A long, but generally very good fourth season of CW's The 100 concluded last night with what can safely be called its most ambitious - but not best - season finale yet. Strangely, not a single storyline was closed out, and some significant changes look to be on the way for Season 5. Dean White directed "Praimfaya", which was written by Jason Rothenberg.
I'll start by saying that I didn't enjoy this finale anywhere as much as I hoped I would, and that's due to a range of factors. The episode's opening few minutes were superb. Opting to kick the hour off with Bellamy and Octavia conversing over the radio was an excellent decision. We had Octavia being given some fantastic words of wisdom from her older brother on how to lead a group of people - a situation she found herself in largely by accident in a sense. She managed to tell Bellamy she loved him, but the communications equipment died before he was able to reciprocate that. That moment pulled at my heartstrings, but this was one of just two moments that would pull at my heartstrings in this finale.
I'll be waiting. Under the floor.
Some further wisdom was imparted on Octavia from Indra - another good decision from the creative team. Indra's role in the back half of this season has lacked significance, but going into Season 5 I'm hoping this will change should the character still exist after six years in the bunker. What Indra said (below) was important because it indicates the whole Commander philosophy will hopefully be history permanently. Time will surely tell, however.
The time of the commanders is passed. The time of blame is passed. This is your time.
That was all we saw of the bunker, and this was another decision I thought the creative team got right because the vast majority of the episode was devoted to the group in the lab making it to space. This storyline was what I was most excited about last week, but it's execution was way off the mark in my opinion.
A 90 minute countdown timer was set very early on. Raven's impassioned speech to Clarke, Bellamy, Murphy, Emori, Monty, Harper and Echo left everyone with the understanding that a standard 6 hour launch sequence had to be condensed into just 90 minutes - and there was a bunch of other tasks that had to be completed too. There was no doubt a sense of urgency, and this was set up well, but where the story's execution fell apart were the repeated failures, catastrophes and mental breakdowns that left me having to suspend my disbelief too many times.
Some good did come from this, however. Though anyone with sense would call it wasting valuable time given a launch was imminent, Clarke's scene with Bellamy during the preparation was powerful, emotional, and well put together. It was then that I became very convinced that the pair would be separated yet again, with one going to space and not the other. I would be proven correct later on. Dean White beautifully framed this scene by shortsighting the verbal sparring shots, then evolving to a more conventional over the shoulder shot with leading room as Clarke's words became more intimate (see the image below). Bringing the characters together using this cinematography was very well done, in addition to Clarke's delicate touches on Bellamy's face, and the way she brought her hands together behind his back while she embraced him.
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| Over the shoulder (top) compared to shortsighting (bottom). Click to expand. |
Clarke's acknowledgement that Bellamy had consistently done all he could for his sister despite Octavia not acknowledging it was the finale's best moment, and one of the season's overall highlights for me. It was Clarke's way of telling Bellamy she loved and respected him because of how selfless he has been, without actually saying she loved him:
We've been through a lot together, you and I. I didn't like you at first - that's no secret. But even then, every stupid thing you did, it was to protect your sister. She didn't always see that, but I did. You've got such a big heart, Bellamy. People follow you. You inspire them because of this, but the only way to make sure we survive is if you use this, too.
Moving on, Echo was mucking around being the dead, expendable weight lots of people assumed she would be. She was useless with the rocket preparation, and spent most of her 90 minutes preparing to kill herself. Bellamy, being the nice guy that he is, talked her out of it, and she was back in the rocket with under a handful of minutes to spare. Though Bellamy's calm approach worked, someone really needed to yell at Echo to do something to make things feel more authentic because this was not a time where one eighth of a workforce could simply skive off like that.
Murphy and Monty were assigned the task of retrieving an oxygen generator from a derelict lighthouse. Part of this scene was teased in a sneak peek shortly before the finale went to air. I can't remember the last time the pair shared a scene together, but it was great value here. Again, further unnecessary drama was added to proceedings when Monty had to remove his gloves to free the generator, resulting in radiation burns to his hands, and on the way back he blacked out, meaning Murphy had to haul the generator back to the lab on his own, later returning with Bellamy to bring Monty back.
This was one of several examples of unnecessary drama that the creative team included, whereas a problem-free trip there and back by the pair would have been more interesting thanks to the dialog that was very promising initially. Another example was the communications system on the rocket shorting out, leading to the reason Clarke stayed behind on Earth. Raven had another mental breakdown as she struggled to come up with a solution to communicate with the Ring, their destination in space. Instead of this breakdown, had Monty and Murphy had a pain-free excursion and returned with the oxygen generator earlier, Monty may have been able to lend some of his engineering knowledge to the situation instead. I would have found that to be much better value than what we actually got.
The worst was yet to come, however. Clarke was left to run a two mile return trip to a dilapidated radio tower in order to get a signal to the Ring to become operational. She did just that, but the dish on the top wouldn't work from the ports below. Kudos to the props team here, who used bits of an old sound desk or patch panel to conjure up a prop that could pass as a tower port interface. That was about all the good there was in this scene in my opinion. With the lower ports out of action, Clarke decided to climb the tower instead of return to the lab and board the rocket. She watched the rocket blast off over yonder while she climbed. When she reached the top, the ports up there wouldn't work either, so she ended up manually dragging the dish into alignment, finally succeeding in getting a message to the Ring before the entire assembly died for good.
Clarke was fine with missing her ride. She had finally made the sacrifice she had been longing to make for much of the series. She descended the tower in world record time and made it back to the safety of the lab mere seconds before the death wave swallowed up the entrance. So much for needing at least 10 minutes to run back, let along descend the tower. But no, she punctured her helmet as she fled, meaning her face was covered in blisters caused by the radiation. Man, did I roll my eyes at that.
With Clarke as safe as she could be, attention turned to those on board the rocket. There were some redeeming qualities here, such as the symbolism and connection between what happened when the original members of the 100 descended to the ground, but it was largely lost on me due to the farcical events that had led up to the launch. Raven got her space walk, and the doors to the Ring opened, but the disembarking of the rocket was left out, and the set design on the Ring was mediocre at best, though hopefully this changes next season. I was forced to endure yet another cliché-ridden "life or death" situation as the group worked to get the oxygen generator working before the oxygen they had brought from Earth ran out and they all suffocated and died. For once, the damn thing worked first time, and everyone appeared to recover with no ongoing effects.
I'll get to the final scene shortly, but before I do, I want to clarify that I believe Jason Rothenberg and his team needed to streamline and simplify the events in the lab and in space, remove many of the problems, and use the formidable combinations that group of characters provided to power through their objectives and succeed. We've had a great last few weeks where the characters have owned most of the episodes, and the subsequent character and story development has been very strong. In this finale, things were back to being heavily story-driven, with character development and interaction being replaced by catastrophic problem after catastrophic problem. That's not a winning combination for a finale.
The suspense - which was well crafted thanks to getting a countdown timer going early on in the piece - was lost with all these issues cropping up. I'm not saying there shouldn't be the odd thing that goes wrong, but in a series where if something can possibly go wrong, it absolutely does, this gets old quickly. It's a cliché-ridden, repetitive, and lazy approach to storytelling. Stories can be told in ways other than placing constant barriers in front of characters. It's the way Rothenberg and his team has compiled the entire series to date, and I've been ok with it for the last four seasons, but last night's finale jumped the shark with this aspect, and a change in approach is due.
Had Rothenberg placed fewer barriers in front of this core group of characters, he still could have achieved the ending he got in this finale. Moments after we see those in space settled in, "6 years and 7 days later" appear. Clarke appears, sporting a new wardrobe, refreshed haircut, and a vibrancy like I've never seen before. The rover survived the death wave, and it's where we are reintroduced to her, sitting on the hood. She get up, places a miniature satellite dish seemingly at random on the ground, and begins pouring her emotions into a radio message addressed to Bellamy, hoping to hear a response from him on the Ring. Likely thanks to her Nightblood cure from earlier in the season, Clarke shows no signs of the radiation dose she got 6 years and 7 days ago.
In the back of the rover, we meet Madi for the first time. She's a young girl, I'm guessing around 12-13 years of age, and a Nightlood. According to the post-mortem interviews, she's been living with Clarke for a number of years, and they have a very strong bond as a result.
Then, out of the sky, appears a large, sophisticated ship, labeled as belonging to the Eligius Corporation. It also contains the label "Gagarin Prisoner Transport". It hovers, then prepares to land just a couple hundred meters from Clarke and Madi. The screen cuts to black, concluding the season in an ominous and totally unexpected way.
This is a huge change of tack for the series. Given the time jump stretches a year longer than many might have forecast, that changes the game for those on board the Ring and for those in the bunker. Both parties - providing they remain where they were - will have been there a full year longer than intended - and that their provisions were designed for. Now, a ship that looks many times more sophisticated than what those on board the Ark had access to, is descending to Earth, and it just happens to contain prisoners - much like the original drop ship from the Ark around 6 years and 6 months prior. Rothenberg mentioned how the story is coming full circle, and that flashbacks are the next best thing to guaranteed as Season 5 picks up the story and explains what happened during the time that had passed.
On one hand, I'm excited to see where things go. A complete refresh can open up new avenues for the series to explore, but on the other hand, there was no real reason to bring this story full circle yet, especially with the bunker and the Ring providing two new environments to develop. It's not done often in television to this extent because most writers are good enough to continue on a roadmap that doesn't require a reset, and given we've already come full circle in one respect thanks to the bunker sharing similarities with Mount Weather, and again with those going into space, do we really need to go full circle in a third way and bring a new bunch of prisoners to Earth to likely wreak more death, chaos and destruction? That will be answered in due course, but I'm certainly on the fence with regard to whether it's the right approach for the creative team to take.
So, in summary, I was really pleased with what came out of the bunker in this episode. It was short and sharp, which let the more interesting and exciting storyline take precedence, but didn't disappoint, with the communication between Bellamy and Octavia being very nicely done. As for the lab and space, in a nutshell, the creative team tried way to hard and opted for an overdone, excessively dramatic story containing all sorts of nonsense when they should have backed their characters to tell the story for them. The moments between Monty and Murphy, Bellamy and Octavia, and Bellamy and Clarke were the highlights by a long shot, but the ongoing catastrophes were a real burden, and left me really disappointed that a golden opportunity to get the characters to space in style was essentially blown. Season 5 will no doubt bring a drastic shift in how the series works, but the writing has to be significantly better than this the caliber shown in this finale to do an adequate job of it.
As for the season itself, it tops last season comfortably from my perspective. Season 4 favored characters over story more than the previous seasons have, but still not quite at the level I'd like to see. The romances and chemistry between certain characters garner my Most Improved award. The subtle interplay between Bellamy and Clarke, and later between Monty and Harper are particular highlights, with Abby and Kane being ones to watch too.
We also said goodbye to several important characters, including Jasper, Roan, Luna, and a surprising amount of supporting characters. ALIE/Becca continued a presence in a much more tolerable and interesting way this season as well. The content between the clans wasn't over-bearing, and bringing that to a climax three weeks ago was a well thought out decision. A bunch of rather unbelievable things dogged proceedings at times, not least of which was Octavia's miraculous cliff-fall survival, and the happenings I've described in this finale review, among others. That being said, I've largely enjoyed the ride Season 4 has taken me on, but a few wee tidy-ups would have made this a season to truly remember.
I'll leave it there for my final review of this season of The 100. I do hope you've enjoyed reading what I have to say each week! I've really enjoyed reading all the comments and discussion, so make sure you share your thoughts and theories on the finale and the season one more time in the comments section down below.
See you all in 2018!
