Welcome to the first and last annual Hundred Games! The winner will be whoever is the last warrior standing at the end of the fight to the death. No cheating, unless you really, really want to, and are a named character. Alliances are allowed, but discouraged, because, as usual, Grounders don’t really understand the meaning of the words cooperation, apocalypse, or last chance for survival. Even Roan, normally one of the most sensible characters on TV, has lost his mind on this one.
This is Octavia’s episode, on screen anyway. We’ll talk about the off screen machinations happening throughout the episode later. Bellamy finds her waiting to be called out to accept her place as champion for Skaikru and they have a moment. Then Clarke gives her a bit of reassurance before sending her out to the public platform. Gaia is acting as Master of Ceremonies. Stanley Tucci didn’t loan her his blue wig, but overall, Gaia’s always enjoyable to look at, so we’ll let it slide.
Each champion each given a sigil necklace, to be collected by their killer.
Roan fights for Azgeda, Ilian for Trishanakru, and in a surprise move, Luna fights for the now extinct Flokru. She declares that if she wins, the bunker will be sealed and no one will be allowed in. She hates everyone and she wants them all to die, so she’s taking her bunker and leaving.
When Octavia’s gone, Bellamy, probably looking for reassurance himself, asks Clarke if she really thinks Octavia has a chance. Clarke’s fresh out of hope, though, and just says that Octavia needs to believe she does. Did Clarke miss the part where Octavia survived the cliff fall and is a ninja now? Wanheda’s not much for team spirit.
The champions are taken to a practice room to choose weapons. Indra finds Octavia and gives her last minute advice, and an heirloom sword. They reaffirm their bond.
Kane, Bellamy, Clarke and Jaha are having a de facto council meeting in the street when Gaia tells them it’s time to start the Games. They continue the discussion for another minute. Jaha and Clarke feel that they can’t trust that Luna won’t win, since she’s had more one on one battle training than anyone, and that the Grounders will honor the outcome of the Conclave, even if she doesn’t. Kane feels that they will honor the results, since the Conclave is sacred. He leaves to help Octavia prepare. Clarke sends an awkward Bellamy to help Octavia, then goes to talk to Roan and work on prepping the bunker.
Roan is with Echo. He’s still inexplicably over Clarke and alliances. If he loses the Conclave and Azgeda is doomed, he doesn’t care if everyone else dies, too. Clarke says that she wants humanity to survive, even if her people don’t. Uh huh. Says the girl who spent a significant portion of the season working on the Ark, which couldn’t even hold all of Skaikru, and put off pursuing other options for weeks/months. Roan dismisses Clarke, Clarke flounces off to the bunker, and Echo gets all shifty-eyed with an idea.
Kane and Bellamy give the girl on fire under the floor her final pep talk. Kane points out the weaknesses of various champions, but Bels tells her to use her natural stealth and let the rest kill each other until the very end, then she can just kill the last few.
Octavia uses this strategy as much as possible, but a tiny girl like her is an attractive target that some of the champions assume will be an easy kill. Meanwhile, Roan takes out his archenemy trikru first thing. Suddenly, everyone in the throne room realizes that they’re probably going to lose, and die. Thinking ahead, not a Grounder strongsuit. Octavia will win through strategy and stealth.
Luna finds Octavia, and rants at her that people are horrible, Skaikru is horrible, and only Lincoln was good. I think there was more, but I stopped listening. The black rain killed her people, but Skaikru tried to save them. Why blame Skaikru for trying to survive? She’s mad with grief. Sure, Lincoln’s death was a tragedy, but he’s the star of his own show now. No more arguing about dropped plotlines. Can’t she be happy he’s with the Gods? Maybe he’ll let her guest star as the Goddess of Death. At any rate, I knew they shouldn’t have killed Nyko that way. He was the last person holding her together. Octavia manages to escape from Luna’s clutches, this time.
Peta Ilian finds Octavia bandaging a wound, and suggests an alliance. She’s not interested. Katniss Octavia tells him that she can never be the girl he wants her to be, and next time she sees him, she’ll kill him.
Bellamy realizes that Echo is hiding in the battlefield and picking off champions with a bow and arrow. Kane tells him to wait until dark, then go find and stop her when he’s less likely to get caught. Strategy, people.
Octavia gets ambushed by three other champions and Ilian shows up just in time to help her overcome them. As they’re having the required romantic argument afterwards, Echo shoots him through the throat with an arrow. He’s conveniently still able to talk, and asks her to kill him, like she promised last time they saw each other. She obliges him. Goodbye, Ilian. You were little more than a plot device, but you were cute, mostly and oddly emotionally stable, and kind of sweet, which was nice for Octavia to have for a few minutes.
Bellamy finds Echo and they get into a scuffle. Roan finds them wrestling and says he knew the two of them wouldn’t be able to stay out of it. Bellamy tells Roan that he caught Echo cheating. Roan says he’s going to turn the car around if they don’t stop. Roan tells Echo that he’s honorable, unlike his mother, and wants to win in a fair fight. He banishes Echo from Azgeda, and bars her from the bunker. He threatens Bellamy a bit, but ultimately decides to let Bels go. If those three don’t ultimately survive the season, it will be a tragedy, for the lost comedy potential alone.
Octavia has snuck in and is listening to their conversation. Bellamy tells Roan that he’s sure Octavia can win, and he’s lucky to have her as his sister. Roan says he’ll tell Octavia that she was lucky to have Bellamy as a brother before he kills her. Octavia draws strength from hearing Bellamy’s love and praise. As Bellamy is leaving the battlefield, a tall, masked man kidnaps him.
There are only four champions left. Luna, Octavia, Roan, and someone else who will obviously not win. Luna immediately kills the random. Octavia and Roan meet up next. Roan proposes that they take on Luna together, so that humanity can survive. Octavia agrees. Luna appears and they fight. Just as Roan is about to deliver a decisive blow, there is thunder, lightening, and black rain starts to fall. Octavia seeks cover in a building. Roan and Luna continue to fight. Luna eventually gains the upper hand, slashes Roan in the stomach, then drowns him in a fountain. She wanders off to find Octavia.
There’s a trail of blood leading to a cupboard in the room Octavia was hiding in. Luna follows it, then stabs the closed cupboard repeatedly. She’s exhausted and struggling to keep going, otherwise she wouldn’t fall for such an obvious trap. Octavia sneaks up behind Luna and kills her.
We see Echo watching Roan’s champion candle being snuffed out, then Octavia walks in to claim her championship. She announces that she fought for everyone, not just Skaikru. The bunker will be shared equally. They are one clan. Indra tells Octavia that Lincoln would have been so proud of her. Kane tells her that the bunker won’t hold everyone.
Skaikru has already made themselves at home in the bunker, having gassed Bellamy unconscious to get him inside, then locked the door. When he wakes up, he’s shocked that Clarke would be okay with this. Jaha tells him that not only was she okay with it, it was her idea. Kane and Octavia are locked out of the bunker. It’s hard to imagine that Abby and Bellamy are going to consider them acceptable losses. Indra, Octavia, Kane and Gaia discover that Skaikru has betrayed them and locked the bunker prematurely. But where was the lever?
Not sure how Luna thought she was going to fight off the entire population if she won the conclave. When it came down to survival of the species and culture, no one was going to honor her wishes. She may have been a great warrior, but she was still only one person against a mob. This was suicide by Conclave. She wanted to take a few people out with her, and have a chance to say her piece. She got that, and the relief of death at last. I wish I was sadder to see her go.
I know we saw Roan’s body, so the no body=no death rule doesn’t apply directly, but I’m falling back on a variation of the rule here. Everyone else who died was killed with a sword, knife, arrow, or some other messy, bloody, indisputably fatal method. But Roan was inexplicably drowned in a fountain, in the dark, in the rain, by a woman who was exhausted, grief-stricken and generally out of her mind. I’m not accepting her assessment of his condition. We’ve seen Roan come back from near death before. Echo was in the throne room a while later. She could have easily watched their fight, then pulled him out of the fountain the second Luna was inside with Octavia, and revived him. After that, she sent him off somewhere quiet with his healers, while she monitored the proceedings. What better way for her to regain her place in the bunker?
If he’s really gone, then I’ll sorely miss him. He’s been one of the best additions to the cast since season one, with his intelligence, common sense, humor and ability to keep up with Clarke. He deserved a better send off than this. He didn’t even get a real goodbye from anyone, unlike Ilian, or a dramatic, long speech like Luna.
Jaha says Clarke “chose” to commandeer the bunker, but you have to wonder how she reached that “choice.” Of course Clarke will save her people first, and it didn’t surprise me that they were already in the bunker. What surprised me was the locked door. Clarke would normally be trying to bring in as many people as possible before the rioting started. Locking the door before the Conclave ended is pure Jaha. And, indeed, Clarke has spent most of this season with Jaha whispering in her ear like Lady Macbeth. She’s been separated from Abby and Kane all season, her two sources of less drastic advice. Bellamy has been so unsure of himself that he’s only been willing to offer moral support, no leadership help this season. Then Clarke’s had Jasper telling reminding her of every difficult decision she’s ever made, while Jaha tells her she doesn’t have to feel guilty for her decisions as long as she meant well. Of course she started leaning on him in the end. He found the bunker; he’s saved them multiple times, despite season 3. But he’s not the best man for the job any more.
This will finally be Bellamy’s time to shine as a leader. He’s the only one in the bunker that Clarke will listen to over Jaha. Bellamy and Abby are going to have to try to get through to her, and the rest of Skaikru, to convince them to do the right thing.
Clarke may yet realize the gravity of her mistake, and exile herself outside of the bunker, since she’s a nightblood with a chance of surviving. Raven is planning to go to space and not return, but the pod can return without her. Without Raven’s weight, there might be enough rocket fuel for a safe water landing for the night blood formula, so that Clarke can inoculate everyone who is left up top. Then we are set up for a recreation of the original Primefire, with the Bunker as the Ark, and Clarke as Becca, leader of the new grounder nightblood culture.
The science has always been bad on this show, almost to the point of campiness, but it’s downright ludicrous at this point. Are they bringing samples of enough other species of plants and animals into the bunker to create a viable food web to repopulate the Earth, or are those all going to magically re-evolve and redistribute themselves in 5 years? I might as well be watching Torchwood: Miracle Day, the other worst-apocalyptic-season-ever-that-wrote-itself-into-a-corner-it-didn’t-know-how-to-get-out-of. They didn’t have enough storyline for the season either, so they stretched out ridiculous, time-wasting plot points, became overly nihilistic, and killed and warped characters, too, trying to make a bad idea work. It’s like watching a show commit suicide by bad writing.
In the end, while the Conclave had character consequences, it only served as a distraction, giving Skaikru time to take over the bunker. It was meaningless to the larger storyline, just as every other episode’s plan to save humanity has been, other than those directly related to the bunker under the temple. I don’t appreciate watching favorite characters die or undergo personality transplants for nothing. It’s not surprising that the episode order for this season was cut to 13. The storyline could have been done in three, and probably should have been. It would have been better as a between seasons movie to set the stage for season 4, the way the Dr Who Christmas movies set up each following season. Then we wouldn’t have needed the endless red herrings and backtracking.
Metawitches 
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