The 100 season 5 poster seemingly pits Clarke against Octavia — or are they mirror images of each other? Let’s take a closer look.
With The 100 season 5 premiere less than a month away, we’re getting trailers by the bucketload, interviews, sneak peeks (…or at least, lucky WonderCon panel attendees did) and much more.
And now, we’ve got the official poster for the season as well. Aside from being a gorgeous piece of key art — which, admittedly, captures the likeness of certain characters better than others — it is layered with meaning, allegory and clues about what’s to come.
Related: The 100 cast, crew preview season 5 opener at WonderCon 2018
Following our wildly successful and highly accurate over-analysis of The 100 season 4 poster last year, we’re going to dive deep into the poster for season 5, and look for clues and hidden meanings.
The poster depicts all of the main and secondary characters — notably including Jackson (Sachin Sahel) and Niylah (Jessica Harmon), who were not present on the WonderCon version.
Also included is newcomer Kara Cooper, played by Kyra Zagorsky. This character is brand new, and has not been introduced or mentioned in any capacity by the cast and crew.
She was, however, visible in the first The 100 season 5 trailer: you see her fighting in the pit inside the bunker, and she’s also present in the desert shot when Clarke reunites with Madi.
Presumably, Kara is Team Octavia in some capacity, and her ‘modern’ name would indicate that she’s a Sky Person. Her being on the poster suggests that she’s a key player in the season, which makes it even more curious that we haven’t heard anything about her yet.
Speaking of new characters: the Eligius prisoners are startlingly loud in their absence from this poster. We’ve heard a lot about the trio of Charmaine Diyoza (Ivana Milicevic), Zeke Shaw (Jordan Bolger), and Paxton McCreary (William Miller), but neither they nor their spaceship are visible on the poster.
It could be a stylistic choice to focus (almost) exclusively on characters we know — or it could be an indication that the Eligius characters, like the audience, are looking in on this world and this constellation of people, able to see both above and below ground. Thematically, it fits with the theory that the new opening credits, as teased by Jason Rothenberg on Twitter, are in fact shot from Eligius’ perspective.
The Red Queen
The poster is divided into two parts. Above-ground, in blue and white hues, are the characters who have spent the past six years either on the Ark or in the patch of survivable land called Eden: Echo, Monty, Emori, Raven, Clarke, Bellamy, Murphy, Madi and Harper.
Below them are the characters that have survived underground, in red and brown: Kane, Indra, Miller, Niylah, Octavia, Jaha, Abby, Jackson, Gaia and Kara.
In terms of placement, the most obvious motif is the opposition and/or mirroring of The 100‘s two ‘queens,’ Clarke and Octavia, who are the focal point of their respective groups.
If this poster symbolizes nothing else, it at least seems to suggest that season 5 is setting up Octavia and Clarke as leaders of opposing sides, and that their roles and agenda(s) might end up not only contradicting, but also in some ways mirroring and/or reflecting each other’s.
But let’s dive even deeper. Let’s entertain the notion that The 100 is, in many ways, like a long game of chess, with various characters moving around the board and making ‘moves’ that affect the outcome. Indeed, characters are often described as ‘knights,’ ‘pawns,’ ‘kings,’ ‘princesses’ (now ascended), etc., and they do indeed hop from black to white — or good to bad — on a regular basis.
As I previously laid out in the article analyzing The 100 season 5 titles, the title of 5×02, “Red Queen,” is likely a reference to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass — an even more apropos reference after this ‘looking glass’ poster where one group is a mirror image/warped reflection of the other — in which the Red Queen is a humanoid chess piece whose status grants her the freedom to move all over the ‘board’ that comprises her world.
Not only is Octavia’s side of the poster literally red, seemingly confirming that she is indeed the ‘Red Queen’ (after all, as she says in the evocative new promo, it is the color of her blood), but Clarke’s side is white/blue, making her the White Queen of this story.
Significantly, in Through the Looking Glass, both the Red and White Queen attempt to influence main character Alice as she, too, is playing the chess game in an attempt to find her way home. And who might Octavia and Clarke both be trying to influence in The 100 season 5…?
Uh-oh.
Further, from the title analysis article:
“In the Lewis Carroll tale, the Red Queen initially presents herself as a friend and mentor to Alice, explaining the rules of their chess game and telling her that she is able to progress from pawn to queen herself if she plays her cards right. Alice joins the game as the White Queen’s pawn and, after progressing to the other side and winning the title of queen, determines that the Red Queen is in fact the “source of all the mischief” and ‘captures’ her, checkmating the Red King in the process.”
Based on the season 5 trailer, something like this does indeed appear to be happening with Octavia, Madi and Clarke. (But remember: the trailer is misleading, and mainly focuses on what happens in the first part of the season. Take nothing at face value.)
Aside from the chess board symbolism, this poster also obviously looks a lot like a picture card in a classic deck of playing cards, with Clarke and Octavia (and their respective groups) mirroring each other much like, say, a Queen of Hearts card might mirror itself.
Are we perhaps overlooking the fact that Clarke and Octavia are not in fact opposites, but rather two sides of the same coin? Looking at their stories so far, I could just as easily make the argument that they are similar as I could that they are different.
If nothing else, this overt mirroring/reflecting of these two characters suggests that their agendas will end up resembling one another more than one might initially assume.
The general flipability of the poster also speaks, on a more abstract level, to The 100‘s ability to flip every moral dilemma on its head and show the ‘truth’ from another point of view. This poster suggests that Clarke is right and Octavia is wrong, but flip it around, and another version of the story reveals itself.
Friends and allies
Looking behind Octavia and Clarke to the other characters, let’s start by seeing if there’s any potential meaning to how each character is placed, and who they’re mirroring. (It’ll be an imperfect ordering since Octavia has nine people behind her, and Clarke only has eight.)
Echo, Monty and Emori are a trio standing a bit apart from everyone else. Seemingly random, aside from the fact that they were all in space together. Did those three form a particular bond up there? Unlikely — but six years is a long time! So let’s shelve that for now.
Clarke has Raven and Bellamy on her right and left side, which is certainly fitting, not just for #Bravenlarke reasons, but because these three characters have always been the ‘leaders,’ or main driving forces, of the delinquent group.
Clarke and Bellamy’s relationship was certainly front and center when the factions were separated, and presumably their dynamic will continue to be important moving forward. We also know that Raven and Bellamy have forged a strong bond in space, but we don’t yet know if Clarke and Raven will have a particular connection this season. (Raven and Emori, incidentally, seem to indeed have a particular connection, if recent interviews are anything to go by.)
On Bellamy’s other side is Murphy. It has been indicated that these two will share storylines this season, with Richard Harmon telling Hypable that Bellamy is Murphy’s “only friend” in space.
Madi being in between Harper and Murphy seems, at a glance, random. Perhaps it is. On the WonderCon version of the poster, Madi was next to Bellamy and Murphy was next to Raven — I’m not sure why that was changed, or what significance this/the previous placement might have. It might prove that there is no significance to placement at all, but you know what? I’m sure we can find some.
In the upside-down, Kane is on the far left, next to Indra. These two are certainly close — or were, before the time jump — and likely will share some kind of connection in season 5. Indra is also next to Miller, and we know from a picture posted by Jason Rothenberg that those two characters are both members of Octavia’s army.
Miller is next to Niylah — maybe random, maybe not — and Niylah is next to Octavia. This might not be random (although Niylah was a late addition to the poster design), because, at the very least, Octavia saved Niylah from Skaikru in season 4, and the two might actually have grown close during their time in the bunker.
On Octavia’s other side is Jaha, who we saw in the trailer (presumably) giving her some dubious leadership advice. If Niylah and Jaha are to Octavia what Bellamy and Raven are to Clarke… well, what does that say about who Octavia is putting her trust in, and why?
Next to Jaha is Abby. The ‘ship that never sailed, but still a significant connection if only for the history between them. Next to Abby is Jackson (where else would he be?!), and then there is Gaia who, along with Indra, are physically closer to Octavia than anyone else.
Gaia is holding a sword, while Indra is holding a gun (which she picked up at the end of season 4). In the season 5 trailer, Indra tells Gaia that “warriors hate war,” and it looks like Gaia might, in some capacity, have become a warrior after all. And finally there is Kara Cooper, another warrior with a Skaikru weapon.
Finally, let’s just note which characters are mirroring each other behind Octavia and Clarke: Kane and Harper; Madi and Indra; Miller and Murphy; Niylah and Bellamy; Jaha/Abby and Raven; Jackson and Emori; Monty and Gaia; Echo and Kara.
Aside from Clarke and Octavia, I really don’t know what significance those oppositions might have, and any reasons I ascribed them here would be pure speculation. Get back to me after the season — whether the poster designer meant there to be significance or not, I can probably dig something out anyway. ?
Light and dark — life and death?
The significance of placing one group of characters above and one below ground might have a deeper meaning than the on-the-nose-signalling of ‘hey, some people were underground.’ (Though, it’s valid information — not all The 100 fans sit around reading over-analyses of poster designs, after all.)
Not only do the implied oppositions of up/down = right/wrong and above/below = heaven/hell indicate that the two groups have had wildly different experiences during the six-year waiting period — the aboveground characters have all had a relatively chill time (blue) while the below-ground characters have been in a hellish inferno (red) — but the character placement and juxtaposition of color schemes and imagery might also give us a clue as to what the future holds.
Octavia’s group is below the surface of the ground (in literal and figurative hell), which is also the desert, with the ruins of Polis in the background and an empty void above (below) them. Everything in this part of the image is wrong, upside-down, twisted, threatening, dark and dead.
Octavia herself is looking right into the camera, meeting her future and her fate (and whomever is looking back at her) head-on. And she does so with no weapons that we can see, even as her warriors stand tense and ready to fight behind her.
Meanwhile on the surface, the scorched earth cracks and gives way to a green hill and vegetation — life — in the background.
There are also stars in the sky, perhaps to indicate that this is where they came from, or perhaps to indicate the possibilities still waiting out there. Clarke is tilting her body away from the camera, and looking up — to the sky? To the future? To the newcomers? I don’t know. But since Clarke and Octavia’s images are new (unlike some of the other characters’, which are recycled from previous seasons), this positioning does not seem random.
As for the other characters, most of them are looking off in the same direction. But while Echo, Murphy and Harper have weapons, they stand at ease, unlike their upside-down counterparts.
It seems that the over-arching message being communicated through this poster is that Octavia’s side represents death and destruction while Clarke’s side represents life, hope, and the future. This is not in any way an accurate reflection of the series, of course: this is The 100, and symbolism is never that overt or cleanly drawn. (And besides, it is very possible that the poster is only reflecting the six years that have passed, not what is yet to come.)
But considering the information we’ve gotten so far about the fight for Eden, and Octavia’s dodgy methods of keeping Wonkru together, I think it’s safe to say that this is the ~vibe~ we’re meant to get from these two respective groups, at least until the season actually starts and the moral waters start muddying.
Stray observations
- It looks like Madi is wearing a metal glove. Could it be McCreary’s stun gun glove thing from the trailer?
- There is something in the forest on the hill. Is it a space ship, Clarke’s village, or that church we’ve heard so much about but have not yet seen?
- Octavia’s forehead is painted red like in the second promo. Is this how she styles herself as the red-blooded Heda?
- On last year’s poster, there were all sorts of hidden symbols in the clouds. Lightbulbs, hearts, dark marks, dragons. This year, I can’t find anything. Anyone else had any luck?
- The tagline ‘No heroes, just survivors’ is certainly apropos for the show, and almost sounds like something Murphy might say. If this all ends with Murphy waking up from a bad dream, I quit.
What do you think about The 100 season 5 poster, and what it may or may not signify about the upcoming storylines?
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