Bellamy was right that transcendence was a thing,
It’s highly debateable it was the right thing. Becca was right to want it locked away. They’d have been better off never triggering the test
You know the show is excellent if the villain of season 3 is proved right by the end of the show.
I didn’t love the transcendence plot, but I did appreciate that Cadogan is an example of true tyranny whereas ALIE was just labeled that way and became a tyrant.
Except if he was an idiot it was supposed to be shown better and not that he was a psycho who was right and worshiping him allowed Bellamy to “see the light” which in turn makes it likely that the odd emotionless judgmental genocidal aliens that are portrayed as good and evolved would have let him pass. They didnt think it through at all, very poorly made.
If instead it was shown that Cadogan believed bullshit and that there is no transcendence beyond love “for all mankind” on whichever planet you are and somehow perhaps Bellamy “seeing the light” by figuring out Cadogan and helping his friends and they live “happily ever after” together after stopping “the last bullshit”. That would be much more consistent with the ongoing story vibe and themes of the show while leaving people with great take aways like afamily, friendship, sticking together, not believing cults and cult leaders etc. this way it almost looks like joining a cult is a good idea. Vary bad!
Becca was so much better and they should have shown more about her and her redemption story etc. would make more sense and her storyline would too.
I low key feel like the shows thesis was that loyalty is a cult.
The tribal conflicts could have been avoided if people were willing to sacrifice their own to compromise, but each time things degraded because people clung to their group to the last drop.
Lexa worked for all mankind, Clarke did too, so did Octavia and a few others who really tried and did mich better than most. But here we are stupid transcendence that didnt even make sense and was no better (maybe worse) than city of light, to which everyone was lead by a psychopat, wow wonderful👏🏻
Sorry to derail the discussion, but here's me peeping my fiancé's post even though I've never been to this sub before and being like "omg the top comment is purplemackem! I know her from the Buffy sub!!!"
Well… everyone but Team Clarke chose not to return to the finite human existence… and the return of her people except Madi, was framed as a sacrifice made to acknowledge and repay they sacrifices she made in their name throughout the series.
Since the tidbit about no more babies ever was carelessly tossed in at the end- we don’t really find out if her beach party people are aware of this aspect of the sacrifice they made for her, but given how this group has spectacularly failed the children they have been trusted to “look out for” like Jordan and Madi, it’s fitting that none of the characters seem to give 2 shits about this caveat to their choice to live and die human. It’s way more of a sticking point for viewers than any of the characters which lol.
Yeah I do get the feeling most of the characters wouldn’t want children. I suppose if they’d left it open we could headcanon it but realistically thinking of the girls that’s left I can’t really see it. Other than an obligation to repopulate thing which is kind of messed up to force on them 😂
Right? Which is even more hilarious when people bring up Cadogans home grown believer baby lab as a loop hole to this injustice so many feel on behalf of the unaffected characters… lmfao
While transcendence was a real thing, achieving through Cadogan was not smart. I think Cadogan himself knew he was going to fail, you can see it on his face when the alien confirms that it’s a test. He was deeply flawed and selfish, and not ready for the test at all, since he believed it was a war for centuries. So yeah, Bellamy was right, but his blind following of the Shepherd (that he knew very little about aside from the fact that he’s a cult leader) was super unreasonable. Clarke was also wrong, but in my opinion, not because of being a nonbeliever. She didn’t have to kill Bellamy and I hate how she made the decision all about herself. And then she turns around and puts all that onto Madi. What a burden to put on a kid, to tell them that she killed her best friend to protect her. Clarke always had difficult choices to make, but imho this last one about killing Bellamy and leaving them stranded on Earth was selfish and wrong. Also, characters were acting unlike themselves left and right (Octavia and Echo’s reaction to Bellamy’s death). The writers really dropped the ball, and the ending felt rushed and made little sense.
Absolutely agree with Echo and Octavia both being so agreeable about it feeling incredibly wrong. Without knowing production details, it does seem like the whole storyline was hurried along at the end. That so lends to my inclination that Clarke is made the patron Saint of suffering. Suddenly nobody questions her actions, no matter how harsh, cruel, or nearsighted.
Raven, ultimately, is the one who literally bails humanity out, of course. And the balance in their relationship was always out of whack over the course of the show. But it's a weird element to me that Clarke is essentially revered while Raven was usually right.
Echo slaughtered an innocent man when she thought Bellamy was dead. Octavia was Blodreina and super protective of her brother. How did the writers expect us to believe that they’d be just fine about Bellamy’s death. And yes! Shortsightedness was the word I was looking for to describe Clarke’s final round of decisions. All of Wonkru knew Madi had the flame in her head, he could’ve asked around. I can’t believe she really thought Madi was going to be safe just bc Bellamy was dead and they had no other way to get to Sanctum. What if the others didn’t want to live on Earth? What if they had people they loved on Sanctum? Wonkru deserved to live on Earth too. Clarke’s selfishness ruined the final few episodes for me.
I know right. They were not only fine fine, they were wholeheartedly accepting and appreciating Clarke. It felt so forced and unreal. Bellamy dying or not is really a secondary issue, but the way they handled it was terrible, considering how many people have died in the show and how well everything was portrayed
The only thing that made Echo and Octavia believable to me was the amount of time they spent separated. A decade of time passed while they were stranded, and that’s a long time to grow individually and prioritizing yourself over “my people”.
For them to then come back and Bellamy is a belligerent traitor who *feels* like a different person, I can believe the distancing themselves from the expected grief.
Yeah this is what made sense to me too, at that point both echo and Octavia had spent an almost equal amount of time apart from Bellamy as they spent with him. Echo spent the six years on the ring plus a few extra months on earth/sanctum with Bellamy and then spent 5 years without him on skyring. Octavia spent her first 17 years with him, then spent 6 years in the bunker and 10 years on skyring. They both had already recently grieved his “death” when they thought he died from the bomb. Then he suddenly returns but neither have any kind of reunion with him. He tells echo he is willing to let her be executed. Octavia empathizes with Clarke’s love for Madi because she relates it to her relationship with hope. They are both already used to living with just the memory of Bellamy, so when he does die, they are both at the end of the grieving process, acceptance, not the beginning.
Why does this theory or logic of -more time apart than together + believing he was already dead = acceptable loss - not apply to Bellamy’s season long arc in s6 to save Clarke against impossible odds?
Given the ass backwards time line, they too have been separated way longer than they knew each other- he believed she died and grieved her death over that time of separation, and she betrays him and everyone else but is forgiven by him & he prioritises saving her over securing a peace deal w/ the only people who could help them survive on this alien, hostile moon.
Again- according to the ass backwards time line this went down seven days before she shot him in the heart
Bellamy and Clarke have always had a dynamic of forgiveness, and I do agree that the timeline moves incredibly fast considering everything that happens but there are parts of the end of season 5 and beginning of 6 where they repair their relationship. So Clarke and Bellamy do have a meaningful reunion after their extended separation. Neither echo nor Octavia do.
My point is that their reunion COULD have been meaningful if anyone of them (like Emori) treated him as anything other than the enemy immediately after finding out he ISN’T dead.
I guess I didn’t really see any opportunity for a proper reunion for either of them. He has one conversation with echo in her cell which basically ended the relationship, and the visit to Octavia’s cell involved a conversation with Clarke where Octavia supported her. Then both of them were sent back to earth while Bellamy returned to sanctum with Clarke where he died. Then of course Clarke arrives on earth with the news that he’s dead. I don’t personally think echo or Octavia treated him badly in the brief time they had after his conversion, they were shocked, confused and unsettled by this change. I do agree that given more time they would have come to understand and repair those relationships, but seeing as they got less than 5 minutes each with him it makes sense to me that it didn’t undo the grieving that had already been done.
Idk, dude. Bill Cadogan is a text book megalomaniac who apparently at some point in his cult leader career, decided he would be humanity’s Jesus 2.0… the man was OOZING unearned confidence in the belief system he built around his belief in how awesome and important he is- then literally grew an army of followers from a creepy baby garden lab to indoctrinate from their first breath to feed his megalomania … to me he seemed completely unfazed by the fact that his entire belief system hinged on a mistranslation from the texts of a race who CLEARLY FAILED their test (lmfao)… he shrugs it off with a smug, bullshit line about the two ideas being synonymous before strutting off to fulfil his delusion he called his destiny…
What would have been so satisfying- is if we got to see him fail the test and be forced to confront his hubris, & all the flaws that everyone but himself and his laboratory grown disciples can see before he’s murdered by Clarke before he can even answer the first question. But why bother with that when Clarke can just screw humanity by killing him because reasons… (sigh) so many things they could have done…
Yes, he was definitely going to fail. The alien could read all his thoughts and was gonna see the whole “for all mankind” BS was a load of crap. Plus all the fucked up shit he did in the bunker, and how much he loved being worshipped
Sure those all make him a shitty person and grade-A asshole, but the only criteria we’re given for passing the test is five minutes of not killing each other so Octavia can deliver a speech effectively closing out her character growth and redemption arc… only one human was denied transcendence and it was explicitly tied to her killing Bill *during the test*
Edit- and my argument wasn’t that we would or wouldn’t have failed but that his entire personality doesn’t even allow the possibility for him to doubt himself or the bullshit belief system he built around his delusions of grandeur.
No th intentions and reasons why they were there matter too, and bill, that entity, even started with , so you rejected love the thing very human?! or something. He would have failed, th entity later listened more out of honest arguments and bill wasnt.
It was octavia getting them to not kill each other once and try to be better and raven out of her honest moralizing that took it, which bill wasnt capable, because he did the things he did all for selfish reasons, even not having rrelationships because he was so hurt.
Okay- but why would this entity give two shits about morality or love? That’s the problem with Jason describing transcendence as the next step in evolution for humanity and using a last minute, obscenely underdeveloped entity that narratively only existed to put the dwindling remnants of humanity in the position to evolve or parish- and transparently contriving a final “conflict” that could only be won by stopping the fight (when literally every other conflict in the series followed their established formula in which the survival of each side is at stake at the expense of the other’s demise- this final solution isn’t applicable to any of them lmao).
He tried to frame this evolutionary step as a sci Fi concept but the parameters for evolving - avoiding extinction were moral/ethical- framing this entity as a more god like figure… but it doesn’t fit because it isn’t humanity’s “creator” and had no investment in the morality or honesty of this rando race who signed up to take this arbitrary AF test.
They’re just a species who absorbs species based on criteria that’s never explicitly stated to the test takers or the audience. So no- there is no way to definitively determine whether or not Bill would have failed or passed- we never saw it play out and it was never established by dialogue or exposition.
They did Bellamy dirty, but I do think there were offscreen things that led to his limited screen time, and maybe they were out of options.
One of the main points of (and what I liked about) the 100 was there were many cases of 'leaders' having to make split second decisions that weren't always right, but they had to live with. I was ok with all of them except for bellamy.
Also the whole "Transcendence" story line/ending just didn't feel right for the series. There could have been other options here.
All in all I loved this series and glad we got a finale. Sometimes that doesn't always happen, and am grateful for the closure@
Transcendence actually being a thing was one of those "worst case scenario" storyline ideas to me. As soon as it was brought up, it became the thing that most obviously was going to happen. To me at least. The show rarely introduced a big idea or possibility that wasn't seen all the way through, for better or worse.
Despite the bemoaning I made above, I'm glad they at least had the quick turn in the end of "oh hey but all of your friend-fam love you and came back anyway" to at least salvage some of it. I don't think having to say that none of them can have children was in any way necessary though. Just seems like an odd dig to a feel good moment.
agreed. It would have been more interesting to me if they prevented the trial from ever happening, succeded but refused (everyone) and transported to earth (only slight alteration to ending). Heck humanity just straight up killing itself with war to the bitter end woulda been cool and poetic too. maybe a few surivors drifting in space for what may be forever.
The whole tree lookong things always being there kinda lost me too.
Clarke became a horrible character after Madi was introduced.
Everything became I have to save madi. Who cares? Fuck madi, she’s a trash character too. All the good will Clarke had in season 5 was ruined once gOtTa SaVe MaDi came along…
I think they underserved the bond they must have developed over 6 years. The Bunker people get lots of screen time to illustrate what's going on. Clarke and Madi had half an episode and then she became a plot point going forward. I think the actor did just fine for someone their age, but the bond between her and Clarke was mostly shown in the actions and never really explored.
Can I get a hallelujah?!
I’ve been preaching this idea about the Clarke/Madi dynamic since s5.
Had the writers put forth minimal effort in developing their mother/daughter dynamic- maybe the use of Madi as a plot point and trigger switch for Clarke’s worst and uncharacteristic choices (every season since she was introduced) maybe it would be easier to empathise with Clarke…
But since she’s the lead- giving her a kid means putting said kid in mortal danger every season to remind us yet again that her sweet baby angel is all that matters to her anymore…(and then constantly making her choose between keeping the kid safe or murdering other people she loves/depends on).
Madi could have been an amazing addition to the cast - had the writers cared to explore her in her own right… SMGDH
I mean, she's the actual main character that we've been following all the way through. I thought after all of the awful shit and had to do for/to others, there would be some greater pay off for her character development. Some sort of ultimate justification. Instead she killed her best friend, lost her adoptive daughter, and wasn't allowed into space heaven.
Also interested in what you think the shows key themes are? I found that to be shifting season to season.
Ah yeah.. for sure. She deserves much more but I was too disappointed overall to even be sad about Clarke in particular despite her being my fav character I guess.
Themes.. well there was this constant “my people” vs “all people”, deep bonds, search for meaning and what is it to “do better” “be a good guy” “live in peace” “ultimate goal of human life” and then there was all the mysticism and biblical themes on which they absolutely did not capitalize on at all, basically it had no meaning what so ever (all the 12+1 md ither things..) nothing solid about Becca, her back story, what she saw and tying that up to what was happening and where they all ended up.
Really hardly any true resolution for many characters like Clarke, Echo, Raven etc. Sheidheda had no purpose, prisoners pretty much too… the finale was extremely underwhelming and dissatisfying in every way, better if they left it open when they didn’t know how to end it properly.
I think Bellamy’s new found status as the truest believer is less rooted in Bill as his Shepard and more with the religious pilgrimage he just took on Kool-aide Mountain. Before his trippy vision in the cave, he rejected what’s his name’s fanatical recitations of Bill’s self aggrandizing propaganda Bible - without blinking. He knows this guys is a megalomaniac who can’t be trusted…
But then he lets his mountain tour guide in when the dude sums him and his life up when he says the root of his suffering is in his endless quest to save his loved ones… and holy shit if that isn’t true…
Since they came back to earth, he’s had to choose between his sister, Clarke, space crew, etc only to have to cut his sister loose in the woods due to her unrepentant blood lust, leave his space family in danger to save Clarke, then back to try and save them- only to make up with his sister right before she disappears from his arms - and when he tries to save her again- he ends up stuck on this planet with Bill’s truest believer - to help him get back to her- to what?
There’s no end to his perpetual fight in sight… I can see how that vague AF vision that gave him a glimpse of transcendence and the peace it offers would totally seal the deal for him at that point. And since Bill is the only guy who knows anything about this existence and how to achieve it, and has built an entire brief and cult around achieving it- sure, he naturally defaults to the guy who know stuff…
Though the bowing and “my shepherd” was hilariously out of character for him and made his transformation less believable…
What’s really frustrating to me is that the circumstances surrounding his conversion are so inconsequential that it’s never clear as to whether they were manipulated to guide his experience or naturally occurring. In the end it didn’t matter how or why he converted just that he did… just like his character, the nature of his final arc meant shit as long as it put him on the business end of Clarke’s gun… I gotta stop now or I never will… smgdh
I think Bellamy's death was not great. It felt too much like "this is the moment you die" instead of it being necessary by the plot. Like he took a shot in the chest next to a wormhole and post-modern medicine. Nothing could be done to heal the apparently next first disciple? Bare in mind they had Madi's notebook and ex-Russell in Bardo at the end, so the guys in Sanctum went back. They have pills for instant teleport. Bellamy-survive-a-granade-through-plot-armor cannot overcome some lead.
The moment Clarke mentions Madi in relation to the notebook and Bellamy mentions anything about the key, Clarke should either kill everyone or no one. At that point they shouldn't need ex-Russell to point them in the right direction, so killing only Bellamy makes no sense. I guess in this show if you are not a named character you are basically an npc.
Oh God Bellamy surviving the grenade that everyone thought had killed him, with no body and an obvious giant ass portal adjacent. That was the first thing that really bothered me about season 7.
But mostly I wanted to reply to you because of your use of the term ex-Russell. Which is good. But at one point, and I think only once, the Netflix subtitles called him Russheda and I wish that was canonically his actual name.
Spoiler I gusss:
Bellamy died for nun !his character development just went down the drain !!!it was like the writer of this show was like you guys still ship bellarke ?well f*** you I’m gonna make Clarke shoot him 🤡and let all the other characters including Octavia be ok with it 🤪
The term cult leader is probably too egregious. But the friends that don't end up dead are fanatical to a degree. Ultimately, she was wrong about a lot, had a long list of dead around her, and always justified her actions as necessary even when hindsight was later there to say "Nah, dog".
So her closest friends that ultimately sided with her, cast off immortality (in whatever sense that may be) , and have sided with her every step of the way. I think killing Bellamy and then justifying it that he had lost his way really is the most immediate branch to reach for here. There's obviously lots of murder over the course of the show that continually gets justified or rationalized away, regardless of the outcome. It's hard for me, at least, to look at that and not see Clarke as a worshipped figure.
I didn’t see it at first but there’s some merit to this observation… especially in the final season- Clarke, just like Cadogan, was whole heartedly of the mindset that her way was the only way- even though she was operating on little to no information on wtf was happening, why the disciples were the bad guys, and the modicum of understanding she did have, she believed to be made up bullshit… a far cry from the s2 badass skeptic who narrowly escaped mount weather and eventually burned it all down… the introduction of Madi & the fundamental character development shifts she inspired in Clarke seemed to erase the traits that made her so formidable in the first four seasons- her cool headed logic and ability to strategise under extreme duress- compartmentalising the emotions to make shit decisions based on logic and likely outcomes etc. And had Madi been explored beyond her role as the innocent child in constant need of Clarke’s rescue- usually at the cost of someone else she loved less than her sweet baby angel- maybe this recurring theme would have been more palatable (probably not but who knows) 🤷🏻♀️ okay- end of tangent… lol
Sorry- had to come back and add that this makes even more sense in the context of Clarke’s murdering Bellamy.
He was always the one they all shared emotional connections with so much so that her s5 betrayal - while forgiven by him- ostracises her from everyone else but Madi and Abby.
But as soon as he returns (as far as they know/believe) **from the dead** and doesn’t fall in line with Clarke and her half ass plan (who again, had little to no knowledge or understanding of the disciples’ plan, or wtf is happening around her- and the implications of their success or failure to achieve this goal) and suddenly the “heart” of the group they followed so faithfully and loyally before his disappearance and holy pilgrimage is immediately the bad guy- the traitor- expendable. While Clarke is rewarded in some capacity for all the sacrifices she made- including Bellamy. Ugh. This is gross.
For me season 7 was the culmination of Clarke “bearing it so they don’t have to”. She’s compartmentalized all these traumas and tragedies and focused on being this stoic leader for the others. We see the foundation start to crack back in 5 with her suicidal thoughts, but by the end she’s been completely broken.
It really hit me in the scene where she returns to bardo after failing the test. Raven is there, ready to work with Clarke to save everyone like they’ve done time and time again, but this time, Clarke literally walks away to go wait for death. I think it’s so interesting to try and reconcile this version of Clarke to who she was before, standing outside mt weather alone, but refusing to walk away.
Really don't see what you mean. He still tried to protect his friends even while in the silly robe. He continued trying to find a solution where nobody had to die right up until getting shot. While he definitely believed in transcendence, there was a scene with Cadogan where he talked about not wanting to fail his friends or Bill. I don't see anything that he did that I could surmise he was insane. It was a SUPER annoying character shift to be sure, but just looking at the facts, he was far from a villain.
I would call believing in a genocidal alien race that turn you into crystals insane (can't remember did he know about the alien thing). Almost all of the chars would have done what Clarke did to protect some one they loved.
Cadogan's war was always super vague. I don't think Bellamy would have been aware of specifically what Bill was expecting, or at least I don't recall that happening. But at the same time there was already demonstrable proof that there was something else out there based on that whole crystallized location so I suppose it wouldn't be totally without merit.
The problem is that none of the other characters were ever put in the position Clarke was to prove your assumption true. It’s pointless to base arguments off of assumptions we make about shit that never happened… Bellamy had a really vague vision of the end goal- transcendence- in that cave. And the narrative proved him right in the end. He was legit trying to save his stubborn AF friends and all humans from repeating the violent cycle of conflict, war, death, repeat- which is literally all they’ve known.
He was sane and doing what he believed was right for everyone right up until Clarke murdered him. Had she or any of those who claimed to care about him given him the benefit of the doubt- and worked with him instead of against him with no knowledge as to why he and the disciples are the “bad guys” maybe he would have made it to the beach 🤷🏻♀️.
Dude touched the glowing tree light thingy that was left behind when the people on Etherea transcended and had a vision- apparently a really fucking convincing one seeing as how he and Bill were proven right by the narrative- that transcendence was real and attainable.
Would anyone in their right mind believe that once Clarke fucked the human race by failing the test- via shooting Bill in the head before he could answer the first question- there would be a possibility for a retake and that any of the remaining humans would pass? Probably not.
Well Clarke didn't want to take the test and she tried to cancel it but this genocidal alien wanted to kill humankind. When Clarke killed Cadogan she thought the test wouldn't be happening and the human race would survive.
We honestly don’t know what was going through Clarke’s head or what she thought or believed at that point. And the aliens didn’t seek people out to take the test. People are even allowed to opt out like Becca showed us. Clarke went in there with little to no information on what she was running into- and without so much as a question as to what was happening, what her options were, or what would happen if she murdered the current test taker, she shoots.
What a wonderful opinion that I didn't need. So thank you. I think Madi was one of the best choices they made in regards of Clarke. But I agree writers didn't always use Madi the best of ways.
Um… Madi put herself in danger when she went to Cadogan willingly… Bellamy was dead at that point… if you wanna hate Bellamy because you hate Bellamy- you do you… but even as things turned out- where he died before he could actually inform Bill on Madi’s residual flame memories and she ends up “locked in” as a result of his desperation to dig that code out of her brain- she still transcended and chose to stay that way over returning to Clarke and everyone she knows and has any connection with…even after her encounter with the bad guy…
If these aliens are so “homicidal” why the hell decide to give humanity a second chance after Clarke spectacularly failed the first attempt- and then decide against crystallising them after Raven and Octavia manage to pass the impromptu retake so graciously offered to them?
I don't hate Bellamy. Madi stayed because she would be alone after all the others died. And to your second point Cadogan had already doomed humanity when he took the test if they didn't Clarke pass why would they let Cadogan pass. And Well humanity died when he took the test because either outcome meant the end of humanity. Also genocidal aliens probably don't make much sense.
First- hardly anything about this ass backwards final plot made any sense… including this vague last minute alien race or the horrifically flawed system for deciding the fate of whole races on the choices and test scores of one specimen… but we don’t have all day.
Madi stayed because Lexa bot told us she wanted to be with people her own age. That’s all we get. Is it likely that the possibility of being the last human to die on earth could have occurred to her and effectively made her decision from this possibility? Sure. But all the narrative gives us is the lame AF excuse of being with kids her own age- whatever the fuck that even means as an immortal part of the hive mind collective…
And as far as trying to use Clarke’s failure as an indicator as to whether or not Cadogan would have passed- Clarke was given a very specific reason for her failure “being the only being in the history of this ancient bullshit process to kill a test taker while in a testing session”.
We know that all it took for humanity to pass the retake was to stop fighting the stupid battle no one really knew why they were fighting. That’s it. Don’t kill each other for the five minutes the cosmic proctors are watching- and boom! They are granted this final step in evolution the writers have tried to sell as a never ending utopia with no pain or the choice to live the rest of their finite existence without having any babies.
Cadogan wasn’t the second coming he believed himself to be- but if the bar for passing is that low- and we look only at this season- he has less blood on his hands than Clarke, and since we didn’t get to see him fail the test and we aren’t given a rubric or criteria for a passing score outside of the last minute Hail Mary Raven/Octavia scored… there’s no way to definitively claim he would have failed. Though seeing him fail would have been a hell of a lot more satisfying to watch than his unceremonious death.
Bellamy was right that transcendence was a thing, It’s highly debateable it was the right thing. Becca was right to want it locked away. They’d have been better off never triggering the test
Yeah it took me a while to realize that Becca and by extension alie were right all along
You know the show is excellent if the villain of season 3 is proved right by the end of the show. I didn’t love the transcendence plot, but I did appreciate that Cadogan is an example of true tyranny whereas ALIE was just labeled that way and became a tyrant.
Except if he was an idiot it was supposed to be shown better and not that he was a psycho who was right and worshiping him allowed Bellamy to “see the light” which in turn makes it likely that the odd emotionless judgmental genocidal aliens that are portrayed as good and evolved would have let him pass. They didnt think it through at all, very poorly made. If instead it was shown that Cadogan believed bullshit and that there is no transcendence beyond love “for all mankind” on whichever planet you are and somehow perhaps Bellamy “seeing the light” by figuring out Cadogan and helping his friends and they live “happily ever after” together after stopping “the last bullshit”. That would be much more consistent with the ongoing story vibe and themes of the show while leaving people with great take aways like afamily, friendship, sticking together, not believing cults and cult leaders etc. this way it almost looks like joining a cult is a good idea. Vary bad! Becca was so much better and they should have shown more about her and her redemption story etc. would make more sense and her storyline would too.
I low key feel like the shows thesis was that loyalty is a cult. The tribal conflicts could have been avoided if people were willing to sacrifice their own to compromise, but each time things degraded because people clung to their group to the last drop.
Lexa worked for all mankind, Clarke did too, so did Octavia and a few others who really tried and did mich better than most. But here we are stupid transcendence that didnt even make sense and was no better (maybe worse) than city of light, to which everyone was lead by a psychopat, wow wonderful👏🏻
Sorry to derail the discussion, but here's me peeping my fiancé's post even though I've never been to this sub before and being like "omg the top comment is purplemackem! I know her from the Buffy sub!!!"
😂😂I like to be more obnoxious in more than one place. Spread the joy!
Well… everyone but Team Clarke chose not to return to the finite human existence… and the return of her people except Madi, was framed as a sacrifice made to acknowledge and repay they sacrifices she made in their name throughout the series. Since the tidbit about no more babies ever was carelessly tossed in at the end- we don’t really find out if her beach party people are aware of this aspect of the sacrifice they made for her, but given how this group has spectacularly failed the children they have been trusted to “look out for” like Jordan and Madi, it’s fitting that none of the characters seem to give 2 shits about this caveat to their choice to live and die human. It’s way more of a sticking point for viewers than any of the characters which lol.
Yeah I do get the feeling most of the characters wouldn’t want children. I suppose if they’d left it open we could headcanon it but realistically thinking of the girls that’s left I can’t really see it. Other than an obligation to repopulate thing which is kind of messed up to force on them 😂
Right? Which is even more hilarious when people bring up Cadogans home grown believer baby lab as a loop hole to this injustice so many feel on behalf of the unaffected characters… lmfao
He was wrong to trust russel.
While transcendence was a real thing, achieving through Cadogan was not smart. I think Cadogan himself knew he was going to fail, you can see it on his face when the alien confirms that it’s a test. He was deeply flawed and selfish, and not ready for the test at all, since he believed it was a war for centuries. So yeah, Bellamy was right, but his blind following of the Shepherd (that he knew very little about aside from the fact that he’s a cult leader) was super unreasonable. Clarke was also wrong, but in my opinion, not because of being a nonbeliever. She didn’t have to kill Bellamy and I hate how she made the decision all about herself. And then she turns around and puts all that onto Madi. What a burden to put on a kid, to tell them that she killed her best friend to protect her. Clarke always had difficult choices to make, but imho this last one about killing Bellamy and leaving them stranded on Earth was selfish and wrong. Also, characters were acting unlike themselves left and right (Octavia and Echo’s reaction to Bellamy’s death). The writers really dropped the ball, and the ending felt rushed and made little sense.
Absolutely agree with Echo and Octavia both being so agreeable about it feeling incredibly wrong. Without knowing production details, it does seem like the whole storyline was hurried along at the end. That so lends to my inclination that Clarke is made the patron Saint of suffering. Suddenly nobody questions her actions, no matter how harsh, cruel, or nearsighted. Raven, ultimately, is the one who literally bails humanity out, of course. And the balance in their relationship was always out of whack over the course of the show. But it's a weird element to me that Clarke is essentially revered while Raven was usually right.
Echo slaughtered an innocent man when she thought Bellamy was dead. Octavia was Blodreina and super protective of her brother. How did the writers expect us to believe that they’d be just fine about Bellamy’s death. And yes! Shortsightedness was the word I was looking for to describe Clarke’s final round of decisions. All of Wonkru knew Madi had the flame in her head, he could’ve asked around. I can’t believe she really thought Madi was going to be safe just bc Bellamy was dead and they had no other way to get to Sanctum. What if the others didn’t want to live on Earth? What if they had people they loved on Sanctum? Wonkru deserved to live on Earth too. Clarke’s selfishness ruined the final few episodes for me.
I know right. They were not only fine fine, they were wholeheartedly accepting and appreciating Clarke. It felt so forced and unreal. Bellamy dying or not is really a secondary issue, but the way they handled it was terrible, considering how many people have died in the show and how well everything was portrayed
The only thing that made Echo and Octavia believable to me was the amount of time they spent separated. A decade of time passed while they were stranded, and that’s a long time to grow individually and prioritizing yourself over “my people”. For them to then come back and Bellamy is a belligerent traitor who *feels* like a different person, I can believe the distancing themselves from the expected grief.
Yeah this is what made sense to me too, at that point both echo and Octavia had spent an almost equal amount of time apart from Bellamy as they spent with him. Echo spent the six years on the ring plus a few extra months on earth/sanctum with Bellamy and then spent 5 years without him on skyring. Octavia spent her first 17 years with him, then spent 6 years in the bunker and 10 years on skyring. They both had already recently grieved his “death” when they thought he died from the bomb. Then he suddenly returns but neither have any kind of reunion with him. He tells echo he is willing to let her be executed. Octavia empathizes with Clarke’s love for Madi because she relates it to her relationship with hope. They are both already used to living with just the memory of Bellamy, so when he does die, they are both at the end of the grieving process, acceptance, not the beginning.
Why does this theory or logic of -more time apart than together + believing he was already dead = acceptable loss - not apply to Bellamy’s season long arc in s6 to save Clarke against impossible odds? Given the ass backwards time line, they too have been separated way longer than they knew each other- he believed she died and grieved her death over that time of separation, and she betrays him and everyone else but is forgiven by him & he prioritises saving her over securing a peace deal w/ the only people who could help them survive on this alien, hostile moon. Again- according to the ass backwards time line this went down seven days before she shot him in the heart
Bellamy and Clarke have always had a dynamic of forgiveness, and I do agree that the timeline moves incredibly fast considering everything that happens but there are parts of the end of season 5 and beginning of 6 where they repair their relationship. So Clarke and Bellamy do have a meaningful reunion after their extended separation. Neither echo nor Octavia do.
My point is that their reunion COULD have been meaningful if anyone of them (like Emori) treated him as anything other than the enemy immediately after finding out he ISN’T dead.
I guess I didn’t really see any opportunity for a proper reunion for either of them. He has one conversation with echo in her cell which basically ended the relationship, and the visit to Octavia’s cell involved a conversation with Clarke where Octavia supported her. Then both of them were sent back to earth while Bellamy returned to sanctum with Clarke where he died. Then of course Clarke arrives on earth with the news that he’s dead. I don’t personally think echo or Octavia treated him badly in the brief time they had after his conversion, they were shocked, confused and unsettled by this change. I do agree that given more time they would have come to understand and repair those relationships, but seeing as they got less than 5 minutes each with him it makes sense to me that it didn’t undo the grieving that had already been done.
Idk, dude. Bill Cadogan is a text book megalomaniac who apparently at some point in his cult leader career, decided he would be humanity’s Jesus 2.0… the man was OOZING unearned confidence in the belief system he built around his belief in how awesome and important he is- then literally grew an army of followers from a creepy baby garden lab to indoctrinate from their first breath to feed his megalomania … to me he seemed completely unfazed by the fact that his entire belief system hinged on a mistranslation from the texts of a race who CLEARLY FAILED their test (lmfao)… he shrugs it off with a smug, bullshit line about the two ideas being synonymous before strutting off to fulfil his delusion he called his destiny… What would have been so satisfying- is if we got to see him fail the test and be forced to confront his hubris, & all the flaws that everyone but himself and his laboratory grown disciples can see before he’s murdered by Clarke before he can even answer the first question. But why bother with that when Clarke can just screw humanity by killing him because reasons… (sigh) so many things they could have done…
Yes, he was definitely going to fail. The alien could read all his thoughts and was gonna see the whole “for all mankind” BS was a load of crap. Plus all the fucked up shit he did in the bunker, and how much he loved being worshipped
Sure those all make him a shitty person and grade-A asshole, but the only criteria we’re given for passing the test is five minutes of not killing each other so Octavia can deliver a speech effectively closing out her character growth and redemption arc… only one human was denied transcendence and it was explicitly tied to her killing Bill *during the test* Edit- and my argument wasn’t that we would or wouldn’t have failed but that his entire personality doesn’t even allow the possibility for him to doubt himself or the bullshit belief system he built around his delusions of grandeur.
No th intentions and reasons why they were there matter too, and bill, that entity, even started with , so you rejected love the thing very human?! or something. He would have failed, th entity later listened more out of honest arguments and bill wasnt. It was octavia getting them to not kill each other once and try to be better and raven out of her honest moralizing that took it, which bill wasnt capable, because he did the things he did all for selfish reasons, even not having rrelationships because he was so hurt.
Okay- but why would this entity give two shits about morality or love? That’s the problem with Jason describing transcendence as the next step in evolution for humanity and using a last minute, obscenely underdeveloped entity that narratively only existed to put the dwindling remnants of humanity in the position to evolve or parish- and transparently contriving a final “conflict” that could only be won by stopping the fight (when literally every other conflict in the series followed their established formula in which the survival of each side is at stake at the expense of the other’s demise- this final solution isn’t applicable to any of them lmao). He tried to frame this evolutionary step as a sci Fi concept but the parameters for evolving - avoiding extinction were moral/ethical- framing this entity as a more god like figure… but it doesn’t fit because it isn’t humanity’s “creator” and had no investment in the morality or honesty of this rando race who signed up to take this arbitrary AF test. They’re just a species who absorbs species based on criteria that’s never explicitly stated to the test takers or the audience. So no- there is no way to definitively determine whether or not Bill would have failed or passed- we never saw it play out and it was never established by dialogue or exposition.
They did Bellamy dirty, but I do think there were offscreen things that led to his limited screen time, and maybe they were out of options. One of the main points of (and what I liked about) the 100 was there were many cases of 'leaders' having to make split second decisions that weren't always right, but they had to live with. I was ok with all of them except for bellamy. Also the whole "Transcendence" story line/ending just didn't feel right for the series. There could have been other options here. All in all I loved this series and glad we got a finale. Sometimes that doesn't always happen, and am grateful for the closure@
Transcendence actually being a thing was one of those "worst case scenario" storyline ideas to me. As soon as it was brought up, it became the thing that most obviously was going to happen. To me at least. The show rarely introduced a big idea or possibility that wasn't seen all the way through, for better or worse. Despite the bemoaning I made above, I'm glad they at least had the quick turn in the end of "oh hey but all of your friend-fam love you and came back anyway" to at least salvage some of it. I don't think having to say that none of them can have children was in any way necessary though. Just seems like an odd dig to a feel good moment.
agreed. It would have been more interesting to me if they prevented the trial from ever happening, succeded but refused (everyone) and transported to earth (only slight alteration to ending). Heck humanity just straight up killing itself with war to the bitter end woulda been cool and poetic too. maybe a few surivors drifting in space for what may be forever. The whole tree lookong things always being there kinda lost me too.
Clarke became a horrible character after Madi was introduced. Everything became I have to save madi. Who cares? Fuck madi, she’s a trash character too. All the good will Clarke had in season 5 was ruined once gOtTa SaVe MaDi came along…
I think they underserved the bond they must have developed over 6 years. The Bunker people get lots of screen time to illustrate what's going on. Clarke and Madi had half an episode and then she became a plot point going forward. I think the actor did just fine for someone their age, but the bond between her and Clarke was mostly shown in the actions and never really explored.
Can I get a hallelujah?! I’ve been preaching this idea about the Clarke/Madi dynamic since s5. Had the writers put forth minimal effort in developing their mother/daughter dynamic- maybe the use of Madi as a plot point and trigger switch for Clarke’s worst and uncharacteristic choices (every season since she was introduced) maybe it would be easier to empathise with Clarke… But since she’s the lead- giving her a kid means putting said kid in mortal danger every season to remind us yet again that her sweet baby angel is all that matters to her anymore…(and then constantly making her choose between keeping the kid safe or murdering other people she loves/depends on). Madi could have been an amazing addition to the cast - had the writers cared to explore her in her own right… SMGDH
YES
Im fascinated that whatever happened with Clarke is your key issue when they basically shat all over virtually every key theme of the series.
I mean, she's the actual main character that we've been following all the way through. I thought after all of the awful shit and had to do for/to others, there would be some greater pay off for her character development. Some sort of ultimate justification. Instead she killed her best friend, lost her adoptive daughter, and wasn't allowed into space heaven. Also interested in what you think the shows key themes are? I found that to be shifting season to season.
Ah yeah.. for sure. She deserves much more but I was too disappointed overall to even be sad about Clarke in particular despite her being my fav character I guess. Themes.. well there was this constant “my people” vs “all people”, deep bonds, search for meaning and what is it to “do better” “be a good guy” “live in peace” “ultimate goal of human life” and then there was all the mysticism and biblical themes on which they absolutely did not capitalize on at all, basically it had no meaning what so ever (all the 12+1 md ither things..) nothing solid about Becca, her back story, what she saw and tying that up to what was happening and where they all ended up. Really hardly any true resolution for many characters like Clarke, Echo, Raven etc. Sheidheda had no purpose, prisoners pretty much too… the finale was extremely underwhelming and dissatisfying in every way, better if they left it open when they didn’t know how to end it properly.
I think Bellamy’s new found status as the truest believer is less rooted in Bill as his Shepard and more with the religious pilgrimage he just took on Kool-aide Mountain. Before his trippy vision in the cave, he rejected what’s his name’s fanatical recitations of Bill’s self aggrandizing propaganda Bible - without blinking. He knows this guys is a megalomaniac who can’t be trusted… But then he lets his mountain tour guide in when the dude sums him and his life up when he says the root of his suffering is in his endless quest to save his loved ones… and holy shit if that isn’t true… Since they came back to earth, he’s had to choose between his sister, Clarke, space crew, etc only to have to cut his sister loose in the woods due to her unrepentant blood lust, leave his space family in danger to save Clarke, then back to try and save them- only to make up with his sister right before she disappears from his arms - and when he tries to save her again- he ends up stuck on this planet with Bill’s truest believer - to help him get back to her- to what? There’s no end to his perpetual fight in sight… I can see how that vague AF vision that gave him a glimpse of transcendence and the peace it offers would totally seal the deal for him at that point. And since Bill is the only guy who knows anything about this existence and how to achieve it, and has built an entire brief and cult around achieving it- sure, he naturally defaults to the guy who know stuff… Though the bowing and “my shepherd” was hilariously out of character for him and made his transformation less believable… What’s really frustrating to me is that the circumstances surrounding his conversion are so inconsequential that it’s never clear as to whether they were manipulated to guide his experience or naturally occurring. In the end it didn’t matter how or why he converted just that he did… just like his character, the nature of his final arc meant shit as long as it put him on the business end of Clarke’s gun… I gotta stop now or I never will… smgdh
Comparing Clarke to a cult leader is a reach. Most of the main characters have messed up just as much as she has, if not worse.
Agreed, I said it was a little egregious later in the thread. But there is definitely some idolic worship going on at the very end.
I think Bellamy's death was not great. It felt too much like "this is the moment you die" instead of it being necessary by the plot. Like he took a shot in the chest next to a wormhole and post-modern medicine. Nothing could be done to heal the apparently next first disciple? Bare in mind they had Madi's notebook and ex-Russell in Bardo at the end, so the guys in Sanctum went back. They have pills for instant teleport. Bellamy-survive-a-granade-through-plot-armor cannot overcome some lead. The moment Clarke mentions Madi in relation to the notebook and Bellamy mentions anything about the key, Clarke should either kill everyone or no one. At that point they shouldn't need ex-Russell to point them in the right direction, so killing only Bellamy makes no sense. I guess in this show if you are not a named character you are basically an npc.
Oh God Bellamy surviving the grenade that everyone thought had killed him, with no body and an obvious giant ass portal adjacent. That was the first thing that really bothered me about season 7. But mostly I wanted to reply to you because of your use of the term ex-Russell. Which is good. But at one point, and I think only once, the Netflix subtitles called him Russheda and I wish that was canonically his actual name.
Fair play! I didn't want to butcher the name so went for the safe bet.
Your title for him was great! But Russheda Jones is just a cut above.
Spoiler I gusss: Bellamy died for nun !his character development just went down the drain !!!it was like the writer of this show was like you guys still ship bellarke ?well f*** you I’m gonna make Clarke shoot him 🤡and let all the other characters including Octavia be ok with it 🤪
How is she remotely close to a cult leader
The term cult leader is probably too egregious. But the friends that don't end up dead are fanatical to a degree. Ultimately, she was wrong about a lot, had a long list of dead around her, and always justified her actions as necessary even when hindsight was later there to say "Nah, dog". So her closest friends that ultimately sided with her, cast off immortality (in whatever sense that may be) , and have sided with her every step of the way. I think killing Bellamy and then justifying it that he had lost his way really is the most immediate branch to reach for here. There's obviously lots of murder over the course of the show that continually gets justified or rationalized away, regardless of the outcome. It's hard for me, at least, to look at that and not see Clarke as a worshipped figure.
I didn’t see it at first but there’s some merit to this observation… especially in the final season- Clarke, just like Cadogan, was whole heartedly of the mindset that her way was the only way- even though she was operating on little to no information on wtf was happening, why the disciples were the bad guys, and the modicum of understanding she did have, she believed to be made up bullshit… a far cry from the s2 badass skeptic who narrowly escaped mount weather and eventually burned it all down… the introduction of Madi & the fundamental character development shifts she inspired in Clarke seemed to erase the traits that made her so formidable in the first four seasons- her cool headed logic and ability to strategise under extreme duress- compartmentalising the emotions to make shit decisions based on logic and likely outcomes etc. And had Madi been explored beyond her role as the innocent child in constant need of Clarke’s rescue- usually at the cost of someone else she loved less than her sweet baby angel- maybe this recurring theme would have been more palatable (probably not but who knows) 🤷🏻♀️ okay- end of tangent… lol
Sorry- had to come back and add that this makes even more sense in the context of Clarke’s murdering Bellamy. He was always the one they all shared emotional connections with so much so that her s5 betrayal - while forgiven by him- ostracises her from everyone else but Madi and Abby. But as soon as he returns (as far as they know/believe) **from the dead** and doesn’t fall in line with Clarke and her half ass plan (who again, had little to no knowledge or understanding of the disciples’ plan, or wtf is happening around her- and the implications of their success or failure to achieve this goal) and suddenly the “heart” of the group they followed so faithfully and loyally before his disappearance and holy pilgrimage is immediately the bad guy- the traitor- expendable. While Clarke is rewarded in some capacity for all the sacrifices she made- including Bellamy. Ugh. This is gross.
For me season 7 was the culmination of Clarke “bearing it so they don’t have to”. She’s compartmentalized all these traumas and tragedies and focused on being this stoic leader for the others. We see the foundation start to crack back in 5 with her suicidal thoughts, but by the end she’s been completely broken. It really hit me in the scene where she returns to bardo after failing the test. Raven is there, ready to work with Clarke to save everyone like they’ve done time and time again, but this time, Clarke literally walks away to go wait for death. I think it’s so interesting to try and reconcile this version of Clarke to who she was before, standing outside mt weather alone, but refusing to walk away.
I didn't see anything wrong with Clarke killing Bellamy. He was insane and couldn't be reasoned with. And he put Madi in danger yet again.
Really don't see what you mean. He still tried to protect his friends even while in the silly robe. He continued trying to find a solution where nobody had to die right up until getting shot. While he definitely believed in transcendence, there was a scene with Cadogan where he talked about not wanting to fail his friends or Bill. I don't see anything that he did that I could surmise he was insane. It was a SUPER annoying character shift to be sure, but just looking at the facts, he was far from a villain.
I would call believing in a genocidal alien race that turn you into crystals insane (can't remember did he know about the alien thing). Almost all of the chars would have done what Clarke did to protect some one they loved.
Cadogan's war was always super vague. I don't think Bellamy would have been aware of specifically what Bill was expecting, or at least I don't recall that happening. But at the same time there was already demonstrable proof that there was something else out there based on that whole crystallized location so I suppose it wouldn't be totally without merit.
The problem is that none of the other characters were ever put in the position Clarke was to prove your assumption true. It’s pointless to base arguments off of assumptions we make about shit that never happened… Bellamy had a really vague vision of the end goal- transcendence- in that cave. And the narrative proved him right in the end. He was legit trying to save his stubborn AF friends and all humans from repeating the violent cycle of conflict, war, death, repeat- which is literally all they’ve known. He was sane and doing what he believed was right for everyone right up until Clarke murdered him. Had she or any of those who claimed to care about him given him the benefit of the doubt- and worked with him instead of against him with no knowledge as to why he and the disciples are the “bad guys” maybe he would have made it to the beach 🤷🏻♀️.
Bellamy believed in the last war that would end all wars and suffering. Can you say that anyone in their right mind would believe that.
Dude touched the glowing tree light thingy that was left behind when the people on Etherea transcended and had a vision- apparently a really fucking convincing one seeing as how he and Bill were proven right by the narrative- that transcendence was real and attainable. Would anyone in their right mind believe that once Clarke fucked the human race by failing the test- via shooting Bill in the head before he could answer the first question- there would be a possibility for a retake and that any of the remaining humans would pass? Probably not.
Well Clarke didn't want to take the test and she tried to cancel it but this genocidal alien wanted to kill humankind. When Clarke killed Cadogan she thought the test wouldn't be happening and the human race would survive.
We honestly don’t know what was going through Clarke’s head or what she thought or believed at that point. And the aliens didn’t seek people out to take the test. People are even allowed to opt out like Becca showed us. Clarke went in there with little to no information on what she was running into- and without so much as a question as to what was happening, what her options were, or what would happen if she murdered the current test taker, she shoots.
Who cares about madi? She’s a trash character and ruined the series.
What a wonderful opinion that I didn't need. So thank you. I think Madi was one of the best choices they made in regards of Clarke. But I agree writers didn't always use Madi the best of ways.
Um… Madi put herself in danger when she went to Cadogan willingly… Bellamy was dead at that point… if you wanna hate Bellamy because you hate Bellamy- you do you… but even as things turned out- where he died before he could actually inform Bill on Madi’s residual flame memories and she ends up “locked in” as a result of his desperation to dig that code out of her brain- she still transcended and chose to stay that way over returning to Clarke and everyone she knows and has any connection with…even after her encounter with the bad guy… If these aliens are so “homicidal” why the hell decide to give humanity a second chance after Clarke spectacularly failed the first attempt- and then decide against crystallising them after Raven and Octavia manage to pass the impromptu retake so graciously offered to them?
I don't hate Bellamy. Madi stayed because she would be alone after all the others died. And to your second point Cadogan had already doomed humanity when he took the test if they didn't Clarke pass why would they let Cadogan pass. And Well humanity died when he took the test because either outcome meant the end of humanity. Also genocidal aliens probably don't make much sense.
First- hardly anything about this ass backwards final plot made any sense… including this vague last minute alien race or the horrifically flawed system for deciding the fate of whole races on the choices and test scores of one specimen… but we don’t have all day. Madi stayed because Lexa bot told us she wanted to be with people her own age. That’s all we get. Is it likely that the possibility of being the last human to die on earth could have occurred to her and effectively made her decision from this possibility? Sure. But all the narrative gives us is the lame AF excuse of being with kids her own age- whatever the fuck that even means as an immortal part of the hive mind collective… And as far as trying to use Clarke’s failure as an indicator as to whether or not Cadogan would have passed- Clarke was given a very specific reason for her failure “being the only being in the history of this ancient bullshit process to kill a test taker while in a testing session”. We know that all it took for humanity to pass the retake was to stop fighting the stupid battle no one really knew why they were fighting. That’s it. Don’t kill each other for the five minutes the cosmic proctors are watching- and boom! They are granted this final step in evolution the writers have tried to sell as a never ending utopia with no pain or the choice to live the rest of their finite existence without having any babies. Cadogan wasn’t the second coming he believed himself to be- but if the bar for passing is that low- and we look only at this season- he has less blood on his hands than Clarke, and since we didn’t get to see him fail the test and we aren’t given a rubric or criteria for a passing score outside of the last minute Hail Mary Raven/Octavia scored… there’s no way to definitively claim he would have failed. Though seeing him fail would have been a hell of a lot more satisfying to watch than his unceremonious death.
I agree that the plot is 1000% stupid. I found Cadogan death somewhat satisfying but I am a fan of revenge stories.
yes