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The 100: Praimfaya

"The time of the commanders is past. The time of the flame is past. This is your time."

That was good TV.

Praimfaya has finally come and it was just as disastrous as ALIE predicted. Absolutely every second had me on the edge of my seat. A ticking clock will do that to you.

Bits that gave me all the feelings:

— The Blakes' goodbye complete with Octavia forgiving her brother, exchanging I love yous and Bellamy giving a leadership pep-talk and pointers. Too cute. So earned.

— Raven breaking down and thinking that curing her super brain made her not smart enough to save her friends. I wanted desperately to give her a hug. Thankfully, Bellamy did, too.

— Emori asking if they could give Clarke an extra minute to get back. She isn't usually one on the inside. She's used to getting left behind or kicked out and it really endeared me to her 500 times over that she would still be a badass and speak up when it was someone else on the outside.

That tiny moment when Clarke's watch turned to 9:59 and she told herself that her fight was over was intensely powerful and even now every time I think about it, I see a new layer. First of all, for some reason when it was happening I wasn't sad because I thought she was about to be killed off, but in hindsight it's obvious that she really thought she was. And I think the writers had to have considered it as it would've knocked the viewers right off our feet.

Secondly, what I was most devastated about was the fact that it would be a special kind of hell to go five years without seeing or speaking to another person. I can only assume that's why they gave her a friend in the flash-forward. Like how Tom Hanks had Wilson on the island. To sidestep the whole Clarke goes mad story line. And it added so much more to the job of getting the satellite turned around as her last act on earth. The last time (in her mind) that she could help people that she loved. Plus Clarke kept trying to tell Bellamy goodbye and prepare him to lead without her. It was harder for me to swallow when I watched it a second time.

I loved the parallel of Bellamy having to make the decision to go without Clarke and Clarke making the decision to shut the door on him back in the finale of season 2. And he was right. He didn't hear it but Clarke told them not to wait for her. He listened when she said that he needed to start using his head and it saved his friends.

Echo's breakdown and suicide attempt was a really intense moment for her character. Up until now we have only seen her as a fearless warrior. Always fighting, not giving up. I'm glad we finally got to see a different side to her. And it makes sense that she be so terrified to go into the sky. If I was going to complain, I would say that the scene felt out of place and rushed but there was really nowhere else in the episode that felt superfluous so what can you do.

We spent all of four minutes in the bunker with Octavia and the undergrounders. This is her time. All of the terrible things she's survived, and all the love from Bellamy, Lincoln and Indra, have culminated to put her in this position of ultimate power. I'd like to believe that the small amount of time we saw them signifies there are no problems. I can see O running a tight ship and not giving people a chance to step out of line, but that dream kind of died when we found out that Clarke hadn't heard from them and wasn't able to even find the door from the sound of it. It would be a special kind of ironic if the bunker that everyone was dying to get into turned out to be a death sentence, not that I'm hoping for that. I guess we will have to wait and see.

So what do we know about next season?

It felt very odd to not see the Arkadians' reaction to Kane and Jaha gassing them and nixing the lottery all together. Not to mention we didn't get to see how Abby felt about Kane saving her over someone else and with Clarke not making it back to the bunker. Such a weird dropped thread that I can only assume we will see in flashbacks in season five.

The prisoner transport ships coming down at the end has to be a deliberate call back to the 100 prisoners that were sent down from the Ark, right? Will we be getting a lot of callbacks to season one plots?

This was an excellent finale. Maybe not the best finale we've ever gotten, but certainly the best episode of the season.

4 out of 4 prisoner transport ships.

Bits and pieces

I never really made the connection that the landscape of this show was going to completely change until Polis was wiped out. Everything we've known has to be gone, right? No more Arkadia (not that there was much left after Ilian, anyway), no more Becca's lab, no more Polis, no more dropship for that matter. But where did Clarke hide from the death wave if not in the lab?

Emori and Echo's faces when the rocket hit zero gravity was almost too good.

When Clarke opened her eyes, after the six years and seven days, she was so obviously wearing mascara that it annoyed me. Like I can barely find a mascara to make my three eyelashes look cute and post apocalypse Clarke Griffin is just swimming in bomb eye products made out of what?... Mud? And don't get me started on the return of the red streaks in her hair.

The ship that was landing said 'Eligius Corp' and 'Gargarin Prisoner Transport.' Any ideas for what it could mean?

Clarke told her new friend to load up 'all the guns.' I guess they've had not a lot to do but arm themselves.

Clarke's new friend makes me wonder if there were other secret nightbloods scattered about.

There are a lot of rumblings online about someone returning from space pregnant or with a child. Should we vote on who the parents might be?

Bellamy: "We will meet again."
Octavia: "And I'll be waiting. Under the floor."

Bellamy: "Grounders in space. It's an oxymoron."
Clarke: "Survival's a team sport, especially up there. It was the only choice. Only choice, also an oxymoron, by the way."

Bellamy: "Hey, Raven, you can do this. You can. How many times have you saved our asses before you ever even heard of ALIE?"
Raven: "Too many to count."
Bellamy: "You're damn right. We don't need ALIE on the Ark. We need you."

Murphy: "Who knew you were a secret badass?"

Raven: "She saved us again. Think we can do this without her?"
Bellamy: "If we don't, she died in vain. And I'm not gonna let that happen. You with me?"
Raven: "Always."

Clarke: "Here we go again. Bellamy, if you can hear me, if you're alive, it's been 2,199 days since Praimfaya. I don't know why I still do this every day. Maybe it's my way of staying sane, not forgetting who I am. Who I was. It's been safe for you to come down for over a year now. Why haven't you? The bunker's gone silent, too. We tried to get them out for awhile, but there was too much rubble. I haven't made contact with them, either. Anyway, I still have hope. Tell Raven to aim for the one spot of green, and you'll find me. The rest of the planet, from what I've seen, basically sucks."

How I assume we will all be waiting for season 5.

5 comments:

  1. I actually think this was the best finale we've ever gotten. I was on edge the whole time. It's such a testament to how legitimate the stakes are on this show that I was genuinely afraid for Clarke. Of course she survived which is great, but it's amazing that the writers can have you actually sacred for the lead characters future.

    I totally agree about the dropped thread of what happened after the list came out. I can only assume that the writers ran out of time, and it would have killed the momentum if we had switched back and forth to the bunker while the space crew were racing against time outside. Hopefully we'll see more of what happened in flashbacks, but it could be a similar case to what happened when Clarke tried to take the bunker for Skaikru and we never saw how she got to that point.

    Great review, Laure!

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  2. Yeah, I agree -- this was an edge of your seat finale. I really didn't want the wave to happen (I kept thinking of all of the fictional animals that would die!) but there's no question that The 100 pulled out all of the stops again.

    Having it go an extra year was creepy, though. I'm imagining the bunker as total warring chaos. Wouldn't they have run out of supplies by now? If there are still over a thousand people in there and they find their way out, what are they going to live on? Who is in that ship that was landing, and where are Bellamy and company?

    Thanks so much for another terrific season of reviews, Laure.

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  3. Off all the tear worth scene...It was the pure wonder on Echo's face and the excited Joy on Emori's watching Raven spacewalk that got me..

    As much as it was little jarring that we didn't see to much of the bunker it worked better for the story and the episode as a whole.
    This show is its own worst enemy..It has too many good characters.

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  4. Wonderfull edge of seat finale, they only thing missing was more runing time so we oculd fit in more of the bunker at the beginning. Of course the main leftovers of the 100 working together always makes the best episodes.

    I hope next season will be flashback heavy. I really do want to see how they lived on the space station and in the bunker. Glossing it over and just telling via present day dialog would be not enough.

    I don't know about the spaceship cliffhanger. How would the Ark not register that there are other survivors in space. Maybe from a base on the dark side of the moon?

    I guess Clarke's group are all latent nightbloods that did not participate in conclaves so not everyone outside died.

    Can't wait for season 5.

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  5. It was a very exciting finale, but the ending was confusing. Even if we assume there were nightbloods out there that survived, how would Clarke have found them? Why is the area around Clarke lush and green while the rest of the world is dust? Did she find a G.E.C.K.? (Fallout joke)

    My thought on the other spaceship was that it could be that ALI has come back.

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