Does Emori Die in The 100? “False Gods” Review (Season 7)

Does Emori die in The 100? The short answer and the long one

The short answer first. In "False Gods," Emori survives. She goes into the reactor with Murphy, comes out alive and carries on. Across the whole of the series, though, the answer is yes. Emori dies in the series finale, "The Last War," which aired on September 30, 2020, after being injured in a corridor collapse in the previous episode. Murphy and Jackson transfer her mind drive into Murphy's head. That makes "False Gods" a calmer entry in her story than it looks.

The episode, which aired on The CW on June 3, 2020, was directed by Tim Scanlan and written by Kim Shumway. Season 7 premiered on May 20, 2020, and runs 16 episodes. In the third hour, the show is back on Sanctum, and two plots run in parallel. One is the fate of Russell Prime, who faces a death sentence. The other is a staple of the series: a threat of nuclear meltdown. The two stories feed on the show's biggest recurring question, which is whether a person who has done terrible things can redeem himself, or whether it matters if he does.

Radiation is a familiar threat on this show. The 100 began with a premise in which the Earth's surface was ruined by nuclear war, and it has kept returning to meltdowns, fallout and contamination as a source of pressure ever since. The reactor crisis in "False Gods" is that tradition in compact form: a fixed deadline, a technical job and a human cost that someone has to decide to pay. The episode's innovation is to make the decision the point of the plot, with the engineering as a backdrop.

Moral problems fill the episode. It is a piece of television about people judged by what they have done, and the answer it gives is uncomfortable. A noble present does not wipe out a bloody past, and The 100 has never been shy about letting its characters pay for what they were.

The reactor and the Nightblood problem

The cooling rods in the reactor have failed, and they must be repaired before the core overheats and kills everyone. Raven, played by Lindsey Morgan, is confident that if the work is done quickly nobody needs to be badly hurt, perhaps a few days of vomiting. She needs two crews: one to fix leaking pipes, which anyone with welding skills can do, and one to enter the core and repair the rods, which requires a Nightblood because they resist radiation poisoning. Clarke would volunteer, but the other plot needs her. So Murphy and Emori, played by Richard Harmon and Luisa D'Oliveira, step up.

Murphy is the series' survivalist, a man who does what benefits him first. He has earned the nickname cockroach, which suits this task. Raven knows his priorities and sends Emori in to do the work, trusting that Murphy will not let her fail. Emori met Murphy in season two, during the stretch when he followed Jaha's spiritual quest to the City of Light, and she is the best thing to happen to him in the series. She is his moral compass, often the only voice that can talk him out of a bad idea.

Raven's gamble with the prison miners

This time the crazy idea belongs to Raven. She would rather not ask Wonkru for help, because it is distracted by its own drama, so she turns to the prison miners, a decision that is hard for her given their history. Their leaders are Hatch, played by Chad Rook, and Nikki, played by Alaina Huffman. Hatch appears reasonable, which signals that he is in trouble. Nikki is more of a Lady Macbeth, tired of the miners being treated as second-class citizens after serving their time, and she refuses to join her husband in helping. That saves her life.

The redemptive theme arrives when Murphy and Emori realize that the miners are doomed. Raven's response is cold and clear: since the miners are already doing the work, they might as well finish it before they die. Murphy ends up trapped in the room with them and talks to Hatch, who says he went to jail for robbing banks, not such a bad crime, except that his trigger-happy wife decided homicide was an option. Hatch says that kind of act can never be redeemed. Murphy keeps quiet about their fate. As the miners die around him, he is spared the guilt of telling them the truth.

The marriage of Hatch and Nikki is a sharp piece of characterization in a small space. Hatch wants to help and cannot imagine being redeemed. Nikki wants justice for her people and cannot imagine helping anyone who has treated them badly. Each choice is understandable, and only one of them keeps its owner alive. The show lets the audience notice that the survivor is the one who refused to take part in the repair, which is a bleak joke about what the setting rewards.

Raven's choice is the one that stays with the viewer. She was captured and tortured by the miners at one point, and the decision to sacrifice them prompts a question about whether she is acting for the good of Sanctum or taking revenge. The honest answer is both. When she traps Murphy with them, it is a calculated move, since Murphy wanted to tell them they were going to die, and Raven feared that they would not finish the job if they knew.

Russell's execution and the Dark Commander

On the other side of the episode is Russell, now the Dark Commander and the host of Sheidheda. Facing the pyre, he finds a clever way out. He gets one of his followers to call him a false god, which gives the episode its title, and to try to shoot him. The attempt fails, and Clarke and Indra realize they cannot kill him without making a martyr. Gaia then reveals that the Flame had to be destroyed because the Dark Commander had taken over Madi. The crew that Sheidheda originated from is angry that their Commander was removed, and they leave Wonkru. Fewer people means fewer forces to keep the peace.

False Gods review verdict: a heavy hour with long consequences

As an episode, "False Gods" is food for thought. It treats the nuclear plot as the more morally loaded of the two, even though the political plot has more future impact. Sheidheda's staged execution shows how good he is at manipulating blind followers, and it is easy to see that it will turn badly. With Wonkru breaking apart and the miners about to revolt, Sanctum is in a very poor position by the end of the hour.

The performance that holds the episode together is Harmon's, and D'Oliveira gives Emori the steadiness that makes his choices matter. Murphy has been written as a coward and a cynic, and the confrontation with Hatch brings out a bit of both and a bit of something else. He is allowed to feel relief that nobody asks him to take responsibility, and the show lets that feel faintly dishonest. When Raven steps into the same moral grey area he has lived in for years, Murphy seems to enjoy it a little.

The pacing is tight and the stakes are real. In season 7 terms, the hour also does useful bookkeeping: it shows what Raven is willing to do for Sanctum, it keeps Murphy and Emori at the center of the action, and it stretches the Dark Commander plot without wasting a scene. If there is a complaint, it is that the redemption theme is stated outright in dialogue several times, and the audience may feel they are being led. The episode earns the argument anyway. The answer to its question, can an evil man redeem himself, is maybe, maybe not, and the characters die either way. The clean split between this hour and the finale is a useful reminder that The 100 plants its tragedies early and cashes them late. If you want to know where Emori ends up, the finale is the place, and it makes her scenes here more poignant on a rewatch.

Sources

• The 100 (TV series), Wikipedia — season 7 cast, characters and episode list