Mount Weather
Clarke is still not happy in Mount Weather, even though yet another one of The 48, Miller (looking a bit different), is now out of quarantine and seemingly pleased to be in a civilised world. When sirens go off in the compound, Clarke runs to find out what's happened, discovering a body with a bullet wound and another one of he Mountain Men, who'd been outside on a mission, with burns all over his body from the radiation.
Shooed out of the way, Clarke appeals to Dante to let her see the body, believing the bullet wound she saw means that members of The 100 are still alive outside, or that people from The Ark survived the drop to earth. But when she sees the body, because Dante is ever so accommodating (I'm suspicious), she sees that it's an arrow wound, which can be blamed on the Grounders.
Later on, unable to let her mind rest, Clarke sees a soldier moving through the recreation room. As he is distracted, she notices some slight radiation burns on his skin, and hears him tell a friend that he has another treatment to go, and realises he's the guy she saw covered in burns earlier. How has he healed so quickly?
Desperate times call for desperate measures and, realising the only way into the medical ward is as a patient, Clarke cuts open the stitches on her arm - using the metal underside of a bunk bed. It's absolutely disgusting, really stupid, but also brave and takes guts of steel.
It's enough to land her back in the medical bay, and once the very glamorous, very put together doctor, who gives off a strange vibe, disappears, Clarke gets out of bed to investigate. Soldier guy is unconscious, and the weird metal thing in his chest (that all the Mountain Men have) is hooked up to a tube, as is the guy's in the bed next to him. Following the tubes up Clarke sees them disappearing along the ceiling and out of the room in metal pipes.
Enterprisingly, she crawls into a vent and follows the pipe into a room where we see what is probably the most horrific thing The 100 has so far shown us. Hanging upside down, and hooked up to the tubes treating the men in the medical ward are two human beings. And as Clarke looks further into the room, she sees cages full of humans, weakly calling for her help. She avoids their touch, but can't help herself when she sees a face she recognises. Crouching down, she comes face to face with...Anya.
In the woods
Octavia wakes up, right where Lincoln left, to find a strange Grounder nearby. He's scary looking, and Octavia's still delirious from the poison, so it's unclear whether he's going to hurt her as he approaches. He forces some sort of concoction down her throat, and luckily it's an antidote to whatever poison she's ingested.
When she wakes again, the Grounder is still there. He tells her his name's Nyco, and he's a friend of Lincoln's. Lincoln is back at camp, being held by his clan, and as a favour Nyco has come to help heal Octavia. But that's all, and he tells her to go away, that she can't help Lincoln.
But the women on The 100 don't give in easily, and Octavia kidnaps Nyco, even though he's twice her size. She makes him lead her back to his village, where they are greeted by a bunch of guys wielding bows and arrows, and yet another female leader. Indra is the head of Lincoln's village, and she's unwilling to let him go - he must be punished for putting his clan in danger by helping Octavia.
But Octavia has Nyco, the village's only healer, and tells Indra to return Lincoln to her at dusk, or she'll kill Nyco. Indra, clearly a clever woman, knows when she's been bested, and brings a very beaten up Lincoln to the rendezvous point. As he heads towards her, reapers attack and kidnap Lincoln (making him the damsel in distress, for the second time this episode). Everyone else is left, and I foresee an alliance between Octavia and Indra in the future.
Camp Jaha
This episode is all about tough women, which I'll discuss more later, but the toughest of them all must be Raven. Abby tells her the bullet is lodged in her spine. She can leave it in, and survive, or Abby can try and take it out, but Raven might die, and it's still not a guarantee that she'll walk. And there are also no anaesthetics about, so Raven will be awake during any operation. Of course, Raven chooses to go ahead with the operation, despite Finn's protests, because she needs her legs on the ground.
So Abby cuts into Raven's back, and there are screams of pain from Raven heard across the camp. But that's not Kane's only worry. He wants to confront the Grounders, but first he wants Bellamy to give him as much information as possible. Bellamy feeling understandably resentful, because he's still under arrest, and also guilty after losing so many friends, especially because Kane tells him they discovered more ammunition in barrels in that underground hideout. And then Kane sticks Murphy into the "prison" with Bellamy to make things worse.
The forest around Camp Jaha also seems to be full of enemies. When one of the Ark survivors fires his gun after seeing something in the woods, Kane cracks down on the use of weapons. But later, the group find four of their own strung up in the trees, like Jasper was way back when he was kidnapped by the Grounders right at the beginning of the series. Again, it's a warning, but will Kane heed it?
Raven, because she's a superhero, has survived the operation. And because she's a legend, after having a moment with Finn, and even though she still can't feel anything in most of one of her legs, she tells him to go away, to leave Camp Jaha and rescue their friends. Does Raven's awesomeness know no bounds?
So Finn heads off to free Bellamy, and they decide to take Murphy with them, as he's the only one who knows where the Grounders' camp is. Accompanying them are Sterling and Monroe, the two teens that were hanging out with Bellamy last episode. As they run into the woods they encounter Abby and a guard. And instead of stopping them, Abby and the guard hand them weapons, and the guard tells them to bring his son -Miller - back.
On The Ark
So it was a baby Jaha heard crying, and he finally finds it in a drawer. It's a gorgeous little boy, and seeing him makes Jaha realise that he can't let the boy die on the ship. So he comes up with a plan - he and the baby will attempt to get to earth, using one of the missiles onThe Ark.
But the missile is on the other side of The Ark, and because of all the damage, the only way to get there is to put on a space suit, tuck the baby inside, and head out into space. Jaha makes it, just about, but when he gets there, somehow the baby has disappeared. Because, of course, the baby was not real. It's all Jaha's imagination, partly because he's lonely, and partly because of the oxygen deprivation.
Ready to give up, Jaha sees Wells in front of him. I know he was boring, but it was lovely to see Wells, even if he wasn't real. He talks to Jaha, and persuades him to carry on with his crazy plan to get to the earth. Better to die trying than on your knees, I guess.
So Jaha makes it, somehow. Only, after his initial delight, he looks around to find that he's in the middle of a desert, and there doesn't seem to be anything around for miles.
Solid ground?
What an episode. I have previously spoken at length about how absolutely brilliant The 100 is when it comes to its representation of women and its portrayal of gender roles. And this episode was a prime example of that. It was full of women being brave, and being brave for the greater good generally.
Raven and Clarke were drawn in parallel, both choosing to go to extreme pain to save themselves, and to potentially save others. Their physical bodies are strong, but more than that, these scenes showed us how mentally strong they are, as if we needed more evidence.
Octavia, after being injured and rescued a number of times by Lincoln, once again took on the role of rescuer/prince to save him (she did this before, helping him escape from The 100's camp). If there is a true partnership on this show, it's Octavia and Lincoln. And we met another fierce female leader in Indra, continuing The 100's fascination with matriarchal societies. In fact the patriarchal societies/male-led groups we've seen are no more (The Ark), weird (Mount Weather), or under threat (Camp Jaah).
And finally, there is Abby, who in subtle ways shows how she can make tough decisions, and go against Kane when she needs to. Hers is a different style of leadership to Indra or Anya, but it's easy to see where Clarke gets her convictions and guts from.
Overall, an absolutely brilliant episode. I'll end at the beginning - new credit sequence, woo!
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