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travllingbunny · 4 years

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The 100: 7x05 Welcome to Bardo

Here’s finally my belated review of 7x05. I was too busy last week (with actual work) so I couldn’t write it before 7x06 aired. Then I got a bit distracted with my Dark rewatch and Dark season 3 dropping. But I’m taking a break from it to finally post this review and then, hopefully, 7x06 not long after. It’s good that I did a couple of rewatches because I could notice more details. (The review was already halfway over a week ago, so I added some remarks in italics that are things I only think now after seeing 7x06.)

This was an episode I was looking forward to and I enjoyed it, because it finally brought us to Bardo, in the belly of the beast so to speak (note: I wrote this sentence before I saw 7x06, and now I want to keep it because it’s just too funny that 7x06 put Clarke and co. in the literal belly of the beast), where the main action is likely to be, advanced the main plot of season 7 quite a lot, tied a few storylines and showed us Octavia in the present for the first time this season, and - not gonna lie - the highlight of the episode, 1 minute appearance of Bellamy, the first one since the first scenes of the season premiere.

However, I have to say that I wasn’t really impressed with the part of the episode that should have been the most interesting - Octavia’s flashbacks showing what happened to her when she was first taken to Bardo. It served its purpose by filling in the blanks, or rather confirming what I had already figured out, but for one thing, I didn’t get too much character focus in this episode, except for a touching Octavia-Hope scene and Echo’s disturbing actions in the end, which made for a pretty strong scene. And this time I was really bothered by the sloppiness of the details: from just how inconsistent the time dilation rules (rules? what rules?) seem at this point (already a problem before, but this episode made it even worse, especially since it focused on the timeline so much) to the messy selection of flashbacks in the Memory Capture scenes (while the timeline is the writers’ fault, this was obviously a case of the editor being really lazy). Maybe this is just nitpicking, but I find it really annoying when I can’t analyze details to come up theories because I have no idea which detail is a part of the plan and which is just a screw-up.

:Like everyone have some theories, including those about what really happened to Bellamy after his “death”. (At least they’re not even trying to make us believe Bellamy is dead on social media and in Inside the Episode features, like they tried last season with Clarke.)

This is why it ended up being an episode I liked less on rewatch, and I rank it behind 7x02, 7x04 and 7x01, although ahead of 7x03 (and, it turns out, 7x06). Even though the Sanctum portion of the episode was really strong and interesting this time.

Prepare for a lot of nitpicking of plot holes, and me about to incur the wrath of many t100 fans by explaining why I really dislike like the idea of an Octavia/Levitt endgame romance (it’s mostly because of their interactions in this episode).

This was the second episode this season where Marie said “Previously on” (I’m curious how many different cast members do it this season) and I think it’s the first time we saw the opening titles that were released before the S7 trailer, the ones that start with the Bardo Stone Room.

Sanctum

The deluded brainwashed folks in Sanctum who still worship the Primes have a name they have given themselves - the Faithful. And it seems that they call the people who aren’t brainwashed ‘the Fallen’. Has the show ever had such an annoying character as Trey, their leader?

I must say I related to Murphy when he suggested that maybe they should just let them burn themselves if that’s what they want, instead of letting them exert control that way. Yes, I know it’s bad. But that’s one of the things Murphy is good for, to sometimes say things that we all kind of think but would feel ashamed of saying aloud - at least if it was real life. However, Murphy - and I’m sure everyone - changed his mind when he saw they were going to burn children. And the father of the child who was about to be sacrificed (who we now know is called Jeremiah) looked confused and terrified. Maybe it’s just Trey and a couple of other fanatical people influencing and manipulating the others. Unfortunately, real life examples of people doing horrible things - even to their own children - in the name of what they believe in, to make me hesitate to call this too extreme to be plausible. But what is going on in the heads of these people? At least before, when the people of Sanctum were sacrificing their children or other loved ones or themselves, they believed it meant living forever and being one with the gods, but this?

Nelson is becoming quite a likable character even though he has only had a brief scene or two here and there. (And then the show goes and does... whatever the hell they’re doing with him in 7x06.) Like this time, when he was the only one who tried to save the Faithful woman who set herself on fire, explaining that the people of Sanctum are still their people, even the Faithful. (Now this is a much nicer face of the Children of Gabriel. Where was he when CoG were killing Nightblood people/potential hosts, even though that’s not the most efficient way to stop the Primes - as opposed to killing the Primes and destroying their mind drives?)

Great little character moment for Emori when she asked Nelson: “Even though they cast you out?” He probably doesn’t even know how much that resonates with her. Is this foreshadowing her storyline this season? Will she have to interact with or do something for the Grounders - or even specifically her clan, Sangedakru (which also happens to be the clan where Sheidheda was from - and the most likely to follow him if/when they find out who he is, since they seem to consider him their “greatest champion’)? (The latter seems slightly less likely now that Indra seems to have made them respect her authority... but I doubt it’s going to be that easy...)

BTW, speaking of Emori. let me just address the speculation that she’s pregnant - apparently based on the fact she threw up?! She threw up because she got radiation poisoning, FFS. If she were pregnant, the fetus would at least be in huge danger of not surviving. Maybe the writers of The 100 didn’t know or didn’t expect the audience to know about the effects of radiation, but come on, they must be aware that everyone has seen Chernobyl.) And Jackson, a doctor, examined her right there.

Murphy being snarky: “I’m tired of being a hero”. Hmm... when was the last time, Murphy, you were a hero without someone roping you in first, or without you following Emori’s lead or making a last moment decision? However, while Murphy likes to claim he doesn’t want to be a hero, Bellamy told him in 5x01 that Murphy’s problem on the Ring was that he actually wanted to be a hero and felt useless because he didn’t have the opportunity. Still, he’s come a long way since season 1, when he wasn’t exactly that protective of children.... Granted, Charlotte was not an innocent, but she was still a child. And he was 17 at the time, now he’s an adult.

I’m enjoying watching Indra in her new leadership role and her stand-offs with RussHeda. It’s very fortunate that Adina is not busy with AHS anymore, and JR Bourne makes for a fantastic villain - in a completely different way than Russell was. Russell was soft and emotional while also pompous and hypocritical and seemed to believe his own BS, which made him all the more annoying. Sheidheda is much smarter and has no delusions about being a good guy. He’s scary and dark but he also knows how to turn the situation to his benefit and has very rational remarks about how ridiculous the Faithful are with their tactic. He clearly has nothing but contempt for them. “My, my, what foolish little lambs you are.” (Which ties into this season’s themes of Shepherd and the flock.)

We learn more about Indra’s backstory, and this is the most I’ve been interested in Grounder history since... ever?

It’s also quite dark how she manipulates Jackson with his desire for revenge, by keeping the truth from him that RussHeda is not Russell. But Jackson’s dark side of his thirst for revenge for Abby has made him the most interesting that he’s ever been as a character.

I think that this storyline will eventually somehow tie with the main storyline. If nothing else then because Sheidheda and Madi are connected to the knowledge from the Flame, which is connected to Becca and ALIE and events from the prequel. Especially since it increasingly seems like the “great war” that’s being talked about may have something to do with AIs...

Bardo

Timeline and time dilation

Let me get this off my chest first... The timeline of this episode was confusing for some viewers in terms of the sequence of events. That isn’t the case for me - the problem is that the amount of time that was supposed to pass makes the time dilation seem really inconsistent.

So, chronologically, things happened like this:

in 6x08 (some 4 or 5 Sanctum days ago): Diyoza goes into the Anomaly; ends up on Skyring

Octavia goes into the Anomaly 6 seconds later, ends up on Skyring, 3 months (Skyring time) after Diyoza arrived. she gives birth.

Octavia and Diyoza spend 10 years there raising Hope.

Octavia sends a message to Bellamy in a bottle, not realizing the bottle ended up on Bardo (apparently, the default setting of the Anomaly, is: you go from Sanctum to Skyring and from Skyring to Bardo). Disciples capture her and Diyoza and take them to Bardo.

While Hope spends 10 more years on Skyring with Dev, before jumping to Bardo, Octavia is taken to Bardo, tried to run away, then is taken to Memory Capture. This is 45 (Bardo) days ago. She resists at first, but 34 Bardo days ago, she allows Levitt access to her memories and he starts watching them in a more coherent and chronological manner. 31 Bardo days ago, after he’s seen her memories up to the season 3 finale, Hope comes to rescue her.

Levitt helps them and Octavia is sent back to Sanctum, losing her memories, and runs back into Gabriel’s arms (no, I don’t mean it like that and I don’t ship them) - 10 Sanctum seconds after she ran into the Anomaly! (This is still 6x08)

7 Bardo days ago (which is some 2 days ago on Sanctum) or 6x13, Hope (who had probably been immediately captured when trying to save her mother - I guess she and the Disciples spent 24 days waiting for Octavia to enter Hope’s mind code into the Anomaly Stone...) is sucked into Sanctum, stabs Octavia with the tag which pulls her to Bardo. Octavia is brought to MCap again, and apparently Levitt talks to her and then she is brought to the Stone Room to talk Bellamy down. Something happens to Bellamy and Octavia is made to believe he’s dead.

in the present, Hope, Echo and Gabriel (after spending 5 years on Skyring, which was somehow 2 days on Sanctum (?)) jump to Bardo, kill some people, pretend to be DIsciples and listen to Anders’ speech, find Octavia, and see the memory of whatever happened or did not happen to Bellamy.

Now this means that the time differentials between planets have been like this:

Sanctum: 6 seconds = Skyring: 3 months

Sanctum:10 seconds = Skyring: over 20 years (because Hope spent 20 years on Skying and at least a few hours on Bardo, all in those 10 Sanctum seconds)

Sanctum: a few seconds (under 10 seconds, probably a lot less) = Bardo: 14 days (from “45 days ago” to “31 days ago”)

Sanctum: about 2 or 3 days = Bardo: 24 days

Sanctum: 2 days = Bardo: 7 days

Sanctum: a little over 1 day = Skyring: 5 years

See the problem here?

@justbecauseyoubelievesomething pointed out before that the time differentials may vary a lot because of planets orbiting their suns (and Sanctum orbiting its planet and the suns) in elliptic orbits, so distances from the black hole change. However, the problem with this is that 1) they haven’t said that on the show and instead keep talking about the time differentials as if they are at least roughly the same or similar all the time, and 2) these fluctuations vary way too much for it to make any sense? If it was just 1:3 and then 1:7, for instance, OK - but how the heck does the time differential between Sanctum and Bardo go from 1:200,000 to 1:3?

How is this supposed to work? Do people on Bardo go:

“We’re sending a team to Sanctum!”

“Understood! We will need just an hour to retrieve the target!” “But Sir... they’ll return in 20 years! We have to wait till next week, then an hour will be just 7 hours here!”

“All right, we have to wait for the next week then!”

And do these fluctuations happen just between Sanctum and Bardo or Sanctum and Skyring, or also between Bardo and Skyring? The latter would make their prison system quite complicated and tricky!

A couple of other pieces of info -

Levitt put the “Trust Bellamy” note in Hope’s arm during his MCap session (because he knew what Bellamy was to Octavia), but Anders apparently did not realize why Hope was bleeding or that it had something to do with Levitt, though he was the only one who could’ve had any contact with her?

One thing I don’t get is the part where Anders says: “it’s why you’re a prisoner dressed like a savage so you can get close to Aunty O”. Why did they have to dress Hope in Grounder-like clothes, exactly?

We also see that Meredith’s team was told to go to Sanctum and find Clarke - though it’s unclear why they waited so long to send them. Or why Meredith’s team waited about a day and a half to contact Clarke. We see Anders telling Meredith: “Because of the time dilation, no one will come for you if you fail” - and I have no idea that’s supposed to mean, especially since I don’t know what time differential it was supposed to be at the time.

Octavia in Memory Capture

...And I’m gonna nitpick some more.

Maybe it’s not a big deal that many of the scenes we saw as Octavia’s memories didn’t make sense, because they were either scenes she wasn’t present for or scenes from the future (relative to the moment when she was on Bardo the first time), but I expected better, after the wonderful attention to detail in last season’s Nevermind and Matryoshka, where neither the prop masters nor editors and sound editors made any mistakes with what we saw and heard of Clarke’s memories.

So, 45 days ago, when Octavia was first brought to Bardo, and Anders and Levitt were seeing random memories against her will, the first thing she’s told is to imagine someone holding out a hand to her to help her, and we see brief flashes of various memories (aka scenes from the previous seasons) before her mind settles of many different images of Bellamy:

Aurora with baby Octavia

Lincoln, just before his death

Indra - when Octavia finds her and talks to Clarke and Lexa (3x05) - of course this is there because of Indra, but I don’t know if Clarke is also supposed to be one of the people O thinks of: we see her quite clearly as she’s saying she must talk to Bellamy to save their people

and then a bunch of images of Bellamy - which is where things start not making sense, because while we see him

in the Pilot on the dropship (that makes sense)

in season 5 when he argued with Octavia (also makes sense)

but we also see him dressed Gabriel’s cardigan, which he only wore after reuniting with Octavia in 6x10, after she came back from Bardo, and one of the images is definitely from 6x13 when Hope came from the Anomaly (future scenes!)l

we also see the scene where Bellamy was looking for Octavia and talked to Clarke in 1x06 (where Octavia was obviously not present for! It’s also the scene right after the Aurora flashback - the editor were obviously being super lazy)

and Bellamy in an anti-radiation suit in 4x13 when he had to leave Clarke (the only way Octavia could remember that is if she had a telepathic link to her brother!)

Other memories include Murphy in Pike’s class (clearly just as a cool transition from a Murphy scene in Sanctum), but it was really funny how horrified Octavia seemed when Levitt asked her if he was her lover. ;) Levitt clearly got a bunch of images of her friends - including Raven, Clarke (from the Pilot!) and Indra, whose images we see on screen in addition to Bellamy - and he finally sees a bunch of memories of Hope on Skyring, which is what she was trying to hide the most.

At this point, Octavia desperately tries to make a deal with Levitt - he doesn’t mention Hope in his report, and lets her go later, and she’ll let him into her memories. Just before Levitt starts watching her memories in the chronological order, we hear some more of Octavia’s memories in her head (they aren’t showing on the screen, where the same flashbacks as before are playing):

banishing Echo in 4x11

Bellamy deciding to leave her in 6x03 (“Are you out of your mind? You didn’t need to kill anyone!”)

Miller saying “Blodreina gave that honor to me!”

Octavia yelling “You’re dead to me!” to Bellamy (in that disturbing scene in 3x10) and...

Hallucination!Pike telling her she caused a world to be destroyed and herself yelling she wanted “REDEMPTION!” - which is another inconsistency, because comes from a red toxin hallucination that she’ll only have after she returns to Sanctum (in 6x09)! At least you could say this was already in her subconsciousness, but these were supposed to her memories!

When she starts cooperating, Levitt basically binges the first 3 seasons of The 100 - or rather, a version of it where Octavia is the main character and everything is only from her POV - ending with 3x16, which is probably pretty significant, as they showed several moments right before Clarke destroyed the City of Light and the moments after she came back. We see Bellamy telling everyone what to do as they were fighting chipped people to protect Clarke, Clarke on the throne in the City of Light, Pike fighting chipped!Jaha, Pike saving Octavia, and, and after the destruction of the COL, Murphy and Emori hugging, and finally - Octavia stabbing Pike.

This is where Levitt goes “Yes!” - which makes me (and Octavia) feel real tonal dissonance. He reveals himself to be a true Octavia stan, the kind who thinks their favorite character simply cannot go wrong and who doesn’t just defend her and have an understanding and empathy for her motives and emotional states (which is great), but cheers even the bad things she did (which is not great). Now, if Levitt is meant to be a representation of a typical stan, that’s great. The show has, this season in particular (and even in S6 to a point - through Jordan) been dealing with the idea of Clarke, Octavia and other main characters as living legends. And a lot of t100 fans - including every single YouTube reactor I’ve seen - always cheers and says they’re happy when she kills Pike. I didn’t feel that way, so there’s that. And sure, some of that is because I didn’t hate Pike. But what’s more important is: that moment was never portrayed as a triumphant one. (It it was meant to be, it would have been Octavia killing Pike in a battle, or something similar to the scene where Lincoln killed Cage Wallace in 2x16, not Octavia stabbing Pike when he didn’t expect it, after they had fought together and right after he had saved her life. It wouldn’t have shown Bellamy and Clarke worried about Octavia, or made it her ‘start of darkness’ moment that led to her becoming a murder-obsessed assassin in season 4. And 6x09 made a point that Octavia herself saw this act as a wrong one - that she thinks she didn’t have the right to murder someone in cold blood even though she had legitimate reasons to hate him. The show generally doesn’t portray revenge-murder as a good thing. And that is true in this scene, too: we see flashbacks of Pike at his most heroic (fighting chipped Jaha and Pike right after he saved Octavia’s life) before the scene of her stabbing him, and while Levitt is like “YES!”, Octavia seems upset to see that moment again and a tear is falling from her eyes.

So why, then, is the show apparently portraying Levitt’s uncritical stanning of everything Octavia does as a great thing, and why are so many fans and reviewers convinced that Levitt is a great new love interest for Octavia, possibly her endgame love interest, because of his adoration of her and the praise her gives her? (And 7x06 has made me think that, yes, the show is definitely portraying him as a potential love interest.) Yes, I agree that Octavia needs someone to help boost her self-esteem and tell her she’s not a monster, that she’s a good person at heart, that she’s worthy of love. But it would mean so much more if it came from someone who was able to relate to her as an equal and also acknowledge her dark side and be critical of the bad things she did. “I understand why you did this and it doesn’t make you a terrible person” is different from “Everything you did is right and awesome.” I liked what he said about her as a child, how she was even then being responsible and protecting her mother and brother and not just herself by hiding. But it’s absurd to tell someone “You’re not a killer, you’re a warrior” right after you’ve seen them murder someone out of revenge in what most definitely wasn’t a battle or a fight. The fact is that Octavia is both a warrior and a killer. They all are - she, Clarke, Bellamy, all of them. Having a good heart and understandable motives doesn’t change that fact.

If Levitt is supposed to just be a Disciple with a crush that makes him help Octavia, fine, but I can’t see a potential romance there - it would be like a relationship between a celebrity and an obsessive fan.

World-building

This episode was full of world-building info, probably what I liked about it the most:

Levitt seemed particularly interested in Clarke and the fact she was in the City of Light, which makes me think that the reason why she is ‘the key’ in the eyes of the Disciples has something to do with Becca’s tech and ALIE in particular, and that the enemy they’re afraid of may be some sort of an AI.

We finally saw Bardo. Not that it was surprising since we already knew from the opening titles and 7x04 that the compound was underground and that it was a dome with artificial atmosphere and that it included an arboretum, Stone Room, which is on the way to the cells, etc. I checked to see if it matched the layout drawn by Orlando. I had assumed that the numbers were levels in the structure, but while Orlando put Arboretum as 1, it is on level 2.

It seems that all the Disciples were either black or white clothes. (Fits with the black and white way of thinking.) From what we’ve seen so far, it seems that the military, so to speak (fighters/those who jump to other planets) wear black, while the Stone Conductors, people who do the Memory Capture, other scientists, as well as other personnel (like janitors or gardeners/groundskeepers) wear white. Anders himself, the First Disciple, wears white, so I suppose he is one of the “civilians’.

Anders claims that the Disciples have risen above “lesser emotions” and learned to value the collective rather than the individuals. But from what we’ve seen of other Disciples, that’s BS. That may be their ideology, but in fact, they’re just the same as anyone else and just as prone to developing feelings of love and bonds of friendship as anyone else.

Levitt is Level 11! Which makes you wonder how hard the Disciples really check how ‘devout’ the Disciples are. But maybe he’s just too important as an expert,

We see the MCap technology at work. But we also see that it’s not easy to extract memories from an unwilling subject. Levitt has apparently mostly done this to the Disciples themselves (you’d think most of them would be willing, but obviously some were not, since they sound like they already have experience with unwilling subjects.) Levitt tries to get Octavia to comply because he’s a Good Cop by telling her that they may get his colleague instead, who will “burn right through” her brain. (But as we see from the Diyoza flashback in 7x06, that’s not true - the other guy, Kirsch, doesn’t do that when Diyoza is uncooperative. I don’t think they are actually able to do that.)

The Disciples usually send teams every 30 minutes (but these 30 minutes are drastically different on Sanctum and on Skyring!)

More about how the Anomaly Stones work: while Dev told Hope that all you need to do Is think where you want to go and the helmet will do the rest, it’s not actually that magical - in fact, you actually need someone (normally the Conductor) to push the buttons on the Anomaly Stone.

According to Levitt, pulling someone from another planet through the Anomaly is “ safe 8 out of 10 times". What happens the other 20% of times? Is it really being “turned inside out” as Hope said in 7x02?

It’s also confirmed that people lose their memories if they travel without the helmets from a faster to a slower time dilated planet (which I had already figured out based on the fact that the danger only seemed to exist when travelling from Skyring/Bardo to Sanctum and from Skyring to Bardo, but not the other way round).

When Hope was about to leave to save her mother, Levitt tried to tell her: “They have helmets, too, that means that…” – what? That they can see her? Meredith’s team didn’t see Raven, so it can’t be that. But do they have some other way of communicating? Do you have to be actively thinking for them to detect you? Whatever it is, she should’ve listened as she quickly got caught.

Eyes are important as it’s through them that the biometric signature/mind code is made. And the Disciples have a very quick way of painting/tattooing the code on someone’s back.

What exactly is the problem with the atmosphere on Bardo? There is a biohazard alert as Octavia is brought in and she’s checked for some sort of an infection (“she’s clean”). It seems that the problem is with some kind of a disease (especially with what we hear from Levitt in 7x06).

In the category of revelations that weren’t a surprise at all since the fandom has figured them out weeks ago, Gabriel realizes that there is a Stone on Earth (as we saw in 7x04 and in the opening titles - it’s the offline planet), by listening to Anders’ speech where he mentions that the Shepherd delivered them by a stone. (Confirming the theory that Disciples are Second Dawn even before that was technically confirmed in 7x06 and that Cadogan led them through the Anomaly some time after the Apocalypse and after burning Becca. I suppose they disconnected the Stone so unbelievers could not follow them.)

There’s a ton of new info about the history of Bardo. According to the Disciples, the compound was built by “Native Bardoans”, who went extinct before the Disciples got there. And they were supposedly giants, but were turned by something called “Gen9″ into “crystal giants”?! Levitt says that the whole min code could fit on a Bardoan’s arm? (How does he know that?) I call BS on that. The rooms and doors in the compound are tall, but wide enough just for a human-sized person to pass through. (And there are plenty of human buildings with very tall doors and ceilings.) The retinal scans are fitted to the human eye, all the technology is human-sized, and, most importantly, the keys on the Anomaly Stone are the size of a human finger. The whole thing reminds of many legends that various big ancient buildings were built by giants. I still think Eligius III people were the ones who built the compound. We still haven’t heard anything of them and where they fit. And with the time dilation, they could’ve been on Bardo for decades or centuries before Second Dawn arrived a few Earth years later.

What is Gen9? I assume it’s a disease (especially with all the mentions of the polluted atmosphere on the surface), but it’s also been suggested it may be a computer program, which would fit with the idea of the enemy being an AI or connected to AIs. I like the theory that it’s not short from “Generation 9″ but “Genesis 9″, which would fit with the religious themes (the Disciples mix and match a lot of pseudo-Christian and pseudo-Buddhist ideas). Genesis 9 is the chapter about God’s Covenant with Noah, where God tells him that humans should go and multiple and feed on plants and animals, but they mustn’t eat what has lifeblood in it still, and they mustn’t shed the blood of another human being. “I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.“

These are the transcripts of all the prayers and speeches of the Disciples from this episode, as much as I was able to hear them:

[prayer] “In the light of the Shepherd, for all mankind. He will save us from the war to end all wars”

[female speaker] "The Shepherd brings us wisdom. The Shepherd brings us love, for all mankind. (...) Humanity (...) (final days)… burned, (...) as bombs launched, your ancestors chose a different path. There will soon be time when we will be tested to a man, and we will be victorious. For all mankind!"

[male introducing Anders]“And now, it is my greatest honor to present the esteemed First Disciple, who will lead us through today’s lesson on the Book of Allness.”

Anders: “Thank you, Emilio. In the light of the Shepherd, for all mankind!

Let’s first take a moment to acknowledge our newest class of Level 9s. You’ve each demonstrated impressive devotion to the Shepherd. Our predecessors on this planet did not share that faith. Like our ancestors on Earth, they destroyed their world. Even before they were wiped out by Gen 9 and turned into crystal giants, their atmosphere was so polluted they were forced to build forests underground in order to breathe. Even the rain that should fall from the sky, falls instead by their technology. For that, we thank them. But where are they now? We know that by the time the Shepherd delivered us with the stone, the Bardoans were gone, extinct. Why is that? [Someone from the crowd: “They didn’t have the Shepherd!” Everyone laughs. Oh, Disciple humor... ] No, they didn’t, did they? They [unintelligible, Gabriel speaks over this part]… they lost their last great war. That same enemy is coming after us now. But, in the light of the Shepherd, we will not lose. [crowd cheers] We’re close now. We’ve located the key. After hundreds of years it has returned to us. Ours is the generation that will win the last war! Our Shepherd will rise [unintelligible] and we will win (?) this fight, for all mankind!”

Hi, Bellamy! Bye, Bellamy! See ya later!

And for the most important thing in this episode: yes, we were blessed with a rare and joyous moment,, a sighting of Bellamy Blake on screen (and not in MCap but in an actual new scene), as occurrence as rare this season as (probably) the Disciples seeing the Shepherd.

While absolutely no one is buying the fake-out death (about as convincing as Clarke’s in 6x04 or Octavia’s in 6x13, though I now wonder if leaving Bellamy out of the poster and Bob out of the Countdown was a part of the fake-out they committed to), there have been many different theories about what really happened there, if the whole scene was staged or if it even happened or was an implanted memory. (The glitch effects between scenes may have contributed to that theory, but the glitch effect occurred at random points, e.g. when Hope remembered her conversation with Anders, and I don’t see why that would be a false memory.)

For a moment, I even wondered if Levitt talking to Octavia was her hallucination (seeing a comforting figure) because it seemed quite implausible that Anders and the others had only then started to figure out that he got too close to her, and that they were still letting her come anywhere near her. But 7x06 proved I was wrong. Well, maybe Anders has realized Levitt had helped Octavia and Hope and it’s all some elaborate trap where he is using Levitt as an unwitting pawn, though that seems a bit convoluted... or maybe Anders just isn’t actually that smart as we assume he should be.

I’ve never believed in the ‘implanted memory’ theory, and people have since pointed out that there’s a sign of damage from the blast in the Stone Room.

The other prevalent theory is that the whole scene was staged by the Disciples and that Bellamy himself was in on it because he’s been brainwashed. The arguments are - it’s unlikely that Bellamy managed to overpower a few Disciples after being captured unconscious, and that there’s supposedly something “off” about him in that scene because he had been crying just before that. I don’t think there’s anything “off”, and he had learned that Octavia was alive, so why do people expect him to be crying rather than fighting to save her? As for it being unlikely that he killed a couple of Disciples immediately, overpowered another and captured the Conductor - I’m sorry, but have you seen the Disciples this season? They are being killed by pretty much every main character. And maybe some fans see Bellamy as a soft sweet teddy bear of a man and think that only women on t100 are allowed to be good fighters, but canon Bellamy is pretty damn badass and really good at fighting. What would be actually hard to believe is that Bellamy could get brainwashed over the course of a few hours. I’m sorry, but no.

People also said the fact that Bellamy asked what the heck Octavia was talking about when she used the opportunity to tell him that Disciples wanted Clarke (”I’ll tell them everything, even about Clarke”) was a sign he had lost his memories or been brainwashed and that he didn’t know who Clarke was - which is a really convoluted argument. The simplest and most obvious answer is that he was surprised and wanted to know what they wanted with Clarke.

There was actually something odd about that scene - but it was Anders’ behavior. after Octavia said that line about Clarke and after Bellamy reacted to it, he got a very strange look on his face, and the camera was focusing on him. The second odd thing is that the Conductor got very upset at that moment and started begging Anders: “Sir, please, no”, before Anders shut him up - which seemed like an overreaction to the possibility of... what? Letting a prisoner go? This makes me think that the Disciple on the floor detonating a grenade was a part of the ploy by Anders. He certainly was never going to send Bellamy to Sanctum - I have an idea where he actually sent him - but what if he was also signalling something to the Disciple - that he should detonate the grenade? Which would be a smoke screen so Octavia, Levitt and others wouldn’t know what really happened to Bellamy and would think he was dead.

But why would Anders want Octavia to think he was dead? It’s certainly not to make her cooperate, because that was only ever likely to have the opposite effect. But also - why would the Disciples focus on making Octavia tell them more about Clarke, when they could try to use Bellamy for the same purpose? From Octavia’s memories, they must have known how close Bellamy and Clarke are. (Or did Levitt tell Anders that? If he did not, that was an additional reason to suspect Levitt and hide information from him. If Anders was only starting to realize there’s a connection between Clarke and Bellamy, that could have changed his plans.) And they could do more with Bellamy than just try to get his memories. They could use him (his life, his safety) to draw in Clarke, the “key”. If Anders has sent Bellamy somewhere and wanted to hide his whereabouts and make people on Bardo think he’s dead for the time being, the blast could be a good distraction, before he plays that card. (All of this, of course, assuming Anders is actually smart.)

Now, where is Bellamy? He certainly wasn’t sent back to Sanctum, and Anders had no reason to send him to Skyring or Nakara (if he needs him alive and under his control, that would defeat the purpose), And there’s no indication that it’s possible for the Anomaly Stone to send a person to another location on the same planet. So, I believe Bellamy has been sent to Etherea. That would be the reason to finally go to the only planet of the 6 that we haven’t seen yet. I’ve also had the theory that Etherea is the slowest of all the planets - because, if you’re using time dilation as a plot point, why wouldn’t you milk it for its worth? And if that’s the case - good news is that Bellamy won’t get almost any older, but the bad news is that he’s lost all his memories. But not too bad of a news, since he’d get them back as soon as he gets to a faster planet.

This would open some juicy story possibilities...

An Echo of Finn (and Octavia?)

This episode continued the trend we’ve already seen in 7x04 - Hope is becoming more of a killer after her first kill on Skyring, Echo is reverting to her identity as as ruthless spy and killer (and occasionally murderer, as at the of this episode), in her 5-year single-minded mission to save Bellamy and now as a result of believing that Bellamy is dead and her mission was for nothing. And Gabriel is getting more and more frustrated with both of them, especially Echo, and constantly going “will you stop killing people, please?” (Well, not in those words.) (And I’m wondering how close he really got to the others, since they spent 5 years together and were preparing to jump to Bardo, but Hope never told Gabriel about Levitt?! )

There was some irony earlier in the episode when Hope seemed almost ready to attack Anders in front of hundreds of Disciples (she really hates him - I guess because she knew they were torturing her mother), and Echo told her to “pull herself together”, since it was Echo later that lost it, murdered Kirsch the memory capture guy in a particularly brutal way, and blew their chances of using him to get to Diyoza, which would’ve been a terrible blow to Hope if Diyoza hadn’t freed herself anyway, as we see in 7x06.

(Kudos to Tasya for being really good in that scene, she made Echo look genuinely scary. I’ve often criticized her acting, but this time she was really on point.)

So let’s talk about this moment and Echo’s arc this season.

Some people say that this is just a normal reaction to “losing the love of your life” and that everyone would react the same. But we’ve seen other characters lose people they deeply loved, and they did not react the same way. We’ve seen Bellamy react to Octavia’s “death” in S4 and Clarke’s “death” in S6. We’ve seen Clarke react to many of her loved ones’ deaths, most recently to her mother’s. Her grief over her mother was shown in detail over several episodes, and we saw her explode in the end, but while she beat up Russell, she stopped herself from killing him (and Russell was the actual person who murdered her mother and had previously tried to murder Clarke herself and stole her body for his daughter). In S6, Bellamy wanted to kill Russell (again, the actual person responsible for Clarke’s death) and burn the Sanctum down, but he stopped himself. In this very episode, we see Octavia react to her brother’s “death”. which she sees as very real, but she hasn’t started going around and killing anyone she gets her hands on.

Now, Octavia of the past, S3 Octavia, was different, far less mature, more violent, and she did react violently to Lincoln’s death, including becoming a murderer - now, the person she murdered was the one directly responsible for Lincoln’s death, but she also went on to become an assassin and became rather murder-happy, before stopping herself just as she was about to kill Ilian the same way Pike killed Lincoln.

Another obvious parallel is to Finn and the way he was losing control and becoming more violent, ruthless and selfish, from murdering a Grounder prisoner, to wanting to leave Mel literally hanging from a cliff because she was unimportant in his eyes compared to his goal of finding and “saving” Clarke (who, it turned out, didn’t even need saving and had saved herself), to completely losing it and killing a bunch of completely innocent people. The guy Echo killed here wasn’t really innocent, but he wasn’t responsible for Bellamy’s “death”, either, and Echo’s behavior on her quest to save Bellamy has been increasingly violent throughout the season. And, while we knew Clarke was alive and well, we don’t know where Bellamy is but he is still alive and will probably eventually meet Echo again, just like Clarke reunited with Finn.

(Mind you: I don’t think Echo’s killing spree is the reason why Becho will fall apart. The relationship was already disintegrating in S6, if you pay any attention. This is more about Echo herself and where she finds herself without that relationship. Finn’s killing spree wasn’t the reason why Flarke fell apart, either. Clarke still had feelings for Finn, but she had rejected him for other reasons, i.e. his earlier behavior. )

What do all these actions have in common? They weren’t romantic, they were f*cking unhealthy. When Finn told Clarke that he killed all those people for her, she was horrified, and I was really angry at him for telling her something that terrible.

In Finn’s case, he may have been suffering from PTSD, and his feelings for Clarke were turning into an obsession and made him look almost like a stalker. In Echo’s case, she has serious identity issues and her childhood trauma and conditioning by Queen Nia. But the show is, in this case, more open about the fact that, for Echo, it’s not all about romantic love. or love in general. She has lost her purpose. Bellamy is not just her boyfriend, he’s her King, like Nia and Roan before him. Echo’s own subconsciousness has been telling her that this is a problem, and that her relationship with Bellamy is very unbalanced. “Without Bellamy, who will you follow? Without someone to follow, who are you?” It also told her that she has remained the same as before she became a part of the Spacekru and his girlfriend: “Once a killer, always a killer.” ““The honorless spy who would do anything for her queen, even betray the man she now claims to love?” In S5 and S6, Bellamy was trying to not “make the same mistakes”, and “do better”, and was always rejecting Echo’s more ruthless suggestions of how to deal with any potential enemies, and she always fell in line as he was the leader/ Without him, she is reverting to her old patterns.

It’s not romantic or a sign of soulmate love to wrap your whole identity over one person. It’s really unhealthy. It was also unhealthy when Octavia said she didn’t have a home and didn’t belong anywhere after Lincoln’s death because he was “her home”. She had to grow out of that. Maybe she could offer some advice to Echo now. Will it work or not? I don’t know.

What I’m sure of is that Becho is doomed, but the writing on the wall has been there at least throughout season 6, if not already in season 5. What I don’t know is how Echo’s own arc this season will end. She will have to forge a new identity, but what will it be? Will she start following someone else? (That would be a pretty depressing arc.) Become independent, but still a ruthless killer? Will she start thinking about the morality of her actions as most other o the major characters do? Will she fail to find any solution and will die? Not every character on the show gets to have an uplifting arc where they solve their issues. Her arc is different from Finn’s because his dark arc was a completely new and shocking development, while Echo is reverting to who she used to be. But I think it’s more likely that she gets a more positive ending than Finn, because the show has been paralleling storylines in seasons 6-7 to storylines of early seasons (like Sanctum-Mount Weather) but with a more positive outcome.

Best moments/lines

While Bellamy’s 1-minute appearance was undoubtedly the highlight of the episode, my favorite scenes were Octavia’s reunion and goodbye with Hope (even with Hope being an adult now, Octavia talks to her as a surrogate aunt: “I love you, little one, don’t you ever forget it”), the scenes with Murphy and the kids and the battle of wills between Indra and Sheidheda.

The best line by far was Hope’s reply to Anders:

“This is what happens when you value individuals above the collective”

Hope: “It’s called love, you son of a bitch,”

Body count:

One Faithful burned herself.

another fanatical suicide: a Disciple who detonated the grenade (at Anders’ orders?) in the flashback scene with Bellamy

a bunch of Disciples killed, again. For a group that’s supposed to be so badass and scary, they really failing to be that, since they’re constantly getting their asses kicked. OK, they are not all Level 12, and Orlando was both Level 12 and a teacher of fighting skills. And yes, Echo and Hope (and Gabriel, who hasn’t killed anyone so far) have had almost 5 years of training by Orlando, while Octavia and Bellamy (and Diyoza, of course) are incredibly badass even without it. But you can’t keep them getting killed so easily and expect me to take them seriously. This time, Bellamy killed a couple in the flashback, and Hope and Echo killed a few, including a particularly sadistic murder of Kirsch the Memory Cap guy.

Rating: 7.5/10

#the 100 #the 100 season 7 #the 100 7x05 #welcome to bardo #octavia blake #bellamy blake #indra kom trikru #indra #sheidheda #john murphy #echo kom azgeda #hope diyoza #gabriel santiago #cadogan #the disciples #bardo #time dilation #the anomaly

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