Sunday, May 8, 2016

The 100 3x14 Recap: “Red Sky at Morning” (Now What?) [Contributor: Laura Schinner]


“Red Sky at Morning”
Original Airdate: May 5, 2016

If this season doesn’t end with our core group destroying Alie and the City of Light, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep watching next season. As a viewer, it’s not exciting or captivating to watch so many characters be forced to enter this illusion where they lose complete control of their actions. And it’s not all that interesting watching the rest of the characters who are trying to defeat the City of Light fail time and time again. With the season coming to an end, the show has been focusing more and more on the City of Light, with no one being able to stop it. And this week’s episode left us with two big questions: what was even the point of anything we saw if it all led to nothing? And where exactly does the show go from here?

We finally saw a concentrated effort from everyone not under the influence of Alie, as each faction tried to bring down the City of Light in their own way. For Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia, and Jasper, this meant further trying to convince Luna to take her rightful leadership position — the most effective way that they could end Alie. However, Alie knew this as well and somehow managed to bring the City of Light to those on Luna’s ship in the middle of nowhere, where so many had gone to escape violence and killing.

For the first time in years, this escape saw a return of violence, as those under Alie’s influence turned to any means possible to force Luna into taking the chip that would send her to the City of Light. Alie knew that if Luna took this chip before accepting the A.I. into her body, it would stop her from being able to destroy Alie. But Luna is a force to be reckoned with and she was willing to do the unthinkable to stop this from happening: for the first time since she killed her brother at the conclave all those years ago, she murdered again. This time it was her most trusted friend who had fallen under Alie’s influence.

Despite seeing all the bad that the City of Light could do, the episode still ended with Luna refusing to take the AI.., telling Clarke that by going to any means to stop the City of Light, they are no better than those who are going to any means to convert everyone. So then where did this leave our heroes? Back at the same place they started, as Luna drugged them and returned them to where they were found. The only difference now is that they are out of options and have no idea where to go from here.

Things aren’t looking any brighter for Raven and Monty, who were trying to destroy the City of Light using their skill set — technology and coding. Arguably, Raven came closest in this episode to putting an end to Alie, despite Monty’s protests that she shouldn’t use their one chance to kill her using the password until the others returned (hopefully in possession of said password thanks to Luna). However, Raven has never been one to sit on the sidelines and wait, and she has always been one of the strongest characters on the show. (Not to mention, the smartest.) She used this to discover that Alie was hiding something in the Citadel within the City of Light. And it all paid off, as she found that the thing Alie was hiding was a kill switch.

Knowing that Raven had discovered this information, Alie sent in backup to stop them from activating the switch. That backup was in the form of Monty’s mom, whom he had killed but whose mind was still in the City of Light. Once again, Monty was faced with the most difficult choice a child could make. By letting Raven get past the blockade, he would be putting an end to his mother once and for all and would never have the chance to see her or hear her voice again. Even though she was just a shell of who his mother used to be, this was not an easy decision to make. But Monty realized it would give them the chance they needed to destroy Alie, so he again went through with killing his mom. Of course, this too led to nothing, as Alie was immediately able to disconnect herself from Raven’s computer — stopping the engineer right before she was able to use the kill switch. Monty was forced to face the fact that he had killed his mother for nothing, and Raven not only has to carry the guilt that comes with that, but also the knowledge that they gave up their one chance.

The third and final attempt in this episode to destroy Alie came from Murphy, Indra, and Pike who managed to escape the prison they’d been put in for refusing to take the chip. Their plan for ending Alie centered around finding her power source, which Murphy remembered was in Jaha’s backpack. By finding this and destroying it, they’d be able to put an end to her once and for all. Again, things looked promising as they managed to make it all the way to the power source. In a moment of hesitation and weakness though — perhaps even showing his humanity — Murphy was unable to take the final step and destroy the power source because he was afraid of what it might do to Emori, who was there with them. Pike then stepped up and took the final step, but naturally was seconds too late. Alie had managed to finish her migration right before Pike smashed the power source, making it ineffective.

So where does that leave us? Alie now has more power than she ever has had before and is essentially untouchable now that the migration is complete and she’s uploaded herself to the Ark. As for those who have been trying to stop her, while each group came close to succeeding, no one was actually able to, eliminating the only three ways they could have possibly defeated her. As Bellamy so succinctly puts it at the end of the episode... now what? Unless Luna somehow has a drastic change of heart, which seems unlikely since if anything were to inspire that, it would be the events of this week’s episode, they are literally out of options.

With two episodes left, we’ll have to wait and see what the group can come up with, if anything at all, to finally end this disastrous storyline.

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