ground has finally gotten to him. Everything the Arkers have recovered from the Mountain reminds Jasper of Maya and the limited time he had with her. There is no physical escape for him, so he has retreated into a bottle. While Monty can’t stop him from getting drunk every night, he wants to do anything in his power to get his friend back. He drags Jasper out on runs with Bellamy and Raven, but Jasper finds a way to turn even those into expressions of his emotional instability. He’s a wreckless ticking time bomb that doesn’t have any concern for his own life. Jasper has definitely hit rock bottom.