The 100 Series Recap: Seasons 1 to 6 and How the Story Ended

The 100 series recap: the story from the Ark to Sanctum

The 100 is a series about finding a place to live. That is the whole show in a nutshell, and the details of the nutshell change from season to season while the mission stays put. The CW series, created by Jason Rothenberg from Kass Morgan's novels, ran from March 19, 2014 to September 30, 2020, across seven seasons and 100 episodes. Anyone sorting through The 100 episodes before a rewatch will find the same pattern: a threat, an alliance and a decision that costs someone dearly.

The setup comes from a nuclear fallout that forced humanity into space about 97 years before the story begins. The survivors live on a space station called the Ark, and after nearly a century away, food, air and supplies are running low. The Ark keeps the peace by rough methods. Criminals are floated, meaning sent into space to die, but children are spared. They are volunteered for an experiment instead.

That experiment gives the show its name. About a hundred juvenile detainees are sent down to Earth to test whether it is habitable. If it is bad, the kids die and the Ark has a hundred fewer mouths to feed. If it is good, everyone else can follow. Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake lead the young arrivals, and their partnership drives the series.

Season 1: the hundred meet the Grounders

Season one, which aired in March through June 2014 in thirteen episodes, introduces nearly all the main players. There is Clarke Griffin, played by Eliza Taylor, daughter of the Ark's doctor Abby, played by Paige Turco. There are Bellamy and Octavia Blake, played by Bob Morley and Marie Avgeropoulos, along with Jasper Jordan, Monty Green, Raven Reyes, John Murphy, Marcus Kane and Thelonious Jaha. The show does not kill main characters easily, and the ones it does kill leave a large mark.

The hundred find Earth habitable, and they are not alone. Survivors of the nuclear blasts live there as the Grounders, clans that fight each other and the Reapers, a cannibal enemy. The Mountain Men are saved for season two. The mission is simple: land, confirm Earth is livable and gather supplies from Mount Weather. Wristbands tell the Ark when someone dies. Bellamy argues that leaving the Ark behind for good is best, which makes sense given what the Ark has done to the Blakes: Octavia was an illegally born child who hid for years, and their mother was floated.

By the end of the season Kane, Abby and Raven reach the ground, and Jaha and the rest of the Ark crash-land soon after. The season sets up the themes the show keeps returning to: class warfare, the good of the many versus the few, group loyalty versus self-interest, and redemption. How far can someone go and still come back?

Season 2: Mount Weather

Season two, sixteen episodes from October 2014 to March 2015, deepens those themes with the Mountain Men. They are the humans who went underground to survive, named for their base at Mount Weather. They have been poisoning Grounders and turning them into Reapers, and capturing Grounders for experiments aimed at making themselves immune to radiation. When the bone marrow of Clarke and her friends proves useful, the mountain gets very interested.

Clarke begins making the best of bad situations. Finn kills eighteen Grounders and is sentenced to death by the Grounder Commander, Lexa, played by Alycia Debnam-Carey, and Clarke stabs him to spare him torture. When Bellamy and Raven set up radio contact from inside Mount Weather, Clarke lets a peace committee die to keep it secret, with Lexa talking her into it. In the season's last big moment, Clarke irradiates Mount Weather and kills everyone inside to save her people, forty-seven of the original hundred. She does it with Bellamy and is so racked with guilt that she refuses to return to camp with him.

Elsewhere, Octavia and Lincoln, a Grounder captured in season one, grow closer, and Octavia sets out to prove to her brother that he no longer has to protect her. Camp Jaha, soon renamed Arkadia, joins Lexa's coalition as Skaikru, the sky people. The second finale ends with Jaha and Murphy finding a mansion and an A.I. named A.L.I.E., who destroyed the world once and plans to do it again.

Season 3: the Flame, Pike and the City of Light

Season three, sixteen episodes from January to May 2016, is tricky. The mythology of the Commander is fascinating, and the side plot about Jaha spreading A.L.I.E.'s word is sometimes dull. The season is also the one that introduces Pike, played by Michael Beach, who takes over Arkadia and hates the Grounders. He kills Lincoln, and Octavia vows blood for blood. In the end she gets her revenge, which is sweeter because Pike believes she has forgiven him.

On the Grounder side, the Ice Nation tries to overthrow Lexa and partly succeeds, since Lexa is killed. Their queen is murdered and her son, Prince Roan, played by Zach McGowan, becomes leader. The plot ties into the Commander mythology. The Commander is chosen by the Flame, a bio-interface device developed by a scientist named Becca, who was the first Commander and also created A.L.I.E. Over time the science turned into religion. The Flame goes into people with the right conditions, called nightbloods, and the only way to become Commander is a trial by combat ending in death, the conclave.

A group of Grounders on a boat, led by Luna, played by Nadia Hilker, rejects the conclave. When Clarke's crew asks Luna to take the Flame, she refuses, not because she would lose but because she would win and would have to kill to gain power. A.L.I.E. lures people into a virtual City of Light with pills, with Jaha as her physical emissary. Clarke, with the help of a blood transfusion, becomes a nightblood long enough to take the Flame and defeat A.L.I.E., only to learn that nuclear Armageddon is on the way.

Season 4: the ticking clock

Season four, thirteen episodes in 2017, starts with A.L.I.E. gone and nuclear winter coming. The survivors have three options: find a bunker, leave Earth for space, or become nightbloods and be immune to radiation. Clarke chooses the third and is the only one who succeeds. Bellamy, Raven, Murphy and others take the second, and Octavia, the Grounder clans and the Arkadians take the first once a bunker is discovered.

The bunker holds 1,200 people, and the Grounder answer is to fight for it. Luna, angry over a death, wants no one to have it if she wins the conclave. Octavia beats her, and each clan is invited to choose 100 people, but Skaikru takes the bunker while everyone is fighting. A lottery ends the dispute. Meanwhile, Raven learns that Becca made nightblood on the Ark, and a rocket gets her group and others into space. The season ends with Clarke alive, with a friend, and a ship landing.

Season 5: Wonkru and the prison ship

Season five, thirteen episodes in 2018, picks up after Clarke's survival. She is not the only nightblood left: she has a kid companion named Madi, played by Lola Flanery, and she will die and kill for her. Octavia becomes leader of the bunker survivors, renames them Wonkru and kills those who disagree. The contrast between the two women is the season's best idea. Clarke does hard things and feels horrible about them. Octavia does hard things and locks down any negative feeling.

Six years after season four, only one spot on Earth is doing well. Clarke and Madi live there when a prison ship lands and claims it, and when Wonkru joins, all hell breaks loose. The ending echoes season four, except that everyone goes to space this time and enters hypersleep, except Monty and his girlfriend Harper. When Clarke and Bellamy are woken by Monty and Harper's son, Jordan, played by Shannon Kook, 125 years have passed, and Monty found another planet before he died. The season is not everyone's favorite, and the show is stretching by this point.

Season 6: Sanctum and the Primes

Season six, thirteen episodes in 2019, goes trippy. Flashbacks show that Earthlings had already colonized the planet Sanctum. Their scientist, Gabriel, created a mind-drive, a device that uploads a person's consciousness and downloads it into a host of a certain age, destroying the original consciousness. Only nightbloods can be hosts. The Primes who lead Sanctum persuade followers that they are gods and stage a ceremony around each body-snatching, a naming day when a person is told they will become one with the Primes.

Three belief systems sit side by side: the Flame, the Primes' faith and the Children of Gabriel, who think death is natural and are the most willing to kill. Octavia and Charmaine Diyoza, played by Ivana Milicevic, each follow a path toward redemption. Diyoza is pregnant and is promised sanctuary for her baby if she kills Gabriel. Octavia is banished by Bellamy for being too violent, and the two meet. They find Gabriel and do not kill him, and Octavia sees that she too can be redeemed.

The season also sets up the final one. Raven and her friends delete the Dark Commander, Sheidheda, from Madi's Flame, but he uploads himself elsewhere. Time anomalies appear, Octavia returns with marks on her back, and Diyoza's grown-up daughter Hope, played by Shelby Flannery, shows up and stabs her. Major regulars die, among them Kane, Abby and Monty, and Clarke has to float her own mother, who has already been body-snatched.

The 100 seasons at a glance

Air dates follow the series' Wikipedia article.

How The 100 ended: season 7 and the verdict on the series

Season seven premiered on May 20, 2020 and ran for sixteen episodes until September 30, 2020. Unrest on Sanctum and conflict with the Disciples lead to a wormhole test that decides humanity's fate. Humanity transcends, but Clarke cannot, so her friends return to Earth to live out their lives with her. The final season drew backlash, particularly over the Blood Giant episode and the series finale, The Last War, which critics called an ineffective ending.

The series premiere drew about 2.7 million U.S. viewers, and ratings declined steadily until the finale, which drew about 0.61 million. Critics were kinder across the run: Rotten Tomatoes scores average 93 percent across seasons, from 76 percent for season one to 100 percent for most of the later ones. Across all The 100 episodes, the critical story is steadier than the ratings story.

Before the final season began, the sentiment was that the show had run long. A five-season story, or seven at most, is the right length for a drama like this, and the final stretch fit that. Character arcs such as Murphy's, from a villain who looked doomed to one of the show's most tenacious survivors, were among its best surprises. If the story was repetitive in its choices between survival and mercy, it was also remarkably consistent about the cost of each.

Sources

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