For an episode that wasn’t a season finale, this week’s The 100 sure felt like a season finale. “Red Sky at Morning” had three complex, separate storylines that all connected on a basic level: ALIE screwing things up for humans monumentally. But the remaining Skaikru members still in control of their free will in Polis, Arkadia and at Luna’s oil rig colony in the middle of the sea worked their hardest to make sure ALIE didn’t steal any more minds via the City of Light chip. It was a war fought on three fronts against the same enemy in a beautifully structured episode of television. The end result was an hour filled to the brim with action, tension, and so many game-changing moments … and one jaw-dropping ending that will no doubt change the course of the series forever. You know, just an average episode of The 100. Let’s get recapping!
The hour opened up on the blood-soaked streets of Polis as ALIE continued her domination of the Grounder civilization. The City of Light? More like the City of Darkness. Things haven’t gotten any better in Polis since last week, but Murphy started to form a dangerous, risky idea in the back of his mind about destroying Jaha’s backpack containing ALIE’s hardware. Indra took out two guards sent to chip the rest of the prisoners in Polis, giving Murphy and Pike the chance to escape with her and make his plan a reality. The other prisoners left in big hordes to try to cover up their mission, but ALIE and Jaha captured and chipped some of the escapees, immediately giving ALIE the knowledge of Murphy’s plan.
ALIE woke up Emori from the City of Light, knowing what she means to Murphy, and made her stand watch over ALIE’s backpack in the Flamekeeper’s temple. Murphy, Indra, and Pike took control of the room with Emori still inside, using a secret tunnel that Jaha didn’t know about. Murphy found the backpack and was about to destroy it, but Emori revealed that it contained a nuclear fuel cell, and damaging it would irradiate the entire city. So … what’s his move now?
Meanwhile, at Arkadia, Raven and Monty were hard at work hacking into ALIE’s code left behind in the computer mainframe with Harper, Bryan and Miller keeping watch outside. Raven wanted to act now to take down ALIE by using Becca’s password after seeing how many minds she had already uploaded into the City of Light, but Monty wanted to stick to the original plan: wait for Clarke to give Luna the flame to get the ALIE kill code from ALIE 2.
While taking a break from their work, Harper made a move on Monty to take their minds off constantly being attacked. It was a cute moment, reminding us that these are still young teens, despite everything they’ve been forced to live through. Too bad they can’t just worry about who likes who and hooking up with their crushes: Monty and Harper’s moment of happiness was cut short, by Raven, who had a breakthrough. Raven could tell that ALIE was hiding something inside her code, and she wanted to use Becca’s password to get inside to figure out what it was, hoping it was a way to destroy ALIE right away. But Monty kept arguing against going inside the code without hearing back from Clarke, so they didn’t alert ALIE to the fact that they were inside her system before they had an airtight way of taking her down.
In Luna’s colony on the oil rig, Clarke and Bellamy were dismayed to learn that Luna wasn’t going to budge on her refusal to take the flame and become the next Commander, despite having all the information. Luna told Octavia that she takes in people who are done fighting and done killing, and that Lincoln knew her rules and would never have brought someone like Octavia to her, since she’s so clearly not done fighting and killing. Luna could tell that fighting and killing was all Octavia knew, and that she and the rest of the Skaikru group would never fit in with her way of life.
After Luna’s refusal, Bellamy wanted to give up on the final Nightblood, go back to Arkadia and just fight whoever came at them, but Clarke made him realize that they’d end up having to fight an army of their own people, which is … not ideal. She had a different, much riskier plan: force Luna into taking the flame, whether she wanted to or not. Octavia was disgusted by the thought of that, bringing up that even ALIE gave people a choice in taking the chip (although her “choice” isn’t really a choice most of the time … ). But it was their only shot at saving their people, and the world itself, so it was go time.
Clarke tried to put the flame in the back of Luna’s head by force, but Luna easily flipped her upside down. Turns out Titus lied about Luna: she wasn’t a coward. She left her conclave because she knew she would win it and would be forced to kill all her friends. In her first round she killed her own brother, and in the second round, she would have been matched against Lexa, and that’s why she left. After besting Clarke without even breaking a sweat, she took the flame from Clarke’s hand and told her she wouldn’t get it back until the Skaikru left her colony. Damn!
While waiting for boats to take the Skaikru group back to shore, Jasper made friends with Shay, a Grounder who wowed the crowd earlier with a shark attack story. Much to Bellamy and Clarke’s shock as they looked on from across the room, Shay was actually able to bring a smile to Jasper’s face. That’s something we haven’t seen in way too long! Yay for both Jasper and Monty getting a little romance tonight!
After Clarke’s misguided attempt to make Luna take the flame, Luna tried to send Skaikru back to the shore with the rest of their weapons and gear. But as Bellamy, Clarke and Octavia waited for Jasper to join them in the shipping container, Luna’s guards attacked Luna instead, stealing the flame from her and locking the Skaikru kids inside the shipping container. While we could see the lady in the red dress standing off to the side (UGH, NO), everyone else was super confused about this turn of events.
After a few seconds, Bellamy was the first to catch on: ALIE had infiltrated Luna’s colony. Yikes. In the chaos that followed, Jasper’s new crush was shot and seemingly killed right in front of him (awwww man, Jasper just can’t catch a break!), but after he was dragged away, she still moved, albeit painfully. So, not dead, but definitely not all good, either. Luna’s righthand man was chipped, and started to waterboard Luna until she agreed to take the chip herself, giving ALIE control over the one person who could take the upgraded version of her code to use it against her. Smart lady computer. Jasper warned her against it, turning ALIE’s attention to chip him too. Oops.
Jasper’s crush Shay used her last moments of life to free Clarke, Bellamy and Octavia from the shipping container, and they rushed into save Luna from being chipped. But Luna didn’t need any saving, since she broke free on her own and killed all the guards who were torturing her, including the man she loved. Jasper was crushed to learn about Shay’s fate from Octavia, but just remarked, “It’s what we do.” That’s super depressing, dude. Par for the course for Jasper, though. Later, at the funeral for all the Grounders killed in the ALIE attack, Luna told Clarke that she couldn’t let more die for her or by her own hand. While Clarke thought that meant Luna was going to take the flame, she actually had the Skaikru teens drugged, and sent them back to shore with the flame. Bellamy’s only words? “Now what?”
Back in Polis, Pike worked hard to disconnect the nuclear fuel cell in the backpack while Jaha’s guards worked hard to break down the door to get in. Time was running out, and things were getting hella tense! Meanwhile, Monty had fallen asleep next to Raven in Arkadia, so she took her chance to break into ALIE’s code with Becca’s password, and ALIE wasn’t able to log her out since she was using an administrative login. ALIE started freaking out, and Jaha immediately realized it must be Raven and Monty working in Arkadia. Raven got inside the Citadel, a.k.a. the thing ALIE was hiding in her program, and found the kill switch, and so Jaha got an idea. He had ALIE upload Monty’s dead mother to the Ark’s computer system so she could talk to Monty and convince him to stop.
It actually worked, for a little bit: Monty stole the keyboard from Raven to talk back to his mother, delaying her from finishing taking ALIE down before the “migration” was complete, whatever that was. But despite what Hannah thought her son would do, Monty manned up and did the right thing, and had Raven shut down ALIE using the kill code. But Jaha urged ALIE to pull her code from Arkadia just in the nick of time, even though that would make her mobile backpack unit the only hardware where she was stored. You know, the backpack that Murphy was about to destroy in Polis.
ALIE worked hard to delay that too, having Emori appeal to Murphy’s heart, begging him not to destroy the pack because she argued that it would delete her mind and kill her too. Murphy couldn’t kill Emori, so he backed away from the pack. And although Pike stepped in and destroyed it for him, it was a few seconds too late. Emori delayed Murphy long enough for ALIE’s “migration” to finish so she lived despite the pack’s destruction. Nooo! They were so close! And what was the “migration” ALIE kept talking about? It turned out to be a transmission from the Polaris escape pod in the temple, sending ALIE’s code up to the remains of the Ark in space, meaning no one could get to her from Earth. She was essentially indestructible now. Way to go, Murphy! That was sarcasm.
What did you think of “Red Sky at Morning,” fellow The 100 fans? Tweet me your thoughts and reactions at @SydneyBucksbaum!
Images: The CW
The 100 airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on The CW.
