The 100 season 7, episode 12 finds beautiful character moments amidst an increasingly frustrating storyline.

Welcome to the final act of The 100. In season 7, episode 12 “The Stranger,” the two separate storylines finally (finally!) converge as Clarke and her current/former old/new best/not friends land on Sanctum… just as Sheidheda has taken control and gotten a hold of the Anomaly Stone.

So many pieces of this interstellar puzzle landing on the same table at the same time, just as the show is rearing up for the big finish? What are the chances?

“The Stranger,” written by Blythe Ann Johnson and directed by Amanda Row, is an excellent episode of television. Right after it aired, I said on Twitter that it feels like an episode of The 100 is supposed to: it recaptures some of the show’s spirit and retouches the fading lines of several main characters, and most importantly, it makes me care about everything and everyone.

Even as the wild, vague, why-is-this-happening-again? final boss fight continues to take shape; even as we continue to spend these precious final hours with characters we barely know — while the characters we do know keep saying things we know they would never say — this episode hones in on that hard-to-define raw heart that inspired me to put so much time and effort into making sense of The 100’s madness in the first place.

Sometimes, and more so lately, the show feels too much like it’s trying to be other shows, or any show. I like when it tries to be this show, and tell this story, with these characters. So I really appreciate when an episode feels like it works hard to stay true to the core of what makes The 100 so unique.

The Shepherd knows we’ve been taken to some weird places in the past and have had to wrap our minds around some unwelcome twists and turns; I’ve never made secret of the fact that the show can disappoint me as much as it can delight. That’s not why I do this. It’s because The 100 always felt like it had something to say, and that dedicated viewers would be rewarded for their dedication.

The Bellamy ‘twist’ is not that. I can’t think of any show in which it would be satisfying to have a main character turn into a religious zealot (for a religion that doesn’t make any sense) and sever all the emotional ties we’ve spent seven years watching them build up in, what, the 95th percentile of the story’s duration? It’s not satisfying. It’s not shocking. It’s not even upsetting, because it doesn’t feel like a legitimate story choice, so I can’t take it seriously. It’s just annoying.

However, amazingly, everything else in this episode works to (almost) make up for it. Once again, The 100 makes the most of Bardo’s dedicated conversation chambers, and Johnson crafts beautiful moments for Hope/Jordan and Clarke/Octavia that elevate the entire season.

Echo is written with a care and deliberation that the character should have been afforded all along. In Sanctum, Murphy, Emori, Madi and Nelson (💔) all come to brilliant life.

This episode makes the most of every little moment and takes care to have characters relate to each other on a human level, without making it hammy or fanservice-y, which is a hard balance to strike. The characters speak with such clarity about who they are and how they feel. More of that, please, always.

Let’s dive into The 100 season 7, episode 12 “The Stranger.”

Welcome to New Capritum

RIP Nelson. You died like Lincoln, refusing to surrender your beliefs or your dignity to the dictator du jour. Respect.

Lee Majdoub is yet another amazing addition to the extended ensemble, and it’s really remarkable how much of a journey the character has gone on in a very limited amount of time. Nelson was the face of an entire people and had to humanize them and their story all by himself, and Majdoub did an amazing job bringing the character to vivid life.

And way to go out swinging, with an epic speech and everything. In another version of this season, this moment easily could have gone to Indra or Murphy, or even Bellamy – any one of their arcs could have come to a close with them making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their hard-won moral integrity – but it seems like The 100 is saving the main characters’ fates for last. (I only hope the deaths that do happen will be as well done as Diyoza and Nelson’s!)

By the way, I’m very upset that Sheidheda successfully massacred all the Children of Gabriel while the much more annoying Sanctum faithful are seemingly all still alive. I never win!

But wait. There is another Skywalker. Indra smuggles Jasper Jr. to join the basement dwellers, completing Madi’s golden trio (Madi is Harry, new kid is Hermione and the other one is Ron, don’t ask me to explain), which is super lucky, because we all know this conflict is going to be resolved by a soccer match uniting the disparate peoples in friendly competition. Chess is so last century, Sheid, jeez.

Madi’s role in this episode is relatively minor, but I really enjoy it. She’s growing up and taking on responsibility, and Emori is gently letting her take care of people without putting too much on her.

The moments between Emori and Madi are probably my favorite parts of this episode, actually (and they have sharp competition). I never would have imagined the show would explore this particular dynamic, or that it would involve Emori mentoring Madi in how to be a good friend, but I absolutely love it.

It shows how much Emori has grown and how much she has found inside herself to give; it lets Madi act her age without coddling her. It feels true.

Murphy and Emori’s story continues to waver between them getting married and having babies or them both dying horrible heroic deaths, which is super fun and not at all giving me a nervous breakdown.

In this episode, they are basically new parents trying to find a little bit of alone time, only for their 200 children to keep bickering and interrupting the conception of #201. (It’s gonna happen y’all.)

They are so damn cute, man. Memori is probably one of the best examples I can think of to prove that the Moonlighting curse is a myth perpetuated by writers who don’t know how to write romance, because they are so consistently in love and yet get to have really cool storylines both together and separately, and none of those storylines are about whether or not they are in love (even when they were broken up, they were no less in love).

If only The 100 could have carried that energy across the board, but at least this one relationship has been done more than justice.

Their plan to hide the outcasts in the nuclear reactor control room is a short-sighted one (why was it that they couldn’t go live in the woods? The Children of Gabriel survived out there just fine) and it quickly falls apart.

But I do love how, initially, Murphy and Emori outsmart Nikki when she comes knocking. It’s always so satisfying when the heroes are genuinely smarter than the villains and get to have some small victories along the way, even if the villains ultimately get the upper hand before the big showdown.

Murphy has a quiet moment with Nikki where he appeals to her better nature – Hatch – and it seems like he genuinely gets through to her. She seems too much like the Bellatrix to Sheidheda’s Voldemort for me to believe it sticks, but just for this episode, I appreciate that she’s made human enough to second-guess her rage in the face of something like compassion.

Sheidheda comes in and Murphy goes to meet him (“You’ll be on the wrong side of the door.” “You’ll be on the right side.” Unnnghhhh these two!) and every single The 100 fan’s heart went into their throat for a second.

But it’s okay! Murphy lives to fight another day. Emori plays the ultimate trump card: they’ll blow the reactor and kill everyone, because letting Sheidheda in means they die anyway, and so Sheid cuts his losses and leaves peacefully. JK!

(Not to give the psychopath any ideas, but I’d have tried chopping off one of Murphy’s limbs first just to see if that made Emori’s resolve waiver. What? Like he wouldn’t?)

Murphy is now stuck as Sheidheda’s pet chess opponent, and without going into it because yikes, I just want to point out that this is the second time a Commander has tied Murphy up and kept him around for their amusement. Coincidence? Probably. But it’s weird, right?

Luckily knight in shining armor Clarke Griffin shows up to save him, asking the question on all of our minds: “What the hell happened here?” And why the hell did it take us 12 episodes?!

Hey stranger

Meanwhile* on Bardo, Bill and Bellamy have a little tete-a-tete to talk about the heart and soul of it all.

(*Time dilation? I don’t know her.)

Bellamy is struggling with the concept of letting go of personal attachments to embrace for all mankindism. And so, it seems, is Bill.

Bellamy tries to test Bill by offering condolences for Anders’ death. Bill doesn’t feel his loss, because he’s been asleep for centuries and only met him twice. Meanwhile, he plainly cares about his children and wants to know what happened to them. And that… seems normal? Certainly doesn’t sound particularly for all mankindy to me.

So why would Bellamy learn that information about Bill Cadogan, and then proceed to try to force himself to feel nothing for his family and devote himself to the collective?

Even more so than Bellamy coming to believe that all of humanity has to abandon the carnal plane and ‘ascend’ after seeing a bright light (…sigh), the hardest thing for me to understand about this storyline is the conviction the Bardoans have that they need to eschew personal attachments to fight/win the war. Cadogan hasn’t. And the Bardoans haven’t actually done it, either.

Every single named character from this planet (except Anders) has been defined by a personal attachment: Dev and Orlando both devoted themselves to Hope the minute they saw her (Orlando even before then!), Lev fell in love with Octavia after taking a day trip through her memories, and Bellamy and Doug are literally best friends now.

I can appreciate that this is a result of our heroes ‘corrupting’ the Bardoans with their wily charms, and that nobody on the show ever claimed this society was born incapable of forming individual attachments, only that they were all taught to avoid them and been closely monitored to make sure they stayed the course.

Psychologically, it’s probably exactly because they’ve been deprived of it that they fall in ‘love’ so quickly, when they meet people that haven’t been subjected to the same brainwashing.

But I just don’t see why it’s a thing in the first place, since literally nobody seems to adhere to it. And I certainly don’t see why Bellamy feels like he has to live by Cadogan’s code, actively trying to condition himself into treating his friends like strangers and willing himself to cause them harm, after finding out that Cadogan himself doesn’t live by it.

And what does that have to do with him wanting to fight the Last War, anyway? Can he not fight the war because he has people he loves that he wants to see ascend? Didn’t the vision use his mother to convince him to believe? Also, he didn’t let Doug fall to his death because “for all mankind” but he’s willing to stand by and let his friends be executed because “for all mankind”? Is it me or is this not super contradictory?

Another thing that makes no sense is the fact that Bill wants to execute every single one of our heroes because of Echo’s semi-successful massacre attempt. I mean, punish Echo and Hope, sure. Maybe Octavia, if you were being really petty. But Jordan? Raven? Niylah?! Their only crime was showing up. So much for ‘all people are the same.’ The Bardoans are so inconsistent, man.

But it’s not really about making sense, of course, it’s about putting Bellamy in a position where he can be (superficially) morally justified in torturing his friends to get/fix the Flame, because he is at least partially motivated by stopping them from being executed. It makes lines like “I’m trying to save you” work on multiple levels, because while he genuinely believes that helping the Shepherd will eventually let them all ascend to Golden Grootism, he is also acting to make sure they don’t get executed today.

The first stop on Bellamy’s asshole tour is Raven and Echo. (It will never stop being funny that the Bardoans pair the characters up in maximum heart-to-heart potential duos. Guess they are living vicariously through the hidden camera footage.)

He tries asking nicely for the Flame, and Raven doesn’t have her Find My iFlame turned on, so naturally he must immediately send her off to be tortured. Because bright lights are pretty, I guess.

Then Echo (rightly) calls Bellamy out on his absolute BS. Here’s how it goes:

Echo: You’re such a traitor!
Bellamy: So is your face!

And like… rude, but accurate.

Real talk though, this scene is so sad. It might have been even sadder if I had ever been fully convinced by this relationship; there is an alternate reality in which Becho was as epic and steampunk Romeo/Julietesque as I think was intended, but this is not that reality (for me, anyway). But even so.

I’ve always found Echo a million times more interesting any time she was away from Bellamy, interacting with characters like Raven and Hope or exploring her very complicated self-image.

Make that almost always, because this scene is a major exception. Wow, what a moment.

Echo has been put through one emotional wringer after another because of Bellamy’s ‘death’, at times crossing way over into the melodramatic. But this confrontation, which should be the most melodramatic of all, grounds the character in such stillness that lets the devastation of her journey breathe.

Because Echo is finally standing face-to-face with the man she killed for, cried for, carved up her own face for, turned herself into something feral and raw and so baseline human for, and there is… nothing. No passion. No love. No hate. Bellamy is empty, and it drains every last bit of fight out of her, as well.

I really, really feel for Echo here, because damn. She really thought they were soulmates, emphasis on the “soul”: Bellamy woke all this emotion in her that she’d spend a lifetime learning to repress, and he even made her believe it was reciprocated (and once, it probably was, we just didn’t get to see that part of their story).

And what’s a few years and a handful of planets’ worth of distance compared to the magnitude of all that emotion?

Holding onto all that, Echo walked across the universe for Bellamy, she waited for him, she fought for him and killed for him… only to find out that during all that time, Bellamy lived a life that was not only about so much more than Echo (as it always had been), but it wasn’t about Echo at all.

It wasn’t even that he forgot her, or found someone else, or stopped loving her. It was that his love for her wasn’t enough – in fact, right now, it must seem to her that it wasn’t anything. During their separation, while Bellamy overtook more and more of Echo’s heart (to the point where he was her singular obsessive purpose), Echo occupied a smaller and smaller part of his.

He already had other people he loved at least as much as he loved her before they separated, and now that they’re back together, he has a ‘greater purpose’ that has nothing to do with her. Ouch times infinity.

Echo was once able to understand the ability to put your loyalty to a cause above your feelings for individual people. Hell, she got her name that way. But the Echo we know today has wholly abandoned her my peopleism in favor of my personism, to the point where it nearly consumed her.

How devastating, that they landed on opposite ends of that spectrum (essentially switching places). To look into his eyes and to see that Bellamy would not only not do for her what she did for him, but that he would consider her death a necessary sacrifice for ‘all mankind’? I feel for her, and I really appreciate how Tasya Teles plays it: a little sarcastic, a little bitter, entirely disillusioned and disbelieving. (Sidenote: I feel that way about Bellamy right now, too.)

Interestingly, in this moment, I feel for Echo the same way I felt for Finn when he looked into Clarke’s eyes after his massacre, and you could see him searching for the same look of shared relief to be back together that Echo looks for and fails to see in Bellamy’s eyes.

It’s not the same situation – Echo didn’t go through with her massacre, and the narrative clearly hasn’t condemned her for the violent acts she did commit – but the look in their eyes is the exact same, and it breaks my heart in much the same way.

Now, because Echo is Echo, and hasn’t had her soul broken in the way more innocent characters like Finn or Jasper did, I do believe there’s hope for her recovery… and call me crazy, but I do dare to imagine that it might involve her finding a way to center her power and passion on herself, not a man.

Beautiful scene, anyway, and I wish they’d all been like that.

Let’s show them how to grieve

This scene, guys. THIS SCENE. Shannon Kook and Shelby Flannery are both among the best recent additions to the cast, and Jordan and Hope are both legacies of some of the show’s most epic characters.

And here they are together, forming a human connection through something as simple as a shared life experience. Emotion made tangible. A reality that could so easily be obscured by the grandeur of it all, whittled down to its most base, human level: grief. Touch. Empathy.

With Hope, Jordan and Madi, the show has teetered very precariously on the edge of repetition valley, because they essentially have the exact same upbringing and the exact same insular relationship with a main character, making them the ‘young’ version of Clarke, Octavia and Monty, respectively.

But using their similarities as a foundation for a very realistic, genuine bonding moment (as opposed to ignoring it or making an offhand joke about it) turns a potential story crutch into a strength; Jordan and Hope just met each other, but unlike a lot of other random pair-ups in recent seasons, I believe that they instantly get close, exactly because Jordan is self-aware enough to relate his own experience to hers.

Jordan is the perfect person to offer Hope empathy in this moment, because he is the living embodiment of that ability. Just as his parents were. And he can offer Hope a way out of the darkness that Monty couldn’t offer Octavia, which is a beautiful bit of story symmetry that draws a strong through line back to season 5.

So while Bill Cadogan is busy preaching “this show life is not about relationships”, we are seeing glimpses, more and more, that this impersonal for all mankind bullshit is just that. Billshit. Human connection is what gives life meaning, and also what breathes life into a scene.

Hope has had an interesting journey in season 7. Her story and the acting by Shelby Flannery is probably one of the best aspects of the season, and if nothing else, surely Flannery will be bombarded with offers after showing off this reel. She is a stunning performer, and I am once again in awe of the casting department’s ability to discover standout after standout.

Even if all we get from this perfect pair-up is a single moment, it’ll be good enough. But I obviously hope there’s more. Hope has had a lot of great scene partners, but she’s never had someone who calmed her down rather than hyped her up. Jordan has not been offered the same interaction opportunities, so I hope he gets to tag along with Hope into the main action.

Especially since – let’s be real – Hope has been given the depth and growth and amount of screentime that should have been Jordan’s to begin with.

Clarktavia nation how we feelin dot gif

Clarke and Octavia are, of course, also stuck together. Whichever Bardoan was in charge of cellmate selection clearly watched Lev’s copies of The 100: Octavia Blake fancam edition and knew what to do.

Not only do Clarke and Octavia need to be together for the big Bellamy confrontation; they also have some unfinished business to wrap up before the show separates them again (and, you know, ends forever).

Or more accurately: Clarke and Octavia need to have their first and last conversation in which they relate to one another as human beings and acknowledge their shared life experience.

Imagine, that it took seven seasons for them to get here. That is absolutely insane. But this little moment actually serves to justify the dissonance between the show’s two main female characters, by calling it out: Octavia flat-out says “I never understood you”, which is absolutely true.

Octavia was always on her own path, and Clarke was usually in the way of that path; the only thing stopping them from being enemies/strangers was their shared connection with Bellamy, who humanized both in the eyes of the other.

The scene smartly spots that it would take Octavia raising a young child in peaceful isolation to understand not only her brother’s sense of responsibility towards her, but Clarke’s sense of responsibility towards Madi.

But it’s not just about them connecting. This could easily have been another instance of two characters monologuing at each other or proclaiming wild emotions that didn’t feel true to their (limited) experiences together.

It is, instead, Clarke asking about Octavia’s experience. It is Octavia trying to hold back, but breaking, and Clarke seeing in her how much she’s changed. It is about showing how much they’ve grown and matured and how different they are from the kids who landed on the ground – and how, in Clarke and Octavia’s case, growing up doesn’t mean growing apart. They recognize all this wordlessly, and it bonds them in an authentic, earned way.

Physically they start the scene apart, two adult strangers whose lives intersected as youths, but who were never really that close. They end the scene sitting side by side, and that’s how they face Bellamy, who is now the one removed from both of them, rather than the thing tying them together. It’s an amazing, subtle bit of symbolism. And I buy it. I have waited so long for a reason to root for these two women to be on the same side, even if it comes about so late, and as part of such a frustrating storyline.

Since Octavia and Clarke were sent to separate planets at the end of the episode, I suspect this was the last time we will ever get to see them quietly bonding together. But I’m just glad it happened at all, and that it was written and acted in a way that honored the depth of the characters’ relationships and gave us a glimpse of the show that could have been, where it was always Clarke and Octavia against the world.

A long time ago, we used to be BEST! friends

Bellamy confronts Clarke and Octavia on his Flame Restoration tour (can we talk about how ironic this is?) and this is it, the show’s chance to sell Bellamy’s big turn.

After opening up a big question last week about what exactly he saw in that bright light that convinced him he needed to make sure all of humanity got grinded into gold dust, this episode gives us the answer.

He saw… a bright light.

Jesus christ on a cracker, guys.

This just isn’t good enough. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that humanity needs to be forced to ‘ascend’ anywhere in the first place, and I certainly don’t buy that Bellamy would abandon his own humanity and everything he fought so hard to become to ensure that it happens, when he doesn’t even know what “it” is.

Bellamy has turned against his friends before. Bellamy has followed an authoritarian leader he believed would bring his people peace, he has imprisoned people he cared about and taken away their free will, he even took part in a massacre. Bellamy is capable of going low. But that is why he worked so hard to go high.

The difference between season 3A and now is that Bellamy following Pike made sense for who he was at the time. That story frustrated the hell out of me because I wanted him to be better, and I loved it because it made sense why he wasn’t (yet); it was so clear what drove Bellamy to this dark place, and it was clearly signposted that he was acting on limited, misleading information. It was a super well done storyline.

And from season 3B onwards, Bellamy’s arc seemed incredibly well-crafted and considered: he wanted to be better, and he took every opportunity to grow. He worked hard to regain Clarke’s trust. He succeeded. He failed with Octavia, and it broke his heart. He became obsessed with saving the 100. He collaborated with the Grounders – Echo, Roan, Indra. He reached out to his enemies. He preached unity. He became a leader.

Slowly, gradually, Bellamy worked to earn his ‘redemption’ in a way most of the other characters haven’t had to, and he did.

His evolution over the course of the series really has been extraordinary. Are we really undoing all of that character work, all of that growth, for a last-minute ‘gotcha’ sucker punch?

“It didn’t have to be like this” is such a bittersweet line from Bellamy, because no, it didn’t. Seasons 1-6 Bellamy didn’t set up this final arc for him. It didn’t have to be this way. I don’t think it should have.

Bless the line “I am the same person who brought you back from the dead“ for trying to tie up the frayed threads of Bellamy’s arc. But the thing is that: no. He’s not. This is not who he was in season 6, and maybe that is the crux of the issue with this storyline.

Bellamy wasn’t trying to save “everyone” when he yeeted Clarksephine through the forests of Sanctum and left the rest of his people to fend for themselves inside a literal lion’s den. He was not moving towards a ‘for all mankind’ mentality. He was emotionally compromised by his burning need to save one specific person he couldn’t live without and acted accordingly.

I want to say that I am genuinely very sorry for any misunderstandings my reviews in season 6 might have contributed to. Clearly, the story they were trying to tell was not the story I saw play out. But I don’t know what I could have done differently. The point of me watching this show in a ‘go with the flow’ way is that I go where it flows. And I did.

In a season that had a lot of issues and disappointments, I was inspired and heartened by the emotion and passion coming from Bellamy, and it got me invested in Clarke and Bellamy’s dynamic in a way I’d never been before. Denying where their story seemed to be heading would have felt like denying the characters’ reality, so I didn’t.

But it was also just an amazing story for Bellamy specifically. He’d come so far. He’d discovered what was most important to him. He’s always been a plot pusher, but man, he was pushing the whole damn season this time. It was amazing.

Maybe it was never intended that way, but it’s how it came across on screen. And in light of how it came across on screen, pivoting in the show’s 11th hour and backtracking/regressing Bellamy to his season 3 self – without good justification — throws it all out the window.

While a lot of elements of season 7 are still great and my love of The 100 doesn’t stand or fall on one character, it’s not unimportant, what happens to each individual character. Maybe especially this character, because while The 100 has a bad habit of obscuring the inner lives of its lead characters (Clarke especially), Bellamy has consistently been one of the few ‘open books’ that made us feel emotionally connected to whatever storyline he was involved in. (Kane and Diyoza performed similar functions.)

Coming to the end of his story and being told we were supposed to be reading a whole different book… well, it breaks something.

For what it’s worth, I think this could have been a very different and much more interesting story if we could emotionally and logically follow Bellamy to this place of conviction – if maybe the show made a real case for the Shepherd, inviting the audience to consider ‘the enemy’s’ point of view, as it used to – rather than treating him like a turncoat villain at the expense of seven years of storytelling integrity.

To bring it back to this episode, Bellamy’s internal conflict is very effectively made external in his scene with Clarke and Octavia, both by Bob Morley (who knows Bellamy better than anyone) and through the writing/directing.

As a viewer, it’s a relief to not having to bend my brain over backwards for once, in order to make sense of what the story is trying to say. I don’t love what is happening here. But at least I understand what the characters are feeling and what they want.

It’s crystal clear that Bellamy believes in the absolute necessity of humanity’s transcendence (even if it’s not clear why), but that he still loves his friends, and that he is pained by having to do what he has come to believe is ‘right.’ (The crystal clarity of the characters’ emotions, by the way, is one of the best things about this episode across the board.)

Even if the narrative puts him squarely in the wrong, Bellamy truly, genuinely believes he is trying to save everyone, including Clarke and Raven and everyone else he puts in harm’s way.

And adding in the impending execution element helps a little bit in terms of explaining why he’s so quick to send his friends to M-Cap… even if it’s still completely and utterly wild that he is standing by and willing himself into impassiveness while Clarke’s mind is being violated, as if season 6 didn’t happen at all!

(Sidenote: How Gabriel wasn’t standing around in the background providing sarcastic voice-of-the-audience commentary is beyond me, especially since he does that for most of the other scenes anyway.)

But, the show must go on. Writing Bellamy off (as she…should?) Clarke manages to negotiate for her friends’ safe passage in exchange for the Flame, but she forgot to read the fine print I guess, because everyone except Raven and Gabriel (lol) are sent offscreen for a bit.

Everyone else is already saying they went to Earth, so I guess I’ll just join that theory chorus… except Earth is supposedly “offline”, no? Ugh, who knows. We’ll find out.

Meanwhile Clarke, Bellamy, Raven and Gabriel (who has literally no reason to be there, but I guess we need him to exposit that it’s a test, not a war) arrive with Bill on Sanctum.

Finally, finally, finally the main storylines are converging, and we stand before an interesting confrontation between Cadogan and Sheidheda, two players who presumably will both want to take the final test.

All I’m gonna say is that if they don’t let Emori take it, it’s their own damn fault if they fail.

For your consideration

‘The 100’

is going on another break, and season 7 continues in September