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The 100: Wanheda, Part 1

"Really never thought I'd miss the Ark this much."

It's official. Clarke and company are back. Breaking hearts first and taking names later. I don't think they could've jammed any more set up for the season than they did here.

And it was pretty much as great as I was expecting.

Right off the bat, it struck me as interesting how far the series has come. It literally started light years (that's accurate space jargon, right?) from where our characters are now. The backstory barely included any mention of living in space, and a lot of the characters are physically and emotionally unrecognizable.

Let's start by addressing what a looney toon Jasper has become. He must have kept all his sanity in his hair, because both are distant memories at this point. Okay, okay. Maya is dead and he probably feels guilty that he gets to go on and she had to die to make that happen. At the end he was ripping supplies out of people's hands, calling them grave robbers and picking a fight with the piano man. I almost felt sorry for him. Then I remembered that he knew Maya for like 17 seconds, he's had three months to drink his pain away and he takes digs at Monty. Not cool, man.

Two things I remembered about Jasper while watching this episode. First, he was accidentally a valuable member of the original 100. He kept trying to show off for Octavia and got lucky. A lot. Plus, he earned the terrible friend of the year award for the way he treated Clarke when she first woke up in the mountain AND refused to go after her when she escaped. On a positive note, though, he did lead a mean sing-a-long on the mini roadtrip. Maybe there's still hope for him.

Jasper isn't the only one that had a massive change in grooming. Did someone open a hair salon in the new camp? If they had, I guess it still wouldn't explain Clarke's new do since she's been too busy tying up bunnies to visit.

The trouble Clarke is in now has nothing to do with what she's been up to in the woods like I assumed it would. The grounders want to kill her because they think what she did at Mount Weather makes her powerful and people want to steal that power for themselves. But of course, they need to wreak more violence to get what they want. Bellamy is right. Peace isn't the norm life on the ground. It's a foreign concept that really only occurs while people wait for the next bloody war to break out. If Indra hadn't shown up to warn Clarke's friends about her new popularity, then what?

Bellamy, for the first time in his life, has been able to find a place out of the shadows. Kane and Abby respect him, the people he led still look up to him, his sister is alive and relatively safe, he has friends, and even a girlfriend to cuddle up with at the end of a long day. It's nice to see him so settled and happy. It's also nice that his relationship with Clarke hasn't been ruined by the distance she put between them.

Octavia can't forgive being forced to live under the floor and then being imprisoned. The jackets represent so much more to her than leadership or even the clean slate that her brother sees. And the more Bellamy and Lincoln try to force her to assimilate as part of the 'Sky People', the more she rebels. I can't really blame her. Deciding how she gets from place to place and where she sleeps are the smallest of freedoms that she was denied until she got to the ground. Without the threat of her brother and friends dying, it's hard for her to pick a side because she doesn't feel like she has a home.

Jaha, ALIE and John- one big happy family. Interesting that the three characters I dislike the most are all camped out together. Jaha is the absolute worst. I don't know how he made it as a leader as long as he did on the ark without getting seriously assassinated. I'll never be able to forgive John for trying to kill Charlotte betraying his people every chance he got shooting Raven everything he did in season one. And computer-animated avatar ladies are creepy in general.

This was good. I really enjoyed it. Not tear worthy, though.
3.5 out of 4 vintage ark bracelets.

Bits and pieces

It's been three months since the season two finale.

Clarke isn't doing the voiceover anymore. Are we supposed to buy that this isn't her story anymore? Clarke doesn't strike me as a background character. Especially if whats-his-name backs her into a corner.

Camp Jaha is now called Arkadia. Ever the Arkers can't stand his story line.

Bellamy and Clarke both got new honeys while Raven 'pushed Wick away.' Does Raven always draw the short straw or what??

Octavia jumping on and off that horse is impressive. Have you ever tried to get on a horse? It's harder than it looks.

Indra and Kane have stayed pen pals since Indra followed the orders to abandon Kane's people. This is the same guy who killed people for stealing medicine for their sick children and handed out public lashings to his friends for not agreeing with him.

Is the infamous City of Light seriously some kind of hippie-hallucination-state-of-mind-situation?? Or is a real place that John is headed on the boat?

Can we take a minute to appreciate the Arkers' ear for languages. Octavia and Clarke are both fluent now. I've been trying to teach myself French for over a year. I can barely order coffee.

Is it really possible that we're going to meet Monty's family and Miller's boyfriend? Because I am into that.

The Mountain Men, they're all dead, right? No one received the bone marrow treatment and is lurking in the shadows. Unless I'm forgetting something. Kane maybe? Although even if someone did get away being cut off from the mountains supplies and all the comforts it provided probably wouldn't bode well for his or her survival.

Niylah (Clarke's new love interest) is played by Jessica Harmon. Jessica is Richard Harmon, aka John Murphy's, sister. Small world.

Niylah is also wearing one of the Ark's fancy bracelets that were put on the 100 at the start of the series to track their vitals. Where did she get it? I'm picturing some kind of underground black market for Clarke's groupies. 'Ooooh, Wanheda touched this rock once - $5 or 5 goats or best offer.'

Raven: "She's too good for you."
Bellamy: "Shut up."
Jasper: "Careful, Monty might melt her."

Jaha: "No pain, no hate, no envy."
Murphy: "No, thanks."
Jaha: "John."
Murphy: "No. Pain, hate, envy, those are the ABC's of me. Hey, get rid of them and there's nothing left."

Niylah: "No kill marks."
Clarke: "My back's not big enough."

Red hair don't care. Especially panther blood red.

4 comments:

  1. I think one of the mountain men survived. The head security guard, can't remember his name, but I'm certain he survived the massacre. This was a great start to the season, although the Jaha storyline is still deathly dull. So the City of Lights is the Matrix? Does that make Clarke the One?

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  2. That was awesome. The episode *and* your review, Laure, which made me laugh out loud at least five times.

    Cage's right hand man survived, the incredibly awful Emerson. I'm sure he'll turn up at the worst possible moment.

    How did Bellamy get cuter during the break?

    Arkadia. Much better than Camp Jaha.

    Loved the trading post. Although I could just feel that that bad guy would be waiting outside for Clarke.

    Are we at war with Canada now?

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  3. It's funny, I'd been looking forward to this so much and it just felt a bit... flat? There seems to be a lot less at stake now, which is not like The 100 usually feels, anyhoo.

    Maybe it's that we've never had a time jump before in this and it somehow felt like all the urgency had bled out of the story lines? Plus almost every relationship we'd been previously angsting about had been ditched (Bellamy has a new random girlfriend? I thought we got past that plot back in season one...!).

    And can we please move on from torturing Raven at some point? Having Wick around at least gave her someone else to interact with and invent things with, and now we're back to giving the poor girl more pain (plus pep talks from Abby, and who needs that...).

    Plus the 'let's sort through the possessions of everyone who got massacred at Mount Weather' scene was very oddly handled - it was incredibly creepy and adding in a random ballad felt very season one. Was actually with Jasper on that one (although he was pretty much annoying the rest of the time -what was almost worst were the others not acknowledging how much of a liability he was until he'd caused so much damage?).

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  4. So we have a time skip. It was inevetible after how last season resolved most of the plot. But the show grew in scope during the skip so I'm excited about that.

    I was thinking that Clarke would have built her own nation in 3 months time, but no she can't because everyone wants to kill her instead. At least eating the brain or heart is not needed to take her strenght like in some real world cannibal cultures. Here they will just kill her. :P

    Too bad Raven pushed Wick away. Let's hope she did not do it hard enough to push him off the show forever, but with so many characters I bet they have to cut someone, but hey Monroe and Harper are still around.

    The City of Light does seem like the Matrix controlled by Skynet.

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