Despite as much we would prefer it otherwise, The 100’s final season has significant problems.
Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake, the season’s two main characters, have been mainly pushed to the background of the storyline. Instead of concluding the character arcs that have been developed over the course of the previous seven years, it has poured itself into writing lore-heavy stories involving time dilation and teleportation stones. With the exception of the fact that he seems to like murdering and violence, the new Big Bad for the team to fight is a seemingly random dark commander. I’ve been there. done that.) Let’s not even discuss Bellamy’s impulsive choice to join Bill Cadogan’s weird Second Dawn cult and find religion.
It’s unclear whether The 100 will be able to tie up all these excellent plot strands in a meaningful way or to reach a natural conclusion that enables our favourites to experience any form of healing or grace with only a few episodes left to air. It’s highly likely that it won’t. Perhaps the show is simply trying to cover too much ground in its last season, and we all need to start coming to terms with the fact that some stories will never have satisfying resolutions.
The 100 has previously shown that it knows how to appropriately pay off its characters’ long-term storylines with depth and purpose, so the idea that the show might not stick the landing after all these years is extremely upsetting. Just take a look at the Season 7 finale of Octavia Blake’s multi-year journey, which allowed her to atone for her past transgressions while also outlining a brand-new future that respects every aspect of the woman she has become.
Octavia is a fictional character who, in theory, shouldn’t even exist. Her mother’s hidden birth was a protest against the Ark’s one-child rule. forced to spend her childhood hiding beneath the floorboards in her family’s bedrooms. The fact that Octavia endures long enough to return to the earth is already rather astonishing. However, that is only the start of her tale. We have watched Octavia transform from a disobedient kid to a strong fighter and hero throughout the course of The 100. She has more than once saved mankind by fusing various cultures, bringing the clans together, and demonstrating that Grounders and humans may coexist in some measure of harmony. She did this by allowing herself to love Lincoln, a stranger with whom she shared little in common.
She has, however, also been a dangerous foe who has fought against the very people she claims to love out of hatred and despair. When given the chance to truly lead, she turned into a ruthless despot who controlled her people and would not put up with dissent, forcing them to practise cannibalism in order to survive, creating fighting pits where those she detested were forced to kill one another for sport, and destroying the algae farm that might have prevented the bunker survivors from starting a war.
The fact that Octavia has gone through trauma after trauma and continued to live is not what is genuinely amazing about her journey, as that has become a defining characteristic of The 100 by this time. Because of the numerous tragedies she has experienced and done, her character has been given room to develop and alter, and the person she is today clearly combines all of her previous selves. It’s challenging to think of a character on this show who has more fully developed into herself than Octavia, from expressing regret and sadness about terrible decisions to learning from those errors and attempting to make better ones. (Perhaps Clarke. Maybe.)
Granted, I doubt any of us could have predicted that Octavia’s ultimate goal would involve (a form of) parenting or that ultimately channelling her fury into fighting for something rather than against something else would give us such a deep new understanding of her character. Few aspects of this season have been as emotionally satisfying as seeing how Octavia’s love for Hope has caused her to reevaluate how she feels about the other significant people in her life. Despite all the pacing and focus issues in Season 7, the story of Octavia’s second found family has been a true highlight of this final run of episodes.
In addition to learning how to be a parent during her time on Sky Ring, Octavia had the chance to appreciate how much of who she is—and how she connects with baby Hope—is a result of Bellamy and the effort he made to look after her when they were younger. Even though the Blake siblings have scarcely appeared together on film this year, this is silent evidence of the consistency of their relationship and it’s proven to be a surprisingly moving approach to keep their closeness alive.
Similarly, Octavia’s revelation that Hope’s presence in her life has helped her understand Clarke more than ever before is a significant indicator of her character’s development. Octavia seems to have finally grasped what it is to love something more than herself, and the strength inherent in those emotions, after spending the better part of a decade evolving from warrior queen to mama bear.
When she and Clarke were effectively fighting with one another to lead their people and eventually the other clans, it’s possible that they could never have genuinely reached an agreement. But it seems now that the depth of their relationship as a whole has grown to a new level. (One unrelated to Bellamy, the one who has frequently acted as a mediator or a wedge between them.)
On paper, The 100’s choice to provide Octavia with a second family before it had patched up the gaps in her first one seems like it should have been a mistake, another instance of The 100 utilising its final episodes to forge new ties at the risk of neglecting the ones it already had. However, Octavia’s story has ultimately been one of catharsis, in contrast to some other Season 7 story twists, which appear purposefully engineered to heap even more anguish on our favourites before the closing titles roll.
After everything she’s been through and done, her time on Sky Ring has allowed her to mend scars that it’s unclear whether she ever knew she was carrying. She has also discovered a loving, caring side that feels like a revelation. (Knowing that she is still capable of this kind of depth of care and affection is truly amazing; I think most of us would completely understand if she weren’t.)
Octavia Blake has alternately been The 100’s best warrior, its most courageous heroine, and its most opulent antagonist. (After all, she had the nicknames Skairippa and Blodraina among Grounders.) Her storyline continues to be the show’s greatest one, bringing together several dark and unrelated elements to create something lovely, even though her function has changed significantly in this last season. After all this time, Octavia has discovered something that feels meaningful. I’m hopeful The 100 will be able to accomplish the same before it ends.
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