The 100 season 7, episode 10 features the death of a major player as the Dark Commander rises to power. Here is our review.
Wow guys, can you believe how excited I was to meet the crystal giants???? And then we saw one get made??? And she was truly the greatest giant the crystals ever did see??
When will I learn to stop asking for things?
Following a two-week hiatus, The 100’s final season picks back up with the aptly titled “A Little Sacrifice,” written by Nikki Goldwaser and directed by Sherwin Shilati.
This episode is a nail-biter from start to finish, effectively capturing that elusive anything-can-happen feeling the show so often chases.
For the whole episode, I really felt like anyone – from Picasso to Madi to Indra to every single main character in Bardo – could die at any moment. The music and cinematography really helped amp up the tension, particularly in that heart-wrenching final scene.
And while Diyoza’s death might not have been particularly unexpected in and of itself, it came about in such a shocking, tragic way (with just a sliver of hopefulness) that both feels true to the character and like it will have lasting repercussions for everyone who knew her.
Even though it is obviously sad to lose what is possibly the best new addition to the cast since season 2, I would say that Diyoza’s death ranks as one of the series’ best. She really was done right from start to finish, she went out on her own terms, and her story will continue through Hope and Octavia as they navigate a world without her.
All three storylines this week were ultimately about how any improvement for humanity has to come through peace, not war. For Diyoza, Indra and Echo, love ultimately won out over their thirst for power and vengeance.
While the villains are busy singing the old familiar ‘love is weakness’ song in different keys, our heroes are learning that love might just be the key to humanity’s ascension.
Let’s discuss The 100 season 7, episode 10 “A Little Sacrifice.”
What the flock
Sooo I might have celebrated the death of the faithful a bit too quickly, as it would seem like Sheidheda’s massacring skills are a bit rusty. Apparently a lot of them apparently just kind of… fell over? And are now totally fine?
Ugh, whatever, if they get adopted by Murphy and Emori, henmothers extraordinaire, then I suppose they have a tolerable purpose.
But while Murphy and Emori rush in to accidentally become the faithfallen’s new gods, Sheidheda escapes through the – lol – secret passage and tracks down Madi, for what is one of the most tense, well-acted scenes of the season.
Madi and Picasso are confronted by Sheidheda, who tones down his crazy into a stillness that is truly terrifying. He threatens Madi, he threatens her family, he threatens THE DOG!!, smearing them both with blood and forcing an absolutely terrified Madi to kneel – like, well, a dog – before him.
Throughout this scene, Madi is plainly terrified, no trace of fight in her. When he threatens to kill her and her family she doesn’t so much kneel as simply let her legs give out underneath her, just as overwhelmed with fear as anyone would be. It’s realistic and believable and so, so heartbreaking.
Considering that Madi was already on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of Sheidheda being in her head last season, I wouldn’t have blamed her for going complete catatonic after this encounter, confronted by her own personal demon made flesh.
But, as horrific as this is for Madi the character, this is far and away Lola Flanery’s best performance on the show to date. She hardly says a word, but you feel every bit of terror she feels in that moment.
JR Bourne is also fantastic in this scene; I find Sheidheda a much more interesting villain when his evil is guided by cold calculation, calmly talking his way to power and chaos. He’s a little Voldemortesque, and Voldemort was always at his scariest when he was most in control.
And WOW was I scared throughout this scene that the dog was gonna get it and I would have to rage quit the series!!! That would have been a shame, this close to the end, huh?
Luckily Sheidheda doesn’t see the value in killing Madi just yet, so Murphy finds her hiding in a corner and calms her down with his amazing powers of impending fatherhood and/or leadership.
Murphy and Emori then get to work saving the faithfuls’ lives and ultimately decide to put themselves in harm’s way to help protect them from Sheidheda.
These two have obviously come a long way from being the show’s post-apocalyptic Bonnie and Clyde. Their decision to step up and become true leaders of a people that desperately need to be led isn’t so much a leap forward as it is yet another step along their steady path of progression.
And that’s a good thing. It has been wonderful to see these two, particularly Murphy, evolve into such compassionate, conscientious characters, that this choice feels neither rushed nor out of character.
Frankly, Murphy and Emori’s slow, believable evolution into leaders is probably the best thing to come out of that six-year time jump between seasons 4 and 5. Emori needed that much time isolated in a peaceful community to learn to trust others and discover the value of her own contributions to the collective, and while we were made to understand that Murphy wasn’t actively a part of their community in space, Emori’s willingness to do and be better definitely rubbed off on him once they were back on the ground.
…Okay. Fine. I’ve come around. I actually really like how the faithful have become the misfit people that nobody wants and that former misfits Murphy and Emori end up becoming their accidental leaders/parents/gods. Yay! I like being convinced not to be annoyed by things.
Sheidheda broadcasts his message of madness to the masses, reciting the lineage and ascending to the throne. And the Grounders, as set in their ways as the faithful, follow him like sheep to a shepherd. (Again I am forced to ponder: is humanity really worth all this trouble?)
But Indra barges in and challenges him the only way the Grounders know how: solo gonplei.
Now, Lexa and Roan’s fight in “Watch the Thrones” is one of The 100‘s most epic moments, and I absolutely do not fault the writers for wanting to recapture the show’s glory days — and with two of the current storyline’s most prestigious actors, no less.
And visually, this scene is at least as epic as its season 3 twin: from the lighting to Indra and Sheidheda’s makeovers to the stunt choreography and music.
When we first saw Indra with her season 2 hairstyle and warpaint, I thought it was old footage, it was so well reconstructed. (And I for sure thought it meant she was about to die!)
Meanwhile Sheidheda looks like a mix between Rufio from Hook and the “what’s up fellow kids” meme, but I mean, isn’t he trying to recreate the look of the original Malakai kom Sangedakru, who was likely a teenager when he was made Commander? So it looks silly, but it’s a silliness I fully buy into.
This scene doesn’t feel like it was done just for show, though. Thematically, throwing another solo gonplei scene in before the end also works really well to show how far the Grounders have come, and indeed evolved, since we met them, even without losing the core of what defines them as a people.
The fact that a non-Nightblood is challenging a reigning Commander for the title and calling the Grounders “my people” is already proof of progress.
And how the fight ultimately concludes – Indra being saved by Madi, and Indra then throwing the fight because of her love for the child – is so antithetical to everything the Grounders stand for, yet such a show of strength, that the surrounding Grounders are visibly shaken, making me wonder if Indra and Madi’s unorthodox behavior hasn’t just lit the spark for wider, more lasting change.
It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that, in the same episode that reveals that the key to winning the ‘war’ for humanity is not in fact through war at all, we see the most nuanced and evolved Grounder since Lexa and Lincoln lay down her arms for something she once considered ‘weakness’.
Indra is nothing but weak; she doesn’t lose to Sheidheda because she is the worse fighter, but because she finds her strength in love, and because she inspires love. That’s why Madi came to save her, after all.
So even though she was the one who suggested it, Indra ultimately subverts the Grounders’ oldest and most violent tradition and ‘loses’ by choosing to embrace her humanity, completely undermining the point of solo gonplei by not going it alone.
It is a ‘betrayal,’ if you will of everything Sheidheda wants the Grounders to stand for. It is a breaking of the old tradition, it is love over strength, it is ‘weakness’ – it is all the good parts of humanity winning over the bad parts, in Indra; in the Grounder lineage and in the human race.
It is, somewhat, undercut by the fact that the Grounders then actually kneel to Sheidheda rather than mob him. But the season isn’t over yet, and this storyline is determined to drag out, so I’ll choose to take this as a win for humanity nonetheless.
While Sheidheda wins the fight and appears to take control, Indra and her humanity survive to fight another day. And you see how much her actions affect the Grounders — not just Trikru Kylo Ren and the Peasant Boy from Once Upon a Time, but Knight, and all the rest of them.
Whether or not Indra is a direct descendant of Callie (I’m warming to the Luna theory), I think she is the Grounders’ embodiment of hope for a peaceful future, and nothing made that clearer than this fight and its outcome. (Hey, maybe she should take this final test…)
And a round of applause for Madi here too, who similarly turns her fear into strength by embracing the love she has for Indra and finding the courage to fight Sheidheda for her.
She takes Sheidheda’s eye, completing his transformation into Scar from The Lion King, and perfectly transitions us into the second part of which episode, in which it’s all just an eye for an eye for an eye for an…
It’s always darkest before the (second) dawn
While I think this episode is a rare instance of the Sanctum storyline being better than what happens elsewhere, all the branches of the Bardo arc are interesting and engaging and serve to push the story forward in significant ways.
We pick up in the stone room, with Clarke desperately trying to exploit her fleeting advantage (luckily Cadogan doesn’t appear to have any follow-up questions for his miraculously resurrected daughter). But her rescue mission is thrown off by the fact that her people have no interest in being rescued.
Echo is the first to declare herself loyal to #TeamAllMankind, and Diyoza and Octavia follow her lead, because whatever else they are, they are first and foremost #teameachother.
When Clarke asks what happened to her so-called friends, Anders is all like “we didn’t do anything to them”… like they didn’t just spend three months brainwashing and conditioning them into turning off their emotions?? Does he really believe what he’s saying? Am I supposed to? Whatever. I’m glad he dies.
Clarke insists on talking to them alone, and leaves Gabriel, Jordan and Niylah to guard Cadogan. Honestly, I had just about had enough of The 100’s random character generator schtick, but this is definitely the comedic quartet I never knew I always needed.
(I also love how Clarke just assumes Gabriel is trustworthy and on their team with absolutely no hesitation, because why wouldn’t she? Gabriel is the best.)
Niylah and Cadogan have a chat about Callie, who may or may not have lived on in the Flame, but whose name definitely survived through the generations. (Which makes sense, as the first Commander(s) would have had close personal relationship(s) with her and made sure she was part of their history.)
Niylah tells Cadogan (and us): “Calliope kom Fleimkepa. They say she was brave. Strong. Legend has it when she died, even her enemies wept.”
The great thing about this little snippet of lore is that it gives us some intriguing clues about Callie’s role in the story, if we get to see it unfold in the spinoff, but it’s also ‘just’ legend, distorted by time and perspective. It doesn’t bind the writers to much, even if it does seem more and more unlikely that she ever took the Flame herself. (Which is still weird since she seemed like such an obvious candidate, but I’m sure the spinoff will explain.)
In return, Cadogan shares a bit of his own history: the original Bardoans left records of their preparations for the final war (test), which Cadogan and his flock have used to inform their way of life for centuries – misreading and misconstruing its instructions, much as our own humanity tends to do with outdated religious and political texts.
The text, as the Second Dawn has translated it, tells of the orb becoming “like a star, challenging all we have done and all that we are.” If we assume Becca already activated the test once on Earth, this would be the white light, and the test would be what she saw when she stepped through it. (Imagine how much trouble she could have saved Cadogan’s followers if she’d spoken in complete sentences.)
Cadogan doesn’t bother questioning his interpretation of the text, thinking that a final war the end all wars, against an immortal, omniscient alien God-by-any-other-name power, makes total sense.
Jordan says it better than I ever could have: “Ridiculous. We evolve to a higher level through our lowest behavior?” It really is amazing that Cadogan, for not to mention everyone on Bardo, assume that this is the way to victory.
Sadly, the time we get to spend with this dreamy quartet is short-lived, as Cadogan calls their bluff and goes to lunch (lol) and Gabriel follows because he believes that he can just bring him back after (lol).
They find themselves dining in a discarded Mount Weather set, sampling weirdly specific ancient Earth cuisine like kombucha, smørrebrød and sushi (where do we think they keep the fish?).
As contrived as the setup for this scene is – for not to mention the miraculous conjuring of a second helping of meticulously prepared food – I really enjoy Cadogan and Gabriel getting to share a moment bonding over their similar past and experiences as ‘gods’ to their respective people.
I still feel like there is a little bit of retconning happening with Gabriel this season to make him seem like the angel to Cadogan’s devil; as far as I recall, it was Gabriel and not Cadogan who played Doctor Frankenstein and killed/tortured innocent people to resurrect his dead girlfriend.
But I don’t really mind it. We need more rational people asking rational questions, and Gabriel certainly proved his ability to put his sense of fairness over his own desires last season.
The conversation also makes it seem like Gabriel hasn’t just spent three months with the Bardoans learning about their history and plan, because he asks very basic questions for the audience’s benefit, but I appreciate that the questions are being asked at all.
I lamented last week that the Bardoans’ endgame makes no sense to the point where Anders couldn’t even explain it in his ‘recruitment speech’, and frankly it still doesn’t, but at least Gabriel calls Cadogan out on it.
He points out that denouncing everything that makes them human to win the war to save the human race is completely illogical. He points out that “we’re not just DNA, we’re emotion.”
Cadogan’s rebuttal, to paraphrase, basically amounts to, “You say that emotion is good, but did you know that some emotions are bad?” This is a hilariously weak argument, and thankfully doesn’t convince the last sensible man in the universe.
Cadogan then digs into his religious extremism bag, proposing that what we do in this life is merely a means to an end, and that this end – or what comes after – is all that matters.
Gabriel is still not biting. Only when Cadogan dangles the forbidden fruit of knowledge does Gabriel seem tempted, for a moment, but they are interrupted by the plot before the conversation can continue.
Meanwhile, the delightful duo of Jordan and Niylah are stuck in the stone room with nothing to do but, oh, just saving the human race I guess??
Poignantly, the answer to mankind’s greatest riddle lies in Monty Green’s lineage and the lessons he taught his son: as Jordan studies the Bardoans’ sacred text, he figures out that the language is structured like Korean and that Cadogan and his flock have mistranslated its meaning.
He quickly figures out that the ‘last war’ isn’t meant to be a war at all, but a test, which one representative from the human race must pass in order to save their species.
It took him just about five minutes.
I suppose this explains why the Anomaly is Green: it was always just out there, beckoning for the chosen family to come through and cut through the bullshit.
And you know what, I can forgive the complete waste of Jordan in season 6 if he ends up being the key to avoiding war and saving the human race with a peaceful solution. What a way to honor the Do Better legacy.
I assume that the person to take the final test will not be Jordan though, but Clarke. Weirdly, I feel like we’ve already kind of seen her take this test and pass it when she faced Becca and ALIE inside the City of Light, so I’m curious how this one will be different. (Or maybe it will be intentionally similar!)
The greatest crystal giant
When Echo leaves the stone room, we very quickly learn what I suppose was meant to be obvious? ambiguous? from the last episode: Echo, Octavia and Diyoza do indeed have ‘a war to fight,’ it’s just not for all mankind.
Echo frees Hope before she can be shipped to Penance, revealing that it was always part of her plan, and that Clarke and co. just happened to arrive to ‘complicate’ it. (You know, if you think about it, this is all just a very aggrandized version of the sitcom trope where a big misunderstanding happens because characters A leaves the room in a rage just before character B arrives with clarifying information.)
She tells Hope to get the others to the stone room while she goes to act out her revenge plan, and Hope eagerly agrees, having her own (and I would argue much more valid) reasons for wanting to wipe out the Bardoans.
Elsewhere, Octavia and Diyoza are questioning Echo’s plan and giving me whiplash from suddenly being so open about their motives (weren’t they being so cagey because they were under constant surveillance?), when Clarke and co. barge in for a lightning round of reunions.
Clarke and Octavia hug it out, but before anyone can get too excited about two of the show’s most fierce female characters being excited to see each other, they swiftly make their moment – like all their moments – about Bellamy.
(Don’t get me wrong: Bellamy’s absence needs to be felt, particularly by these two. It’s just silly, how Clarke and Octavia never got to have a relationship outside of him. But I digress.)
As they hug, Clarke says, “Octavia, I know just a few short weeks ago in my timeline, Bellamy poisoned and almost killed you because you had sentenced me to death, and then you put him in the fighting pits as punishment, but amazingly we all survived and then you helped him save my life, and now he’s dead, and I’m very sorry for the loss we now share.”
Octavia then said, “Clarke, I’ve been living peacefully for 10 years rediscovering the meaning of family and I see now how my willingness to kill you was born out of a desperate need to keep my people safe, but I forgot to account for the fact that you, too are my people, and–”
Well, “I’m sorry” was more time-saving, I guess.
To me, the more satisfying emotional moment comes when Octavia hugs Miller and begs him to hug him back, which he does, after a painful moment of hesitation.
Even a small acknowledgement of all those two have been through together, and a beat to let Miller feel his feelings, goes a long way in terms of honoring the journey we’ve all been on with them.
Hope then arrives to speed us forward before we get too introspective; we have a Jordan-light introduction scene, and only then does everyone realize that Diyoza and Octavia are 10+ years older than when they saw them last. Damn, either these people really don’t know each other very well, or else jellyfish étuffée is just superfood for the skin.
Echo’s carefully constructed escape plan then immediately falls apart because she forgot to account for the fact that her friends would worry about her (which is a very in-character, very sad reason).
Octavia leads the others to find Levitt, whom Echo tortured (!!!) for information – for which we already know she’ll face no repercussions, which is frankly a bit hard to swallow. (I like Echo, but it’s hard to argue with the criticism that she is held to a completely different moral standard than everyone else and faces very few consequences for her actions.)
Echo’s plan is to release the vial of crystal giant super serum into the water supply, basically Bardo’s version of the nuclear meltdown in Sanctum and/or the radiation leak in Mount Weather.
Everyone is horrified by her readiness to wipe out an entire society to ‘avenge’ the death of Bellamy, particularly Diyoza, who confronts Hope about why she’s ‘letting’ Echo take revenge (as if Hope could have stopped her!).
“Because I want her to. They took everything from me,” Hope responds, a chilling way to foreshadow that she has not in fact lost her everything yet — but the innocence the Bardoans did indeed rob her of has awoken a hatred inside her that will cause her to lose everything.
In a neat role reversal, Diyoza has become the one arguing to live and let live. “I know what it’s like to kill innocent people for a cause. And I promise you, it’s not gonna fill that hole in your heart. Only we can do that.”
…I wonder if Auntie O alone will be up for that challenge.
In fairness to Hope, I don’t think Diyoza realizes that the things she found through Hope — peace and family — are things Hope never experienced gaining. She grew up taking those things for granted; indeed she was practically guaranteed peace from birth to death. She didn’t gain anything, she only lost it – and simply going back to Penance with and picking up where they left off wouldn’t give her back what the Bardoans stole, and it certainly wouldn’t give her peace.
“There are no good guys innocent people here,” Hope says, before running off with the rest; and while this is not nor will it ever be true when speaking about a whole people, I think it makes more sense for Hope to feel this way, and to want to wipe out everything that Bardo stands for, than it does for Echo.
Echo saw Bellamy get killed by one single soldier who felt his life was threatened; it was a small, isolated scuffle with lethal consequences for everyone involved. Echo might be blinded by emotion, but fundamentally, Echo knows how war works, and she has fought on many different sides in many different conflicts. She’s been that Bardo soldier more than once. Her choice to wipe out the Bardoans was very much premeditated, and it very much included all the children in that classroom who never did anything to Bellamy. That is horrific on a whole other level.
Meanwhile, Hope’s entire existence was destroyed not because of any individual’s actions, but because of the Bardoans’ societal customs; their way of life was responsible for everything bad that happened to her. Wanting to end Bardo culture as a whole makes sense, for her, on an emotional level. Especially because of how little she understands about the world and her place in it. Hope is still a child in so many ways, filled with raw emotion.
Neither of them are justified in trying to wipe out a whole people. Neither or them are forced to make a choice, like Clarke in Mount Weather. But they are also not the same.
Diyoza only ever wished for Hope to be better than she was, and I hope her sacrifice somehow makes Hope want to honor that wish. But I don’t think Diyoza ever quite understood (or at least didn’t get the chance to express that she understood) that until now, Hope simply hasn’t understood what it means to be ‘better’ than what she already is.
After all, Hope herself has only ever experienced being the Good victim against the Bad antagonist; wiping out the source of the Bad must have seemed like a no-brainer to her — before she ended up accidentally doing something much worse to herself than the Bardoans ever did, of course.
They find Levitt tied up and bloody; Echo killed people and tortured him to get information about the bio weapon, but at least she left him alive… except not really, because she was going to crystallize him along with the rest, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Once they get their information, they leave Levitt tied up in an effort to get to Echo before he can summon the guards, and rush to stop her themselves. (But Octavia does tell him she’s sorry, so crossing fingers for that Levitavia endgame…)
They find Echo just about to pull her tiny little lever, and each take turns trying to stop her.
Clarke tries her old “this isn’t who you are” line (which has not worked for her once), and tries to liken Echo’s actions to her own: “Once you make a choice like this, it stays with you.”
Clearly, Clarke is referring to the time she irradiated Mount Weather to save her people, but Echo rightly points out that it is not the same. Clarke is her own worst critic, and probably does think her own genocide is as bad as Echo’s but at least Echo is rational enough to recognize that doing something to save people and to kill people are two different things. (Skirting along the same lines as Diyoza’s freedom fighter/terrorist labels, really.)
What really gets me about Clarke’s attempts at reasoning with Echo however is the simple fact that nobody mentions the obvious: that this is who Echo is, because these two characters blew up the same damn mountain.
While I appreciate that Clarke is just saying the same things everyone on this show says to talk each other off the genocide ledge, Echo is the one person who has made choices like this one before, and who is the person who learns to live with them. So it doesn’t seem to quite… fit?
Anyway, Raven is the one who gets through to Echo. First by appealing to her (or Bellamy’s) better angels, then by essentially forcing Echo to kill her too if she wants her revenge.
And that, finally, makes Echo realize that Bellamy isn’t the sum of her entire existence: she has other people she loves, and her revenge for one loss can’t come at the cost of more losses.
I love that it was Raven who saved the day, and who proved that Echo got more out of her time on the Ring than finding someone to love/follow in Bellamy. While I like to think Echo bonded with Hope and Gabriel on Penance, too, her space family is still the most important human connection she has, and it should be bigger than Bellamy.
While I’m beginning to suspect that Echo’s story might not in fact conclude with her cutting the strings that tie her to servitude and becoming a real girl, we at least get a hint that maybe it could have gone this way, if Bellamy really was permanently dead and she did have to learn to live without him.
She breaks down in Raven’s arms, and for a moment, all is right with the world. But just as the day seems saved, we remember that Echo isn’t the only one in that room vying for revenge.
In a chilling slow-motion sequence (the music!!), Hope kills Anders and runs to finish what Echo started.
But Diyoza catches the drop – her daughter’s sin – and crystallizes before their eyes as Hope screams her instant grief and regret.
It is the worst pain imaginable: to not only lose a loved one, but to do so because of your own mistake, an action performed in bad faith which you instantly want to go back in time and undo.
Even as the crystal spreads over her face, Diyoza manages to smile at Hope and tell her, “Don’t waste this, little one. Be better than me.” (Be better than us.)
She dies horrifically, yet in the only way that feels worthy of her story: saving her daughter’s soul and giving her a second chance to choose to be a good person.
And in the end, Diyoza herself got to be better: she went out saving innocent lives, when for so long she had been defined by taking them. Most importantly, she sacrificed herself to preserve her daughter’s innocence. Whatever else Hope has suffered and become, she is still not a mass-murderer, and now she has a chance to never become one.
This is Hope’s moment to bend or break; considering how far gone she already was, it would be really, really easy to go full dark side now that she really has nothing left to lose. Diyoza can’t protect her from that.
But she could, at least, give her one last chance. She could show her very plainly that the path Hope was heading down would break herself more than her enemies, and that the answer to violence isn’t just more violence. (When is Hope meeting Jordan, anyway?)
It has to be up to Hope to take that chance. Hope has to actively choose to be good – and she now has to do so under the conditions of having fulfilled her own prophecy of having lost everything.
So much of Hope’s story in season 7 has been about other people wanting her to be good, even as she turned to violence and murder. And Hope never really understood why she couldn’t just be as violent and vengeful as everyone else around her; why was she held to such a high moral standard when nobody else was? She was doing bad things for good reasons, so surely it was okay?
It seems impossible that her accidentally causing her mother’s death is what makes Hope finally understand why she must take responsibility for her actions and actively choose the better, harder path. It seems impossible that the child of two mass-murderers wouldn’t simply follow in her parents’ footsteps. Everything points to Hope being just another Luna; a good person broken and broken and broken down by the world, to the point of absolute destruction.
But this is exactly why Hope must prove that breaking the pattern is possible. If she can do it, it would go a long way to prove that humanity as a whole can wrench itself free of the darkness and make better choices.
Is The 100 in a place where it will allow Hope to make that better choice? Or is she doomed for the show’s trademark nihilistic self-destructive end? I know what I’m hoping for.
And what about Octavia? She’s handled the loss of Bellamy with remarkable grace – whether or not that was just to make room for Echo’s more plot-relevant grief – but Diyoza was a big part of the reason why Octavia was able to ‘afford’ that loss, because of the new family they had formed together.
And Octavia doesn’t just have to navigate a fresh wave of grief, she also has to try to comfort Hope and make sure she honors Diyoza’s sacrifice.
Hopefully, eventually, Hope and Octavia will be able to see past the pain. Because as horrific as her death was, Diyoza might be one of the few characters on The 100 who actually got to find her happy ending, at least for a while. It might not have lasted as long as Monty and Harper’s, but the love and peace she found on Penance was just as real and just as healing for her soul.
Octavia, hopefully, will be able to recognize the value in that, even if Hope won’t.
For your consideration
- “In other words, get the flock out of here.” You know what… Jarod Joseph delivered that line the best way anyone possibly could have.
- “If you’re looking for the wrong answer, it’s easy to miss the right one.” Counterpoint: there is no such thing as a right answer when the question is an arbitrary, ever-shifting construct.
- Why would as timeless of a thing as sushi not be from Gabriel’s time? Did the ocean run out of fish? Trick question, it already is.
- So let me get this straight: they compared Echo’s readiness to ruthlessly murder all the innocent people on Bardo because she wanted revenge to that time Bellamy joined Pike’s preemptive strike against a by-all-accounts hostile enemy army, because Bellamy wanted revenge… for that time Echo ruthlessly murdered all the innocent people in Mount Weather?
- I really love John Pyper-Ferguson’s performance as Cadogan. His benevolence and blind conviction is infuriating, in the best way.
- And my god Shelby Flannery’s acting in that final scene, man… this show has the best ensemble on television, I swear.
- Gabriel touching Jordan’s shoulder and getting alien goo on his hand was low key the best moment in the episode.
- Oh, but I also love the little moment when Madi comforts her new friend. So many good little moments!
- Another random thing I really like about this episode is the slow zoom and focus pulling between Jordan and Niylah in the scene where they tell Gabriel about Jordan’s discovery. Neat.
- ORLANDO???
- I suppose the final test-taker really has to be Clarke, especially because it’ll basically be the only thing she gets to do this season, but I kinda want the person taking the test to be a random wild card like Jordan or Emori or Jackson…
- Wait, why is Emori wearing Jackson’s doctor coat? Where is Jackson??
- ”So what now?” “Now, we survive.” New world, old words.
RIP Charmaine Diyoza, truly the baddest serpent in all the gardens. 🙏
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