What I like most about The 100 is that it defied my expectations. I am one of those viewers who avoided it because the promos and snippets made me believe that it would be about one thing–teenage angst in the middle of some sort of crisis, full of all the tropes and cliche characters you can imagine. I genuinely love the CW but they do stick pretty firmly in their wheelhouse. I imagined Clarke as a “heroine” who has traits pulled from Buffy, Katniss and Bella Swan–complete with the exasperating love triangle with two guys (lolz, this statement and the reality of the show) and that the conflict the world was under would fall into the vague “humans destroyed the world for reasons that are never fully explained and it’s really only important to know that your heroine will save it.”
Boy, was I wrong.
There are so many ways that the 100 breaks those expectations. Yes, Clarke has some of the same traits as previous CW/teen inspired heroines but it’s so much more…visceral in her case, if that makes sense. This isn’t a game and Clarke isn’t destined as a Savior. In fact one of the smartest moves the show made in recent season was to avoid having Clarke be Lexa’s clear inheritor of the Commander chip. Lexa didn’t die to serve Clarke’s ascension to, what amounts to, godhood. Clarke actually goes and tries to give it to someone else and it’s only under a no win scenario that she’s forced to take the chip and then beats it at its own game. I also think that Clarke’s body count is likely higher than Buffy and Katniss’s combined. The events of Mount Weather are proof alone and while there’s inner conflict over those choices, it’s also made clear that in these cases, Clarke doesn’t have much of a choice. Her people have to be put before others and what helps serve this theme is that the world building on the 100 is so strong. I get how this world works–it’s one of constant war and bloodshed and differing groups who have different outlooks on life even though, historically, they are the same people. It has its own language (such a smart move on the part of the writers!) and groups who have a very clear philosophy (jus drein, jus daun) that they actually act on; the way the world impacts every character is so nuanced and compelling. Take Octavia–now there’s a CW cliche if ever there was one, at least at first. She’s the dangerous girl; she’s sexy and snarky and a bit too bold for brass but also clearly falls into the “not the protagonist and not the heroine” box. Octavia could have been just the sidekick, following everyone, never really any help except as a foil for the heroine, Clarke. Instead, the writers made her a living breathing person who negotiates her own identity in light of interactions with the people of the earth, like Lincoln (RIP). Instead she becomes one of the more forward thinking characters on the show, trying to find a fragile peace in a world that is all about conflict and war. Actually, now that I’m talking this all out, The 100 has done such a superb job with all their female characters, from Clarke to Octavia to Raven to Abby to Lexa.
Which brings me to…Clexa. I feel like you can’t really talk about The 100 without bringing up Clexa and, invariably, the “bury your gay” trope. I don’t honestly know how to talk about it and it doesn’t help that around the same time Clexa became canon (and then uncanon by virtue of mortality) OUAT did their own hamfisted, token LGBT relationship and the comparison is so ripe for the picking. How to actually develop an LGBT relationship vs how to never ever write one! On the one hand, I think killing Lexa made sense in terms of the world (constant death and conflict) and in terms of the show’s mythology (we had to learn more about the chip, ALIE, and Becca) and sadly a lot of that meant Lexa had to die for those themes and that story to progress. However, the timing of it–literally moments after Clexa became very real, very raw, and very romantic on screen–was shocking (and maybe it was suppose to be because, again, one of the bigger themes of the show is that peace is a tiny moment before the next moment of war) and unsettling because of the number of times all the other hetero characters have been put into harm’s way and lived to tell the tale, but Lexa–a warrior’s warrior–was killed in a super fast moment that wasn’t even about battle. I still can’t decide if it was a misstep on the part of the writers (and they may have had their hands tied due to the actress’s role on Fear the Walking Dead) but if one good thing did come out of Lexa’s death, it’s that the bury your gay trope is being talked about by more than the insiders of the LGBT community and, hopefully, progress is going to be made. (and yes, I recognize the horribleness of saying that lots of gay characters had to die in order for progress to be made…)
While S4 was really strong on a mythology front (and so eerily reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica, down to the bot in a red dress) there were some issues for me and pretty much all of them go by the name of Bellamy. First, I like Bellamy–really I do. I think he’s a perfect equal to Clarke (and by extension, Lexa) and his story for the first few seasons was compelling, especially as he moved from “dude bro” to “troubled but sympathetic hero” largely due to his relationship with Octavia, a sister not a lover! However, in the most recent season, I wanted to hit him upside the head several times. It doesn’t help that his main conflict this season, and so much of his impetus, was rather ill defined because the relationship that *ahem* blew up was kept off screen until the beginning of the season, only to end in the same moment of its reveal. Now, had it been Octavia who died (for instance) and that death caused Bellamy to go off the rails and join forces with someone like Pike, then that makes total sense. So much of Bellamy’s character is about protecting his sister and often times his inability to do so. But because the relationship was so underdeveloped, it only made Bellamy look stupid and best and unhinged at worst.
I’m honestly not sure what to expect moving forward. I know there is a huge “save the world” conflict that arose at the end of last season and that’s going to be the main thrust of this upcoming season but I don’t know how it plays out. And this it to the show’s credit. I don’t want the 100 to feel predictable because like I already said, one thing that really sells it is how it broke a lot of the ready formed cliches.