by Hayley Charlesworth
At this point in the debut season of a show, it’s make or break time. As the momentum of the early episodes wears out, a show has to step up its game or fade into obscurity. Luckily, The 100 takes the former path with a game-changing episode, as new alliances are formed, and new threats revealed.
At this point in the debut season of a show, it’s make or break time. As the momentum of the early episodes wears out, a show has to step up its game or fade into obscurity. Luckily, The 100 takes the former path with a game-changing episode, as new alliances are formed, and new threats revealed.
On the ground, Octavia continues her dalliance with the Grounder Lincoln, only to be caught by Finn. Seeing only one opportunity to secure peace, Finn sets up a meeting between Clarke and the Grounder leader. Not trusting the Grounders and their intentions, Clarke orders Bellamy and Jasper along with weapons as back-up. Meanwhile, the Ark is preparing to send its first drop ship to Earth, but new councilwoman Diane has other ideas, seizing the ship to take her loyal worker followers to the ground, along with Abi, who has been taken hostage, and leaving the Ark and those on it to die. But things don’t go according to plan, with the drop ship crashing to Earth.
The show’s initial villains are either now too complex and sympathetic (Bellamy), exiled from camp (Murphy, although his potential return is always on the cards), or dead. The only way to move forward was to introduce another threat, and in this episode, The 100 does it twice. Clarke and Anya’s meeting is brief, but a facsimile of war and diplomacy, as they attempt to reach an amicable solution, neither knowing that the other has weapons trained on them. With all-out war about to wage between kids and the Grounders, the real question is on the alliances of both Octavia and Lincoln. Would their attraction to each other cause either to defect to the other side? Octavia is an interesting character in general. Lincoln is her third hook-up in the show so far, following Adam and Jasper, but this is not seen as promiscuity and not presented in any way as a negative trait. Rather, the ease in which she falls for people demonstrates her naivety, having only ever had contact with Bellamy and their mother for the first sixteen years of her life.
The show’s initial villains are either now too complex and sympathetic (Bellamy), exiled from camp (Murphy, although his potential return is always on the cards), or dead. The only way to move forward was to introduce another threat, and in this episode, The 100 does it twice. Clarke and Anya’s meeting is brief, but a facsimile of war and diplomacy, as they attempt to reach an amicable solution, neither knowing that the other has weapons trained on them. With all-out war about to wage between kids and the Grounders, the real question is on the alliances of both Octavia and Lincoln. Would their attraction to each other cause either to defect to the other side? Octavia is an interesting character in general. Lincoln is her third hook-up in the show so far, following Adam and Jasper, but this is not seen as promiscuity and not presented in any way as a negative trait. Rather, the ease in which she falls for people demonstrates her naivety, having only ever had contact with Bellamy and their mother for the first sixteen years of her life.
After a slightly dull start, events on the Ark have become much more interesting in recent weeks, only to result in this tremendous cliffhanger. With almost all previous villains on the characters actually being exposed as decent people making bad choices, we finally have our evil mastermind in Diana. But even Diana has a motivation that one could understand: fighting for the rights of the workers rather than the elite, the people who would get left behind when the drop ships became overpopulated. Her plan of destroying the Ark and killing its citizens in order to secure her followers’ return to Earth may have been a cruel one, but one can still understand her motivations. Of course, that may all be for nothing in the episode’s final moments. You have to hand it to The 100, they certainly know how to do a cliffhanger well.
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