After last night’s ‘Red Sky at Morning’, there are two episodes left in season three of The 100. You could even say just one episode as the final two will be split in half. I could even say that it couldn’t come fast enough.
‘Red Sky at Morning’ felt strange across the board and provided me a feeling I honestly haven’t felt with The 100 before: apathy. It’s been fairly clear that I haven’t been a fan of most of this season. There have been poor plot choices and terrible character beats in spades. Yet, when I think back, I can’t remember an episode in which I didn’t feel strongly about one way or another. ‘Red Sky at Morning’ is exactly this sort of entry. It’s not good but it’s not particularly awful. Yet, it’s still not ‘meh’. As essentially the penultimate, piece-setting story in the season, this episode should’ve knocked us off our feet in preparation for the culminating tale in the total arc. Instead, we’re treated with more expected and unearned pathos for characters we don’t know, big plotty moments that have no real weight other than to move things forward and an ending that clearly sets things back at least three weeks.
My first question in gauging the battle against A.L.I.E. is how many ways can we fight her from the inside? Murphy, Pike and Indra are fighting from her physical place of power, Polis, and are trying to destroy the power source which used to lay within the backpack Murphy almost destroyed a season earlier. That is what they’re doing, right?
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Then we have Raven and Monty fighting A.L.I.E. from inside her actual self: her code. Since Raven has first-hand knowledge of the City of Light, she apparently also knows the way A.L.I.E.’s code works and can find the backdoor which will totally shut her down.
And why is The City of Light seemingly a haven for Yuppies in jackets and polos? Yes, your Grounder face-tats go great with that tweed blazer. Now go grab a drink at that Jamba Juice around the corner, you crazy Grounder, you!
Also there’s Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia and Jasper trying to place The Flame within Luna so that she can attack A.L.I.E. from the same inside space. Except Luna won’t do it.
And for good goddamn reason.
Why in hell should Luna, clearly set in her faulty ways of handling Grounders who refuse to fight any longer, listen to strangers as they try to force her to take responsibility for a world which she has no connection? Clarke and co. don’t even have the smarts to try to appeal to her psyche, they just try to shove it down her throat without using their brains first. I like the idea of placing Clarke and Bellamy in a situation where they need to make a decision that is very difficult but they haven’t had to exhaust all their options yet.
When we find out that A.L.I.E. has infiltrated Luna’s station, we’re given more bits of action that require us to actually care about the characters we don’t know in the slightest as they’re threatened with death. I honestly don’t care what happens to Derrick and Luna, but I’d love to. When Jasper arbitrarily finds his love replacement in Shay, only to have her taken away almost immediately, I don’t feel a single thing for either of them (my biggest takeaway here is that Def Poetry has seemingly survived the end of the world. In that case, we’re all screwed.).
Back in Arkadia, Monty is seduced and propositioned by Harper who, for the first time, actually has a human moment in the show. She has apparently been enamored with Monty for a while and the two finally consummate the feeling. This is actual human behavior and a welcome relief to the robotics the season has purposefully portrayed. The big problem is this moment happens very early in the episode, with Harper disappearing immediately after the fact proving again that this character is here solely to move others along. If I were a betting man, she’ll meet a Sinclair-esque ending sooner rather than later.
So Luna ends up proving her physical strength and destroys anyone on her station having to do with A.L.I.E. only to send Clarke and co. back to the mainland with no real clue where to go next. As an audience, we totally get that they’ve learned something in their trip to Luna’s oil rigger. But have they? Essentially, we’re only left with the same question with which these characters entered: “Will Luna care?” Apparently she doesn’t.
I think it’s safe to assume she will very, very soon and it will likely be very, very plotty. I really like this show and its promise but even with casting complications out of the way, it can’t pull together an interesting penultimate story to get us through the season finale. I continue to look toward the future with hope and utmost trepidation.
“Now what?” – Bellamy
Check out my reviews of previous episodes of ‘The 100’ here:
