The 100 season 4, episode 3 was rife with huge emotional developments, introducing some ticking time bombs that threaten the fragile semi-peace our heroes have enjoyed so far.
Raise your hand if you Do Not Want To Be Clarke Right Now.
I mean holy shit. We thought the culling was bad, and now Clarke’s made a goddamn list of 100 people she deems most worthy of surviving the end of the world. Let’s just sit with that for a second.
Related: The 100 star Bob Morley previews Bellamy’s journey to leadership in season 4… and beyond?
Of course a lot of other awesome, moving, horrible, upsetting and badass storylines interweaved in The 100 season 4, episode 3, and I’m gonna do my solid best to talk about all the things.
Indra has a daughter, you guys. Luna might be the key to saving humanity. The Internet appears to still exist and Jaha has an iPad. Murphy is Murphy. What a ride. Don’t worry though, cause Bellamy’s at the wheel.
‘She’s my daughter’
Gaia. The earth. It’s all connected. And she’s Indra’s daughter!
I feel dumb, but I just didn’t see it coming. A niece, maybe, or a little sister. I don’t know why I doubted that The 100 would go there and give Indra a daughter, but I am pleasantly surprised to be wrong. Because what a flip for that character, what a way to give every choice she’s made, everything she’s done with or for Octavia a new meaning, and to expand on this already wonderful character’s backstory.
Indra wanted Gaia to be a warrior, her beautiful line of “My daughter was not meant to wander the Earth looking for Nightbloods, my daughter was meant to lead armies, my daughter was meant to lead our people” full of so much pain and love and disappointment (make Adina Porter a series regular dot com) against Gaia’s staunch belief that she’s doing what she was meant to do, following her faith.
Newcomer Tati Gabrielle feels like she’s been in this world since the start, Gaia feeling like a piece of the puzzle that’s been missing, and her dynamic with Octavia opens up for so many possibilities.
The show makes little secret of the fact that Gaia considers herself replaced, clearly hurt that Indra has found a new ‘daughter’ even as she rationalizes that this way, they’ve both gotten what they wanted. (This is not, of course, what Indra wants. Indra wants all the daughters.)
Octavia’s reaction to this reveal was also telling, and refreshingly human for this character, who is trying so hard to be an emotionless killing machine. She was thrown off guard; she immediately backed down, and has no desire to hurt a member of Indra’s family. Family, however messed up and twisted it’s become in her mind, is a concept that Octavia feels deep within the fabric of her being.
It’s also Octavia who devises the plan to trick the tech looters (whom Ilian has inexplicably fallen in with — this whole plotline was very reminiscent of the dystopian Dollhouse future, or the New Zealand prototype version of The 100 aka The Tribe), in what was honestly a bit of a cruel twist: Switching out Gaia’s necklace for the Flame, the show makes it appear for one harrowing slow-motion moment as if the last bit of Lexa’s spirit is destroyed. It was pretty obviously a fake-out, but it still hurt. Not cool, guys.
Luckily the Flame is fine, and so is Gaia, who runs away with it and leaves Roan to flounder. And you know what, he’s the one who went and lost it in the first place so this one’s on him. Octavia is happy she gets to do some more killing though, so all’s good in Polis.
Now can we have more Indra/Gaia awesome mother-daughter bonding time please? This is seriously one of the coolest reveals the show has ever done, and I hope it’s the beginning of a much richer storyline with a more meaty Indra arc. There’s so much here about Octavia, Gaia, duty, family and faith that is just begging to be explored.
Mount Arkadia
Three important things happened in the Arkadia part of this story (well four, if you count the return of Nyko, which you should! Where has he been all this time?! Ah, whatever, I’m just glad he’s back):
1. Murphy is once again reminding us that he’s still Murphy. He loves Emori, it’s true, but this just means his willingness to do whatever it takes to survive extends to one more person aside from himself. It’s very sweet, and I have to say that despite Emori’s misplaced jealousy at what happened between Murphy and Ontari (remember: Emori wasn’t there. She only knows what Murphy has told her, which is clearly not the whole uncomfortable truth), their Bonnie and Clyde love story continues to be one of my favorite romance arcs.
Returning to Arkadia to do some recreational thievery, there’s a whole beautiful subplot of Murphy taking the medicine and giving it to the Grounder girl, with Jackson reminding us that this is what his dad got floated for on the Ark and Abby confiding that she had faith in him, only for it to ultimately get turned around as Murphy reveals to Emori that it was a ploy to get into Abby’s good graces.
Was that the only reason he stole that medicine? I think that was intentionally left ambiguous. What is sure, however, is that Abby isn’t the person Murphy needs to impress; Clarke’s already written the list, dude, and I’m not entirely sure you’re gonna be on it. (Hey, maybe that’s what prompts the tearful argument we glimpsed in the first season 4 promo?)
2. Raven had her ‘Bellamy moment’ this week, finding that it’s not so easy to uphold the pragmatic ‘needs of the many’ mentality when face-to-face with the people whose lives you’re willing to sacrifice. After last week’s episode it was important to see her falter when she saw the suffering Grounders; it’s not quite the same (there was no guarantee the medicine would work, and even giving it up wouldn’t automatically sacrifice hundreds of other lives), but it’s still a big moment for her.
I love Raven, and I love that she’s come to represent ‘team brain’ in the Bravenlarke leadership triangle, but Raven is also a person with a huge heart, and the more leadership power she gains, the harder it’s gonna be for her to not let her compassion distract her from the mission at hand.
Her anger at Bellamy last week (and this week) stemmed from her growing panic at all the lives that will soon be lost; she didn’t face the 25 slaves that were rescued and it wasn’t about those individuals for her, it was about all the people she sees every day back at Arkadia. But taking the suffering innocents to her doorstep and telling her to choose puts her in Bellamy’s shoes, and like Bellamy, her humanity wins out.
Abby, of course, is always going to be team ‘save who we can save today.’ She held the same position back on the Ark with the culling, even though the delay ended up costing more lives; she’s a doctor, saving individual lives is what she does.
3. Luna (and any other Nightblood)’s blood makes her resistant to the radiation. Um… uh-oh. This is a morality disaster waiting to happen; first Clarke is put in Jaha’s place on the Ark and it’s obviously only a matter of time before she’ll be in President Wallace’s, as at least some of the designated Arkadian survivors and/or Grounders will probably be willing to sacrifice a few Nightbloods to secure the future of the human race.
You know, like the Mountain Men wanted to do with the 48. The needs of the many, right? It’s a slippery slope, and I kind of can’t wait to see them slide down it.
Also, I can’t believe that literally the entire Floukru got wiped out. Luna’s lost everyone. Well… at least she still has Nyko though, right?
Night Trip
Someone who isn’t me needs to go back and do a more in-depth comparison between the season 1 episode “Day Trip” and “The Four Horsemen,” because I’m guessing the parallels and contrasts probably run deeper than what I’m able to identify in a general review.
The key similarity is obviously that Bellamy and Clarke head out on a mission to examine a potentially habitable bunker — this time finding the frickin’ Mines of Moria (speak ‘friend’ and enter) — and that Bellamy ends up having a revealing heart-to-heart with Jaha — the real Jaha though, we presume, and not another manifestation of his guilt.
In “The Four Horsemen” it’s still all about Bellamy’s guilt, but the real Jaha (who has been constructing a careful narrative about how they’re just as bad as he was and therefore have no grounds on which to judge him, I see you Jaha) doesn’t offer judgement, he offers absolution.
In “Day Trip,” Bellamy begged for the release of death and was denied, the Jaha of his subconscious telling him, “Live, breathe, suffer. You owe them that. You want the peace of death. You’re gonna have to earn it.”
And it seems like Bellamy is working up to ‘earning’ that peace – that death – and saving his people (and/or Clarke) may just be how he finally allows himself to let go of the guilt that is fueling his fight. Not that I think that’s actually going to happen, because self-sacrificial plans on this show have a tendency to fail, but I imagine it’s going to provide for some hefty, heavy character development over the coming weeks.
Bellamy rebukes Jaha’s show of solidarity with a good old ‘I’ll see ya in hell!’ moment, which was awesome. He’s distancing himself from Jaha and his sneaky attempts to align himself with our heroes, much like Raven in the previous episode. However, Jaha’s sins are honestly beginning to pale in comparison to what our heroes are having to do. (And Clarke, based on her willingness to listen to Jaha, seems like she’s thinking along the same lines.)
From the ashes we will rise
You guys, I figured it out. I know why “From the ashes we will rise” is the tagline for the season, and it’s not because they all become doomsday cultists.
As we’re all aware, theorizing on the end of the season is a bit tricky because, despite a recent, potentially revealing Marie Avgeropoulos interview, I’m pretty sure we don’t want to be too callous when speculating about the finale. But FOR THE RECORD, “from the ashes we will rise” is a very clever tagline and I literally pumped my fist in the air when I realized what it probably means.
Clearly though, these doomsday bunker guys didn’t rise anywhere… or did they? With such an elaborate backstory, I’m guessing this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Bill Cadogan and his followers, and I’m also gonna dare to guess that this fallout shelter wasn’t the only plan in place for surviving the apocalypse.
For now though, Jaha is devastated, and presumably goes off to shout at the Island for leading him to believe that this hatch was a way for them all to be saved. 4, 8, 15, 16…
The 100th
Well, I guess it’s canon. Bellamy is officially Clarke’s #99. And she, in turn, is “the 100th.” Have we been reading the show’s title wrong all this time?
Jaha’s plan having failed, Clarke was out of excuses, and had to do what she had been dreading: Making the list of the 100 people that deserved to be saved. And, wow. What a dilemma. Let’s compare Clarke, Raven and Bellamy’s positions to those of the Ark council who had to decide whether to proceed with the culling or not: Bellamy would be the Abby here, willing to give hope a chance and unwilling to sacrifice individual lives, even though the end result might mean that more people had to die.
Raven is somewhere in between Jake and Kane, initially unwilling to let the leaders keep their people in the dark, but now determined to do what must be done to save the realistic number. And Clarke is Jaha, circumstances forcing her to confront the reality that she can’t save everyone, and agreeing to choose who should survive (whereas Jaha chose who should be killed, when he agreed that the Section 17 residents should be culled without their knowledge).
The wild card now is the truth, which on the Ark was finally revealed by Abby and which led to people beautifully volunteering to keep their families safe. My feeling is that the 400 Arkadians who didn’t make the cut won’t go as gently into the night, or be quite as quick to forgive their leaders’ attempts to make decisions about which of them get to live or die.
I’ve examined the list to the best of my ability, and honestly, it looks like it’s mainly full of The 100‘s crew members and their family and friends (way to save yourselves, guys, jeez), with ‘Bryan’ being the only familiar name I could identify. Of course we can’t see the first bit of the list so it’s possible Clarke has prioritized the characters we know (Riley is obviously #1, let’s be real) but I’m not even sure that would be her logic.
Perhaps the list is full of children and families, the ‘innocents’ she’s ultimately trying to protect. But it’s hard for me to imagine a list which doesn’t have Abby, Kane, Raven, Octavia, Monty, Harper, Jasper, Miller etc. on it, especially because the setting of this scene – Bellamy asleep while Clarke struggles with the last few spots – suggests that they’ve at least in part been writing it together.
It’s also hard to imagine any scenario in which Clarke would willingly give herself one of the 100 spots, and to her credit, she doesn’t. She only hesitates to put Bellamy’s name on the list because she knows that he, in turn, won’t accept a spot without her; he’d already made it pretty clear that he didn’t intend to be one of the new 100, and Clarke likely knows that this is his one condition.
Maybe it’s a conversation we didn’t get to see, or maybe she just knows that the only way Bellamy would allow Clarke to put him on the list was if she joined him. Either they’re both saved, or they go into that radiation storm together. There is no third option.
Agonizing over the impossible choice, that some part of Clarke likely also feels she has no right to be making, she looks over to the sleeping Bellamy (nice parallel to 2×05, and nice globe nightlight! I used to have one of those), and finally allows herself to save him.
Sensing Clarke’s distress, which appears to be Bellamy’s superpower, he wakes up, and says the nine all-important words: “If I’m on that list, you’re on that list.” It’s Bellamy who ultimately puts down her name – they allow themselves to be saved only in an effort to save the other – and it’s done. The ultimate incarnation of the “together” that has become so synonymous with their relationship.
Now, I’m not convinced this list will ever come into use. But what a beautiful moment this plot device allowed the two of them to share; I love that the writers aren’t trying to hold back when it comes to showing how much these characters mean to each other and how important their relationship is, whatever form it ends up taking.
This was also the only plausible way both their names would end up on that list — and that will for sure come back to bite them when someone (my money’s on Jasper or Murphy) inevitably finds it and exposes their plan.
Because, let’s face it, even Jaha was willing to walk into the culling with the rest of his people, and although we, the audience, know that Bellamy and Clarke committed each other’s names to the list, not their own, it’s still going to look really bad to the rest of their people that they essentially prioritized their own lives over the lives of two innocents.
For your consideration
- Nyko and Luna?! When did that happen? Didn’t she just lose her true love like five days ago?
- Did you notice the Niylah mention? She’s preserving meat for the Arkadians, which is interesting; I hope she shows back up soon.
- You know, I wonder what it entails, being King of the Grounders. Clearly it does not entail keeping track of important things like Flames while you take ascension baths or dust off your invisibility cloak or whatever the hell Roan does with his time. I’m super stoked about this storyline taking off though, to be honest; I feel like Roan, Kane and Octavia are kind of in a holding pattern right now and I’m greedy, I want more action!
- Ilian keeps following random Grounder dudes and Octavia keeps killing them. I think he needs to take a hint and just start following her, y/y? #Octilian
- Raven enforcing the medication limit gave me major space Kane flashbacks.
- “One kill to prevent thousands? It’s good politics.” – Roan to Indra, echoing Lexa to Clarke when it was Finn’s life on the line in season 2. Nice callback/foreshadowing.
- In the cave, when Emori shows her jealousy at Murphy and Ontari, Murphy’s line “I don’t want to talk about this. I didn’t have a choice” was extremely important, and I’m glad the show is addressing what happened (brief as it was). I’m wondering if this is the end of that story or if we’ll see it continue to have an impact on Murphy; I like that the show isn’t shying away from tackling this complicated coerced rape storyline, especially from a character like Murphy’s perspective, but man, I still kind of want someone to flat-out tell Murphy that what happened to him wasn’t okay. If not Emori, maybe it’ll be Abby? I don’t want or expect The 100 to do an After School Special on this, but I’m still hopeful it’ll be somehow addressed in a way that has real-life relevance.
- “You hear that? No insects.” lol dudes I literally just saw a moth flying through that shot but ok. I do love that Bellamy asked what happens to the animals that eat the fish and bugs, because this is a REAL LIFE CRISIS people.
- Jaha’s line to Bellamy, “She’s lucky to have you,” echoes what seems poised to become a major part of their story: That Bellamy is what’s keeping Clarke centered (and she him — they balance each other out). What has sent previous leaders on The 100 spiraling down a path of corruption has been their isolation; every leader we’ve seen so far has been alone. Clarke isn’t alone, because Bellamy is right there, with her, still the ‘heart’ weighing up what she feels like she has to do to ensure everyone’s survival. That’s gonna matter, if Clarke wants to avoid falling into her predecessors’ patterns.
- Kim Ginsburg?! Uh, Kim and Aaron… did you merge into a superbeast without telling us?
Next week on ‘The 100‘
The fourth episode of The 100 season 4 is titled “A Lie Guarded,” and the synopsis reads:
“Continued struggles with leadership and trust in Arkadia and Polis take violent turns while Abby leads a team to a distant location hoping to find answers.”