Ok, I’m back for episode nine and honestly, I wish this is one I’d skipped instead of needing to write about it. It’s not that I necessarily thought the episode was bad, but it was relatively irritating with the exception of Octavia’s nascent redemption arc and the flaming chemistry between Clarke and Bellamy even when they aren’t both themselves.
Let’s start there. Clarke is still Josephine for the moment and Bellamy has kidnapped her so he can take her to Gabriel and get Josephine out of her head before it goes too long and Clarke’s brain turns to goo. Meanwhile, Josephine can’t help but continually tell Bellamy that he’ll be too late no matter what he does. I’m not loving how long some of this is taking, but I also wish it were taking longer? Like I think I’d prefer if we either already had Clarke back or if everyone still thought she was dead but we’ve been in a weird middle ground too long and it’s a little frustrating.
That being said, Eliza Taylor can not get enough credit for realistically feeling like two different people which is extremely fun. Also since we found out that she and Bob Morley got married in real life it’s even less easy to ignore their palpable chemistry whenever they share scenes.
At the extreme other end of the spectrum is the Abby and Kane plot which, honestly, smacks of behind the scenes drama. There’s no other conceivable reason why this would be the end of Kane’s story other than the possibility that he wanted to leave, got fired, or got another job. After benching him in cryo-sleep since the season five finale, Abby makes him into a Prime in the body of one of the hot werewolves from Bitten, thus sidelining Henry Ian Cusick. Then after less than one episode Kane has decided he can’t live with the guilt of “killing” the man who was in this body before so he decides to float himself along with the means of turning more people into nightbloods.
It is a very weird end to a very good character who I’ve found fascinating in large part because of the actor who played him. It’s also definitely going to make Abby even more insufferable than she was when she was addicted to drugs which is saying something. And even further it feels like a real waste of the hottest werewolf from Bitten TBH (Greyston Holt). Even if there hasn’t been anything going on behind the scenes it feels like a really sloppy end to a character who’s been on the show since episode one.
Finishing up, we’re off to the medium plot with Octavia and Gabriel. I guess we’re just hard done with Diyoza which is also really annoying unless she comes out of the anomaly before the finale way younger or something. I’m a little annoyed with this also because Ivana Milicevic was doing the absolute most with Diyoza, her intense survival instincts, and her relationship with Octavia. If she’s just gone I’m going to be very disappointed.
Octavia on the other hand has finally started exhibiting some growth which is great. After escaping the anomaly with her arm healed Gabriel decides he needs to know what happened in there. Apparently Octavia looks slightly older, her hair is longer and she’s recently showered which all adds up to tell Gabriel that she was wherever the anomaly took her for longer than fifteen seconds.
He decides to drug her with some of the red sun pollen that makes people go bananas so he can try to find out what’s going on. Unfortunately for us and Octavia it’s only making her hallucinate her worst moments so far so we get to watch again as she eats people and kills other people for not eating people. It’s not super fun so far, but as I mentioned it does feel like we’re approaching some kind of redemption with her.
With Bellamy on the way to Gabriel with Clarke/Josephine, it will be nice to see how he decides to deal with whatever Octavia’s going through. I can’t imagine him turning her away again at this point, especially if they need fighters in order to take over Sanctum, but I also can’t imagine him welcoming her back with open arms all of a sudden either. The last four episodes are sure to be interesting, at the very least, while all the plots start coming together from here on out.
