“Fallen”
Original Airdate: April 7, 2016
Despite less-than-stellar audience reception to the season, The 100 continues on each week. And if you’re one of those who are still watching, hoping that they’re going to turn things around, this week’s episode may have been a step in the right direction. While in no way making up for the horrendous character assassination earlier in the season, we’re at least finally seeing characters like Bellamy and Monty come out of whatever weird Pike-induced stupor they were in, making moves that will actually help their people. For Bellamy, in the eyes of the other characters and the audience, it’s too little, too late, and he’s going to have to do a lot more to earn even a smidge of forgiveness for what happened to Lincoln. But turning in Pike to the Grounders doesn’t hurt his cause, even if his motivations for doing so are still unclear.
Obviously then, this episode focused a lot on the aftermath of Lincoln’s death, especially in regard to the other characters’ reactions to Bellamy. Everyone who escaped from Pike, including Kane and Octavia, reunited in the cave where Octavia was keeping Bellamy. It became immediately evident that no one trusted him, and rightfully so, even after he claimed he was now on their side. The confrontation between Octavia and Bellamy was a powerful one, as she very clearly sees Lincoln’s death as Bellamy’s fault. There was so much he could have done to stop it, but instead he went along with Pike’s ridiculous ideas, doing nothing to stop him from killing Lincoln until it was too late.
Watching the siblings at odds with each other, while completely justifiable, is hard to watch. Seeing Octavia brutally attack Bellamy, getting all her anger and frustration with him out, was painful, but even Bellamy was able to acknowledged that he deserved it. The strong relationship between these two has always been one of the highlights of the show, and listening to Octavia declare Bellamy dead to her was rough. It seems unlikely that the two will ever repair that bond they had, no matter how hard Bellamy is willing to try to redeem himself.
His first attempt at redemption came in this episode, after Monty radioed Bellamy to tell him that Pike knew that he had betrayed them and because of that, Monty was on the run. Planning to meet up at the dropship, Kane and Octavia took Bellamy along, knowing they might be walking into a trap. As they predicted, Pike was there waiting for them and they had no choice but to surrender. Still having Pike’s trust, Bellamy was able to convince him that he was leading him to where the rest of their group was hiding, but instead walked him right into a Grounder attack, where he turned Pike in. There are few things more gratifying than seeing this despicable character finally get what he deserves, and hopefully this will be a bit of a turning point for the show. Bellamy has come nowhere close to redeeming himself, and, like Kane pointed out, he may have only turned Pike in for Octavia and not because it was the right thing to do. Either way, no one is going to complain about Pike getting what he deserves.
Elsewhere, in City of Light land, things are still entirely unbearable, made more so by the fact that Abby is now also brainwashed. Because why should any of your show’s awesome ladies have any agency for themselves? Of course, being the strong woman she’s always been, Raven did everything she could to try to escape from having Alie inside her head. She came up with a plan that would actually work, but before she could enact it, Jaha and Alie put a stop to it, giving Raven back all her painful memories to the point that she surrendered and let Alie back in. Now completely under the control of the artificial intelligence, Jaha and Alie used this to force Abby to enter the City of Light by cutting Raven’s wrists and leaving Abby to either watch her bleed out on the floor or take the pill. Watching character after character being controlled by this thing hasn’t been fun or interesting, and hopefully it’ll be over soon.
The light at the end of this tunnel comes from the fact that Jasper was able to grab Raven and escape, running into Clarke on his way out of camp. It looks like the three of them will meet up with the others in next week’s episode, uniting so many of the characters that haven’t seen each other all season. With everyone working together, they will hopefully be able to get this thing out of Raven’s head, putting an end to her loss of agency that has been so frustrating to watch. If they can succeed, then hopefully they will also be able to help Abby in the future as well.
There’s still Lexa’s death to deal with as well, which Murphy is alone in navigating back with the Grounders. He’s been working to earn the trust of the self-declared new commander and help her convince the people that she is their new leader. Murphy has had quite the interesting journey on the show, and his constant snark has been welcome this season as one of the few enjoyable things. He has more than learned how to look out for himself, but also seems to have more of a conscious than he did when the show started, caring about more than just himself. But he will do whatever it takes to stay alive, adjusting to whatever circumstance he’s in, something we’ve seen him do time and time again. This is no different, as he’s once again making decisions to keep himself alive.
Overall, as The 100 is coming to the end of the season, we’re seeing them try to resolve every terrible decision they made prior to this point. Unfortunately, some of the decisions they made are unable to be repaired in the eyes of many members of the audience. They’re going to keep trying, though, and as the season wraps up, I’m thinking we’ll see an end to Pike’s reign and the destructive City of Light. There’s not a ton of hope for the show at this point, but for those who are sticking with it, it will be interesting to see how they continue trying to make up for everything that’s gone wrong.
0 comments:
Post a Comment