Everyone has changed in The 100 season 5 — some for better and some for worse. Here are five characters who became the best versions of themselves over the six-year time jump.
One of the main reasons The 100 stands out as spectacular television is its characters. From the very beginning, this show has had an exceptionally rich, complex cast of characters (and the casting department deserves major props for finding outstanding actors for every single role), and the ensemble has only grown bigger and better over the course of the series’ five seasons.
Related: Five characters who deserve more screen time in The 100 season 5
Compelling characters are what make a show worth watching. Compelling characters that have compelling relationships with each other and go through compelling evolutions are what make a show extraordinary.
The 100 is one of the only shows I’ve ever watched where no subplot bores me, because I genuinely care about every single character on screen, and I know that everything is ultimately going to tie back to the central storyline of the season.
After moving forward in increments for its first four seasons, allowing us to experience each little change the characters went through at the micro-level, The 100 season 5 took a massive creative risk by jumping six years into the future and allowing the characters to take major steps forward (or backwards) off-screen.
The most extreme changes are in characters like Octavia and Abby, whose time in the bunker have left them unrecognizable to the people they were separated from. Others have changed in more subtle ways — like Raven, Monty and Jackson — and a few don’t appear to have changed at all. It all serves to realistically depict what might happen (or not happen) to a person over the course of half a decade, at different stages of their lives, under different circumstances.
While some characters have descended into darkness, others genuinely changed for the better, coming back into the fight with a sense of renewed energy and purpose. Here are five characters who glowed up during the six-year time jump, becoming the best versions of themselves in The 100 season 5.
5. Echo (Tasya Teles)
The Echo we meet in the season 5 premiere, who jokes with SpaceKru and gently reassures Bellamy that everything will be okay, is so far from the Echo who snuck into the conclave, shot an arrow through Ilian’s throat and almost did the same to Octavia in order to manipulate Azgeda’s win, that it’s hard to believe only three episodes (and six years!) separate them.
Echo is perhaps the best example of ‘nature vs nurture’ on The 100: groomed from childhood to be Queen Nia’s loyal spy and subject, she never had an opportunity to be anything else, but now, without her clan to define her, Echo is free to follow her heart and her instincts, molding herself to a new people and new circumstances.
The Echo we meet in season 5 is an Echo who has allowed herself to have a family, and values that family, and is vulnerable with the people she cares about. Yet so much of who she used to be informs who she has become: she still fights ruthlessly for the safety of her people, as ice cold in her methods as she ever was. She may have softened, but she has not gone soft.
While this ‘new’ Echo is, to a certain extent, another role she plays, we also can consider it to be her more authentic self, representing the person she wants to be rather than the one she had to be on the ground. One of the reasons she was so scared of leaving the Ark was that she knew she could revert, or change again, as her circumstances demanded it. Extreme adaptability is Echo’s gift and curse.
The one way in which she has fundamentally changed, which warrants her a place on this list, is that Echo has learned to listen to her own conscience rather than hide behind her loyalty to her clan: it’s very clear that she is no longer willing to blindly follow orders, and that while she still does what she feels she needs to do on behalf of her people, she tries to do the least amount of damage possible in the process.
We saw the very beginning of that evolution in season 4, but the time jump has allowed for her to skip the journey and reach a place where she not only feels compassion, but shows compassion, and who has values of her own that influence her decision-making. She has likely been encouraged to develop those values (and allow herself to listen to them) under Bellamy’s leadership, showing just how big of a difference a positive, healthy community can have on a person’s psyche.
4. Bellamy (Bob Morley)
I know, I know: The 100 fandom is very divided on Bellamy this season. But honestly he was living his best life and wearing his best face on that Ring, and even back on the ground, he continues to make considerate, measured decisions in a way few of the series’ previous leaders have been able to.
Bellamy’s arc in season 3 and season 4 was largely reactionary. In season 3, the Mount Weather massacre pushed him into seeing Grounders as the enemy, leading him to side with Pike and participate in the massacre of the friendly Grounder army (that he had no reason to believe were friendly).
Season 3 was really just a season of escalating consequences, with a lot of characters’ bad or short-sighted decisions having devastating repercussions — including Lincoln’s execution at Pike’s hand. Octavia blamed Bellamy for that, and Bellamy blamed himself for it, too.
Season 4 was spent trying to repair his relationship with his sister, and find some kind of way to cope with the guilt of his actions. Bellamy did a lot of soul-searching that season, ultimately leading him to a relatively good place. That, and the Blake siblings’ ability to reach a (relatively) good place before separating, lay the groundwork for Bellamy being able to put the past behind him and learning how to forgive, both himself and others, and learn to let go of the past.
In The 100 season 5, Bellamy knows what he wants, and why he wants it, and independently takes action in a way we really haven’t seen since season 1 (though the way in which he takes action has changed a great deal). It’s not that he has morphed into a blander ‘greater good’-serving character — at the end of the day, he is still looking out for his own people above all others — but he has learned to measure his words and consider the words of others; he has learned to stop, and think, and act conscientiously rather than instinctively.
Bellamy is in no way done growing and evolving, but this time jump has allowed him to come so far, his development aided by six years of settling and maturing in ways he would not have been able to if the story had continued in real time. In fact, in many ways it feels like the time jump was specifically for Bellamy (and Clarke), giving him the time and space he realistically needed to heal some of those gaping wounds on his soul before sending him back into the fight.
3. Emori (Luisa d’Oliveira)
There is no character that benefited more from those six years in space than Emori.
On the ground, she was hated for what she was, cast out of Grounder society at birth, and surviving by the skin of her teeth. She was alone not by choice, but by necessity, trusting and loving only her brother until fellow outcast John Murphy came along.
But in space, she found a community in the Skypeople, who held none of the prejudices against her that the Grounders did, who treated her as an individual and who appreciated her because she made herself useful to them. She could improve her skills, and grow as a person, in the company of the handful of people that came to be her family.
The tragic part of Emori’s story is that while she evolved into the best version of herself, John Murphy regressed, withdrawing from the community he did not feel worthy of participating in and coming to resent Emori’s ability to fit in and make herself useful.
Back on the ground, Emori has proved that while she still cares deeply for Murphy, her healthy development has also made her realize that their relationship can never work as long as they are in such different emotional spaces.
That realization alone shows huge growth and maturity on her part, and proves that she has come to value herself and her own happiness above a romantic relationship (a very rare development for a female character on a TV show). Emori’s story truly is about Emori now, not about John Murphy or their relationship. Hopefully that story is a long one, because her journey so far has been a thrill to watch.
Who would have thought, when we first met Emori in The 100 season 2, that she would be the character who most came to embody hopefulness and healthy mental development on this show?!
2. Clarke (Eliza Taylor)
Clarke’s evolution is perhaps not ‘positive’ in the way Emori’s evolution is positive, and yet I would argue that six years of relative isolation and peace has still made her the best, most capable version of herself.
Clarke has become incredibly grounded (pun fully intended) during those six years of having to fend for herself in Eden, both mentally and physically. There is something so satisfying in seeing a female character fully self-sufficient, craving human connection not because she can’t survive on her own, but because she doesn’t want to.
Her relationship with Madi has simultaneously served to make her more emotionally mature and more single-minded, the ‘mama bear’ instinct taking her out of the leadership mindset she held for the first four seasons in order to focus solely on protecting one person.
This in itself is perhaps not a forward momentum, considering that she has practically pulled a reverse-Bellamy (why did that sound dirtier than I meant it to?) and is essentially acting and thinking like he did in season 1. While Bellamy has learned to see the big picture in a way Clarke used to, Clarke is much more reactionary and short-sighted this season, her love of and fear for Madi blinding her to everything else.
But for Clarke as a person, allowing herself to give her heart so fully to another human being is still a pretty huge, positive development, considering how many people she loved have been ripped away from her in the past.
In fact, I’m not sure Clarke has allowed herself to feel such pure, unconditional and all-consuming love for anyone since her father, and the fact that she was ever able to form such a bond again shows the strength of her character and her unparalleled capacity to endure. It also shows how incredibly healing those six years of peace were for her.
Her insular family situation and her six years of ultimate ‘slow living’ has also given Clarke a new, unique perspective on the big, messy leadership conflicts she used to get caught up in. She was equally willing and able to objectively praise Octavia’s accomplishments as Blodreina (in a way Bellamy was too emotionally invested to do) as she was to identify Octavia as the obstacle standing in the way of humanity ‘breaking the cycle’, and to take action against her.
Ultimately, the time jump has given Clarke something personal to fight for (and to lose), and re-centered her priorities on freedom and family, rather than an abstract drive to save the world at large. The next step is learning to balance those two sides of herself (the head and the heart) like Bellamy has — which I very much believe is what season 5 is setting her up to do. And even if not, a version of Clarke that fights tooth and nail for her own love and happiness is a version that I can absolutely get behind.
1. Indra (Adina Porter)
Indra has of course always been a fantastic character, who was allowed expand and develop in unexpected, delightful ways even before the time jump. But in The 100 season 5, she is far and away the standout character, and has shot right into my top 3 of all-time favorites (rivalled only by my consistent faves Raven and Clarke).
Not only is Indra one of, if not the only, character who has genuinely become a better version of herself in that bunker, but she has done so in a way that in no way compromises the character she used to be. Indra is still a stoic pillar of authority, and she is still willing to follow her chosen leader down the darkest of paths. She is just no longer willing to follow blindly.
The key to Indra’s evolution is that she is no longer willing or able to compromise her own morality for the sake of lawful obedience. Before season 5, Indra was the ideal soldier, fully capable of making her own choices but choosing at every turn to obey her leader’s commands because that was how she believed her people would get to peace.
Whatever happened in the bunker over those six years led Indra to rethink that position, and the Indra we meet in season 5 is someone who actively listens to her own sense of right and wrong and acts accordingly. Even as she continues to love and loyally stand by Octavia, she has quietly begun taking a personal responsibility for her own and Octavia’s actions, actively working in the shadows to uphold a morality that Octavia will not. If anyone has made the head-to-heart transition this year, it’s Indra.
In previous seasons, her biggest concession would be to hear her enemies out before ultimately following orders. In season 5, she listens to reason whenever she hears it, and there are clear limits to her loyalty, even as she remains loving and respectful of Octavia. From saving Kane to telling Octavia she loves her to helping Clarke and Bellamy stop the war, Indra is an independent agent in a way we’ve never seen before.
Unfortunately, under Octavia’s rule, acting independently won’t do her any favors. But if anyone can break through Octavia’s iron-clad exterior, surely it is Indra — who, despite everything, still believes in Octavia’s ability to lead their people, like she believed in Lexa before her. Whatever happens to Indra once Octavia keys into her sabotage, at least Indra has been fighting for what she personally believes to be right, and hopefully some part of Octavia will be able to recognize that.
After watching Adina Porter’s enchanting performance over the past four seasons, and seeing the character slowly expand and evolve to accommodate Porter’s talent, it is incredibly satisfying to see Indra reach a place where she not only stands by leaders she believes in, but who no longer seeks to hide or downplay her superior wisdom and experience.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic!
Write a comment below or submit an article to Hypable.