I came to The 100 fandom relatively late, not starting the show until maybe two years ago and only getting through half of season one. After picking it up again late last year I finally finished up season five just in time for the season six premier. I thought I’d do a little write up about my feelings on the show so far and then a bit on the season six premier “Sanctum.”
Before we get started I should out myself as a Bellarke shipper just so everyone knows my leanings at the top. That’s not to say I hate any of the other characters Clarke or Bellamy have been involved with, because I don’t. Lexa was one of my absolute favorites. But I do recognize that they have one of the show’s deepest and most interesting relationships and the show seems to squander their chemistry at every turn. I will surely get into this more in the future.
That leads me to one of my favorite things about The 100: the actors. Everyone on this show is legitimately superb and every single one of them, besides Henry Ian Cusick, was unknown to me when I started watching. This is a strategy that can either work like gangbusters or fall kind of flat and I’ve been pleased since the beginning that this one worked out. It helps build a camaraderie behind the scenes that filters through to the actual performances and makes them feel more real. The lived-in feeling in all the characters and their relationships to each other are absolutely the best thing about this show.
So let’s move on to something that doesn’t always work for me, namely almost every single season-long plot. In a general sense, the 100 having to find a way to live in peace with the grounders makes sense and I genuinely didn’t start having issues until probably season three. But by that point it was clear that no one was paying attention to one another and no one cared about anything other than their own power. Then the need for power infected literally everyone like an actual disease to the point that many characters in seasons four and five were acting so out of character that it made zero sense, the biggest offenders being Clarke, Abby and Bellamy. Each of them betrayed the person or people they loved most for an ill advised plan that didn’t end up working anyway.
In the grand scheme of the show these issues are small potatoes and I have a feeling I only see them as such an issue because I watched most of the show in such a short amount of time. However, I will say I’m pleasantly surprised and excited for season six based off the premier. At the end of season five there was a very subtle “End of Book One” that popped up on screen when Bellamy and Clarke were looking at Planet Alpha from the Eligius which led me to believe a couple things. First, Jason Rothenberg has an extremely long game in mind for this show if the first five seasons constituted only “Book One.” Second, season six feels like a pretty hefty story reboot because of this, a fact that they call to at several points in the episode.
From our heroes stepping out of a drop ship to Murphy pulling an Octavia and running headlong into a body of water “Sanctum” felt like a retread of the pilot in the best ways. Despite some characters not letting go of the past and embracing their new beginning 125 years in the future this was one of my favorite episodes of the show to date. I particularly enjoyed that there was no outside antagonist.
Clarke, Bellamy, and company find the Eligius III village but it’s completely deserted which was honestly such a relief. I was worried the whole episode that they were going to be attacked and we’d be right back where we started with a war against grounders 2.0. Luckily, it appears there’s something even more sinister at work on Planet Alpha and it has nothing to do with people wanting to kill each other. At least not until the red sun makes them want to, as we saw when Emori started stabbing Murphy for no discernible reason.
Back up on the Eligius IV Abby is working to save Kane, Raven is giving Abby the cold shoulder about her drug abuse, and Niylah is disobeying direct orders not to wake up Octavia. Meanwhile the majority of the people on the ship are still in their cryo chambers while everyone else figures out what to do. I’m mostly interested to see what happens when Diyoza wakes up and realizes she’s been pregnant for 225 years total. That should be fun.
The episode ends with those on the ground watching their drop ship fly away, piloted by the Eligius III descendants presumably. Meanwhile Murphy has been stabbed and they don’t know what else the red sun will do to them except what a little children’s book shows them.
All in all this is a super fun beginning to a new season and I can’t wait to see where we go from here. I’m also more pumped than I can explain that I finally get to watch it all live and find out everything at the same time as all of you!
