#Then in 1x10 not having a plan directly puts his friends in danger

[imminent-danger-came]

I really need to go in depth into MK's "smartie kid" arc that starts in 1x10 and is then a consistent thread through the whole show

[travllingbunny]

The 100 rewatch: 1x12/1x13 We Are Grounders (Part 1&Part 2)

So I’ve come to the end of my rewatch of season 1. (The season 2 opener post will come soon. I’ve already rewatched it.) Overall my opinions on the quality of the season haven’t changed much, though I did like some episodes more and some episodes less this time. It was, however, interesting to see how much foreshadowing there was of later events and how many moments later got callbacks and parallels in later seasons. 

I’ve also tried to now keep track of the timeline and body count in every episode...but I’m now starting to realize, after how confusing the numbers got in 1x11 and in these two episodes, that I’ve probably given it much more thought than the writers ever did. In the end, I had to look up The 100 wiki – but it seems just as confused as I am.

Back when I first binged the show, some 7 months ago, I was posting about it on SpoilerTV in the daily discussion threads. Sometimes I wrote just a few lines, but about this two-parter, I wrote a very detailed post - and I wish I had posted it on Tumblr, too. Maybe I’ll dig it up and post it as an annex or something.  Funny thing, before that, after 1x11, I made my list of predictions for the two-part finale, and all of them turned out to be true. I liked it anyway - predicting things isn’t always bad, it may mean that the storytelling is logical and that plot points were well foreshadowed. But it’s also one of the reasons why I didn’t find it as mind-blowing as the S2 one or S4 , or even S5 one. (But it’s certainly miles better than the S3 finale. Although that’s not saying much, since the latter was pretty anticlimactic and is one of my least favorite episodes.)

I’ve always felt that Part 1 was the stronger episode, and that hasn’t changed.

Ranking and ratings of season 1 episodes:

1x12 We Are Grounders part 1 - 10/10

1x13 We Are Grounders part 2 - 9/10

1x08 Day Trip - 9/10

1x10 I Am Become Death - 9/10

1x05 Twilight's Last Gleaming - 8.5/10

1x06 His Sister's Keeper - 8/10

1x03 Earth Kills - 8/10

1x11 The Calm - 8/10

1x04 Murphy's Law - 7/10

1x07 Contents Under Pressure - 6.5/10

1x09 Unity Day - 6/10

1x02 Earth Skills - 4.5/10

1x01 The Pilot - 4.5/10

 Season 1 overall - 7.54/10

Part 1

One of the few things I didn’t guess about this finale in advance was Ark coming down the way it did. It’s kind of funny that Kane tried to have a sacrificial redemptive death, but Jaha got there first, and had his best and most useful and most heroic moment ever… but then the show didn’t let Jaha have a redemptive death but let him live. And then he went on to make terrible mistakes and be an antagonist for at least 2 seasons, before having a morally grey (and most suited to his character) role in S4.

Every time someone tries to sacrifice themselves on The 100, they live on, and almost every time a major character has a big heroic moment, they are brought low the next season and make terrible mistakes and/or do antiheroic things. 

I like it whenever the show has a flashback of the life on the Ark or goes into the past in some other way. And it’s always nice to have another little reminder of the time when Wells used to exist for 3 episodes, which usually happens through his father’s memories or hallucinations. Here it’s Jaha watching an old video of Wells and Clarke, which helps him figure out the solution to how to bring the Ark to the ground.

And look at Jaha opening a 97 year old bottle of scotch, “The Baton” This bottle is almost a recurring character - doesn’t it also appear in the season 4 finale?

I remember that I Kane and Abby’s chemistry was so obvious in this episode, and their scenes so close and extremely friendly (what a contrast to where they started... like mother, like daughter?) that I made a comment that they seemed like they were going to start making out any moment, LOL. And I wasn’t even shipping them then, it was more like “Wait, is this going to be a thing now?” Well, I wasn’t wrong, it just took them 2 more seasons.

A few bullet points about things first mentioned in this episode: 

First appearance of Tristan, sent by Lexa, who tells Clarke “I’m the man sent to slaughter your people”. Well, at least no one can say the guy is not honest and straightforward. Also the first time we hear about the existence of “the Commander” and learn that Anya isn’t actually the leader of the Grounders. An interesting bit of trivia I’ve learned since is that the Commander was originally supposed to be a child. JRoth must be really In love with this idea, since he went back to it eventually with Madi.

First time we hear about and see the Reapers, and the scenes with them looked like something right out of a horror movie and was genuinely horrifying. Lincoln not answering Finn’s question what they are but simply saying “Pray you never find out” was, of course, a way to keep it a mystery for us a bit longer, but now we know it was really more about, pray you never get to become one, which happens with Lincoln in season 2, while Finn will unleash his inner monster in another way.

 First mention of Luna by name, though Lincoln had already talked about her people to Octavia earlier in the season. I wonder how much of her role was already planned in season 1. With all the Mount Weather mentions and other things like the acid fog, Lincoln’s drawings etc., it’s clear that the main arc of the first 2 seasons was planned since the beginning, with Grounders as secondary antagonists that the 100 mostly deal with in season 1, and the Mountain Men as the main villains, who will get focused on in season 2. But I’m not sure that this was the case with any of the season 3 arcs.

Lincoln finally explains why he is helping the 100 and that it’s not just about Octavia: “What my people are doing to your people isn’t right”. The same reason why Maya and the other rebels in MW will be helping the Delinquents in season 2. In the show where people too often justify their actions by “it was for my people”, it is great to have characters who prioritize what is right. 

And god, how good it feels to hear lines like that again. Maybe JRoth and the rest of the writers should have rewatched season 1 and remember the things that actually happened in their own show? Back when they still hadn’t gotten it into their heads that the 100 were somehow the bad guys in that scenario because they were desperately trying to survive after being forced to go to the ground (sent by the Arker leadership because the Arkers were going to die in space), and that Grounders were somehow the good guys for attacking and trying to kill them all for no reason but paranoia and prejudice?

Two big things that happen to Finn: he has a reaction to having directly  killed someone for the first time (even though it was a Reaper) and then made his big love declaration to Clarke- only to be rejected, in one of my favorite moments of season 1. I’ve always found Clarke’s reactions throughout that storyline and particularly in this scene really relatable - her feelings for him haven’t gone, but she was hurt and couldn’t trust him or go there again. “You broke my heart... I’m sorry. I can’t.” I always thought that she would never give him a chance again, and that, while the feelings were still there, she was slowly starting to move on and that, in any case, he was her past rather than her future, long before he killed a bunch of people and she had to mercy kill him. Overall, while I really didn’t like Finn/Clarke or Finn/Raven as relationships, the atypical way the C/F/R love triangle was resolved (both girls reject Finn, and become friends) was one of my favorite things about S1.

Finn’s line “I should have fought for you” always struck me as odd (that’s not exactly what I’d say was the problem: he should have been honest with her and told her he had a girlfriend, or then he should have been honest with Raven and told her the truth, he shouldn’t have been playing both of them, he should have made up his mind and been honest about it rather than waiting for Raven to dump him…), and I’m not sure what exactly he meant (fought against whom? Or did he just mean, been more decisive and not let passively wait for things to happen?) but I guess it reflects Finn’s state of mind? He was always trying to play a white knight, first to Raven on the Ark, then to Clarke. And in retrospect, this may be one of the first signs that of where he ends up in S2, when he becomes violent and obsessed with the idea that he’s going to find and save Clarke. But the show has never been fully clear on how much his mental state was PTSD due to war and fighting, and how much his increasingly unhealthy obsession with Clarke.

Speaking of saving Clarke, the fact that Bellamy was able to be very rational about the fact Clarke, Finn and Monty were missing and focus on protecting the camp rather than going on a rescue mission, as opposed to the way he acted in 3x02 when he learned Clarke was in danger and immediately got dressed as an Ice Nation warrior and went on his own behind enemy lines to rescue her, says a lot about how much Bellamy’s feelings for Clarke became stronger between the end of season 1 and beginning of season 3.

This was the episode when Bellamy definitely became one of my 2 favorite characters, with how he dealt with the Murphy situation, and showed what a leader he had become. (Which Jasper also recognized, verbally and with a big hug.) If I were to dig up my SpoilerTV post I wrote back then, you’d see a lot of very embarrassing fangirling over Bellamy. ;) 

This time I was able to focus more on Murphy’s motivations and characterization, which I didn’t think that much before.  When  Murphy is trying to taunt Bellamy - after putting a noose around his neck - saying things like “You think you’re so brave”, “You think you’re stronger than me” – I’m pretty sure that’s what Murphy thinks, deep inside. He has a deep inferiority complex. Which is exactly why he wanted revenge on Bellamy in such a way, hoping to see him afraid and brought low. He used to defer to Bellamy in the early days at the ground, so when Bellamy threw him to the wolves, then later tried to kill him in rage, exiled him and showed multiple times how little he respected him or cared for him (compared to, say, a little girl), that must have brought on a lot of resentment. But the whole “I know the truth, you’re a coward” thing would work better if it wasn’t in a situation where Bellamy was risking his life to save Jasper and actually being just as awesome as Murphy was trying to prove he wasn’t, so the whole revenge attempt was a huge, pathetic failure by Murphy. And Murphy going on about how he’s maybe now going to become the leader of the 100 after both “the princess” and “the king” die, now seems less like a villain’s threat, and more like empty bragging that he probably didn’t even believe in himself. He knows he’s not a leader type and he’s much better at making people hate him than follow him.

The speech Bellamy gives at the camp is impassioned and emotion-driven and gets the Delinquents full of passion to stay and fight – for a moment, until Clarke gives her short speech where she simply points out that they’re likely to die if they stay and convinces them to leave. This is a good example why and how the idea of Bellamy as “the Heart” and Clarke as “the Head” makes sense: it’s not that he is all emotion and can’t think rationally or that she’s emotionless – both of these things are obviously untrue – or that he’s always acting on emotion or that she’s always making her decisions rationally (there are plenty of examples of either of them doing the opposite), but it’s how they tend to approach leadership and decision-making and the arguments they used to appeal to people: his tend to be emotional, hers practical.

Part 2

 …And Clarke points that out to Bellamy when she convinces him to go with the others rather than stay on his own to fight, in one of her many pep talks to Bellamy about what a great leader he is. “You inspire them”. (She’ll tell him the same in the S4 finale.)

The Blake siblings scene was beautiful and emotional and one of my favorite scenes in season 1. But now, after that relationship got a lot more dysfunctional in the following seasons, I can’t help but notice that, while Bellamy takes back his statement from 1x06 that his life ended when Octavia was born, saying it was the opposite, Octavia never really took back her accusations that Bellamy was at fault for their mother dying and pretty much everything. (In the following seasons, Octavia will keep the tradition of always blaming Bellamy for everything ever. She does, however, tell him“I love you, big brother”.  I believe she says that two more times, in the S4 finale and the S5 finale. But in the latter, it understandably doesn’t get quite the same response.

And here we go again, Murphy is once more captured and tortured by the Grounders… how many times does Murphy get tortured or has other bad things happen to him during seasons 1-3?

Fans who like Finn more than I do have argued that he jumped in and saved Bellamy during the battle because they are comrades. But since he was earlier willing to let Bellamy stay behind and probably be killed, I think the main reason Finn did it was because Clarke was showing concern for Bellamy and upset about him potentially dying.

 My main problem with Part 2 was always the scene where Clarke has to pull the lever and close the dropship door, before Jasper incinerates everyone outside. Or rather specifically, the scene where she and Finn stare at each other for a couple of seconds during battle, with dramatic music and all, which was weird because he was pretty close by and it looked like she could have yelled at him to get inside, and he could have come inside, so I was never sure if the scene was just badly done, or if it was supposed to be deeply meaningful (Finn starting to lose it and desperate to prove himself as her hero? A reaction to her rejection? PTSD? All of that at once?) but it didn’t quite work because she looked frozen and emotional, but he was just kind of blankly staring at her… And I’m afraid I still don’t have no idea what the scene was supposed to be.

In any case, the entire thing with Clarke’s dramatic and heartbreaking choice to close to door on Finn and Bellamy to save the others should have felt more epic and had more weight, but it kind of does not. It happens quickly, and then there’s more focus on whether the Delinquent crowd will act inhumane and lynch a vastly outnumbered Anya. And, of course, there’s also the fact that I’m pretty sure no one in the audience ever thought Finn or Bellamy were actually dead. But at least the scene where Clarke goes outside and stares at two charred skeletons was good because you really felt what she must have been thinking.  

However, I love the parallel/contrast to this scene in the S5 finale, when Clarke keeps waiting for Bellamy to come inside the ship and doesn’t pull the lever to close the door (while Raven is hurrying her to do it, same as Miller was here).

The visual of the Ark coming down is beautiful - it looks like a ‘falling star’ - a callback to the earlier conversations about making a wish on a star.

Kane and Abby looking at the Earth together kinds of reminds me of Bellamy and Clarke watching the new planet in the S5 finale. (Except the former two at this point aren’t nearly as close to pull each other in an embrace.)

The ending with the Mountain Men is well done, but that was one of the things I predicted at the time: that the finale will mostly be about fighting Grounders, and then the Mountain Men will appear at the end, and they will be very technologically advanced. With so many mentions of them, it wasn’t hard to guess they had to be the S2 antagonists who appear at the very end of S1 in a cliffhanger - shows often do that. (I actually didn’t even make the Mount Weather connection, since I’m not from USA and had no idea what it was. But the mysterious Mountain Men had to be different from Grounders and Reapers, and the opposite of what you’d normally expect from people called ‘mountain men”. Which doesn’t mean it was not a good twist - it’s just hard to fully surprise fans like me who have watched so much TV .)

Timeline: I used to think season 1 lasted about a month, month and a half, but now it seems that it can’t be more than 3 weeks, at most. And even that’s a stretch.

We know for sure that episodes 1-6 lasted 10 days (and a week passed between 1x03 and 1x04), but events in episodes 1x06 to 1x09 were happening very fast, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of days, and ditto for episodes 1x10-1x13. The only possible times when more time could have passed was between 1x9 and 1x10.

Body count:

Part 1: 

1 Delinquent (Myles), wounded last episode and now murdered by Murphy as revenge for the lynching.

1 patient on the Ark that Abby wasn’t able to save.

1 Grounder killed off-screen by Lincoln

2 or 3 Reapers

1 or 2 unfortunate Grounders being eaten or about to be eaten by the Reapers.

Part 2: Lots of people.

About 300 Trikru warriors (and some of the Reapers who had been fighting them, probably) – most of them burned in the ring of fire.

Either 31 or 29 Delinquents – first a redshirt Drew, killed by a scout before the battle, then a bunch of them in battle with the Trikru (or maybe burned). This is where it gets confusing. At the start of Part 2, Bellamy feels he’s failed and says there have been 18 dead, and Clarke tries to comfort him, saying 82 are still alive. But only 16 Delinquents were killed before 1x13. So, either 1) two more died of that illness or were killed by the Grounders off-screen, or 2) he was assuming Monty and Murphy were dead or would soon be dead. And in season 3, Bellamy tells Kane “Trikru killed 37 of my friends before you even touched the ground”. Out of the 16 Delinquents who definitely died in the first 12 episodes, 6 were killed by Grounders (3 directly, 3 by bio warfare/illness). That would mean either 2 more + Drew + 29 in battle, or Drew + 31 in battle.  In any case, in season 2, 48 were captured in Mount Weather, while 6 survived outside of it (Octavia, Murphy, Finn, Monroe, Sterling, and one boy killed by Tristan in 2x01) – which would make 54, plus Bellamy and Raven.

A bunch of people died in the landing of the Ark, but there’s no info how many. In 1x07 they said there were 2,237 people on the Ark. (Which means that, before they sent the 100 to the ground and Raven took the escape pod, there were at least 2339.)  In 1x11, Kane said there were about 1,000 survivors on the Ark. But he also said 1,500 died in the shutdown of the Ark, which definitely doesn’t add up, as it would mean there were about 2,500 people before that, and that’s without the few hundred that died with Diana on the Exodus ship (which Kane may or may not counted?). Either Kane is terrible at math, or the writers got things mixed up. Anyway, let’s say that 1,000 survived, that means about 1,200 died either on Exodus or due to the shutdown on the Ark. But some of the 12 stations probably exploded before touching the ground, so a few hundred more Arkers probably died.