Last night’s THE 100 brought to the forefront everyone’s painful truth about themselves.
“Nevermore” picked up right where we left off last week, with Jasper and Clarke escaping from a fallen Arkadia. They manage to get in touch with Sinclair, who directs them to the cave where the rest of the group is hiding out. Raven is still unconscious when they get there and they have to quickly get her into the cave, so she won’t recognize where she is when she wakes up. Alie has taken complete control of her mind and body, so when she does wake up, she thrashes around and tries to escape, following the AI orders.
The entire episode was about Alie trying to get into each character’s mind in order to find out where Raven is, especially after she realizes Clarke has the second version of the AI that she seeks. The group’s plan is to follow Raven’s original idea to use the wristband to reverse polarity and fry the chip inside her head (I think? The physics of this is kind of lost on me), so she can be finally disconnected from the crazy AI. Clarke knows that Niylah – that girl she was hooking up with at the beggining of the season, remember? – has one of their wristbands, so they make their way there, after knocking Raven unconscious again and blindfolding her.
Niylah is not exactly Miss Hospitality when they get there, because her father was among that fallen army that Pike slaughtered earlier in the season, so she wants nothing to do with SkaiKru. Bellamy threatens her at gun point, when Clarke can’t convince her to help, so they all make their way inside the little cottage. Except Raven wakes up and proceeds to hurt herself, trying to get away. Apparently, “there is no pain in the City of Light”, so she dislocates her shoulder and opens her wounds again, trying to escape.
So here is where the episode stops being about the quest to save Raven and starts to be a study about each character’s deepest regrets. Because, in order to stop her from hurting herself, the group starts a rotation to keep an eye on her while Sinclair is working on the wristband and Monty and Octavia went out to get an EMP at the dropship. So what Alie does is to throw in each of their faces – Clarke, Jasper and Bellamy – the ugly truths about themselves that they had never been brave enough to face. Like the fact that death follows Clarke everywhere; Jasper is a coward, who loses himself in drugs, so he won’t have to face his emotions; like the fact that Bellamy is not a leader, but a follower.
Each time she manages to rile them up, until with Bellamy she finally gets what she wants; Niylah walks into the room after hearing about the fact that Bellamy was one of the people responsible for the Grounders’ massacre and Raven sees her, giving Alie their location. But it was just in time for Monty and Octavia to return with the battery and – while the first try doesn’t work, the second one does – and they manage to fry the chip.
When Raven doesn’t wake up, Clarke realizes she knows how to get the AI out of her because she saw Titus taking it out of Lexa. So she cuts open the back of her neck and the destroyed chip slips out. Raven wakes up and they get the hell out of there because Alie’s army is on the way. Clarke asks her why Alie tried to get her to kill herself and Raven reveals that it’s because she knows too much. Alie wants the second AI so badly because that’s the only thing that can stop her.
Now, let’s talk about a few key points in this episode.
One, Lindsey Morgan once again hit it out of the park with her performance. It was powerful, raw and she seemed to switch flawlessly between a completely deranged Raven to the calm and collected Alie.
Two, the gang is all back together, but what makes me so happy is the fact that Bellamy and Clarke just clicked again, like they had seen each other yesterday. No matter what, they still have each other’s backs and are a powerful team together.
Three, that scene where Monty killed his mom. That was so, so incredibly sad and heartbreaking and I can already see how this is going to come back to haunt him, especially after Clarke managed to get the AI out of Raven’s head without killing her.
A new episode of THE 100 airs on April 21 at 9/8c on The CW.