The time has come, after seven (or six, depending on how salty you are after September) seasons of The 100, to take a look back at all the highlights of the series! I am going to highlight all kinds of things, from characters to music to deaths and more, so stay tuned!
Today’s topic is… Biggest Unanswered Questions! Happily, there are not too many of these, as one thing The 100 was always good at was tying the story together. But there are a couple things that plenty of fans would love the answers to, and these are the ones that have nagged me for, in some cases, seven years! I also did a few “mini mysteries” because there are of course a few non-essential plotholes that I nonetheless was always curious about!
Sidenote: I actually did a post similar to this many years ago, but we have so many new mysteries to explore! In fact, I only reused 1.5 of them!
Look, the dude talked about being excited about his parents’ impending arrival to Earth, and yet when they conveniently died in a fiery crash didn’t show up, he… did not care? Sure, we can pretend he mourned offscreen I guess, but what slayed me is how much he grieved for Maya, yet seemingly had zero fucks or tears to give for the family who he seemed to genuinely care for.
Two episodes later, forgets he was born of humans.
We never really get a sense of Murphy’s vision of hell. Did he dream it while unconscious? Go to some kind of actual hell? Realize that getting bitten by a snake was probably hell? Literally no idea. I had assumed that we’d delve more into that when he was trying to achieve immortality, and he talked to Raven about it, I was sure he’d go into some kind of detail as to what happened. But nope, he was Ravened right out of his quest for Primehood. No more details needed, apparently.?♀️
Okay but why?
Okay, as far as I can tell, Picasso isn’t an actual Prime. Her mind doesn’t seem to be implanted into some canine Natblida. So… how exactly did we get one dog remaining? Where her parents at? She an only puppy? After nearly 300 years, you’d think there’d be quite a few litters to be had. I have so many questions, and no answers. Let’s hope there are more pupper embryos back in the Sanctum lab when the gang goes there to make babies.
Plenty more where she comes from?
I mean, someone dropped the damn ball. I suppose perhaps this is technically something we could(‘ve) see(n) in the prequel, but who knows how old this dude is supposed to be. All we know is that he isn’t the first Commander, nor the last, and Indra was alive when he was. But facts are facts, dude has a real problem. Was he always a complete psychopath? Or did he have some kind of backstory that turned Malachi kom Sangedakru into…. whatever fresh hell he became as Sheidheda? I want to know! Like, either show me a five year old stabbing his playmates, or his tragic backstory, but I need the details, please and thanks.
No hugs. Much stabbing.
No really, where he be at? He didn’t transcend, and his mind drive was the only one not destroyed (okay, technically Gabriel’s is still intact but we know no one would do him dirty like that), so there could, in pure theory, be a Ryker Desai X. There won’t be, mind. But I am kind of shocked that no one thought of like, Idk, finding him before some of the Sanctum faithful got to him and did a quickie resurrection? I would have stomped on him in a damn hurry, sorry mate.
Oh look, I am the same exact amount sorry that he’s dead!
Speaking of Primes, exactly what happened with Jordan’s weirdass “adjustment” in 6B? Like- I was all in sure he was Ryker X for several hot seconds, though I didn’t want that to be the case. And then, it turned out that it wasn’t, leading to the above mystery. But then… what happened? Our dude was talking to Bellamy as though he’d full-on drunk the Kool-aid in The Blood of Sanctum. But by the time we came back in Season 7, he seemed to be himself. That doesn’t make sense! I mean, okay perhaps if the drug left his bloodstream, but From the Ashes picked up immediately after, so there goes that theory. Especially odd since Jordan was so staunchly anti-Primes when he found out that they’d killed Delilah, then all…. adjusted for awhile, then suddenly not.
Sure, that’s a very reasonable take on actual body snatchers.
Okay look, we know she was kind of wrong about how long they had to live, so there’s a chance that she was wrong about the 4% of the world that was habitable. But considering we have several groups who came down from space (one of whom was able to navigate around the Earth and see that only Shallow Valley remained, presumably), we have to suspect that Shallow Valley was it. And I am no mathematician, but that is like, .000004% of the world or something equally infinitesimal.
Here’s where I must make up a backstory, because I simply cannot suspend my disbelief. There’s no way that the only livable spot just happened to be a foot trip away from the whole gang. It’s absurd. So my only explanation is as follows: Eligius IV saw a few patches of green scattered about, but didn’t want to end up in like, Uzbekistan or somewhere, so they went with the one in the Eastern US. Monty… forgot to check, I guess, after McCreary destroyed Eden. Perhaps some of the writers can provide me with a better story, but for now, that’s the best I can do.
Shallow Valley is like, a football field long, not buying it.
Speaking of the rest of our planet… what did happen to those guys? We got majorly teased in Season 4’s premiere, Echoes, when we encountered some poor souls who happened to be out for a lovely walk near the pyramids when Praimfaya hit there. But it meant there had been, at least until that point, other survivors. Which makes sense, obviously. The Grounders survived (not just the ones that Callie Natblida-ed either), so of course other pockets of humanity existed.
I feel like that was a bit of a missed opportunity? Can you imagine some kind of radio contact with a far away group of survivors? Think of the chaos that could have been sown! Alas, it didn’t happen. Hey, there’s a fun spinoff idea!
Remember that time that O’s old lady claw told her via chalk drawings to head over to the Anomaly? Remember how much sense that didn’t make? Yeah, well, it still doesn’t. We now know the whole story of how O yeeted back out of the Anomaly seemingly right after chasing Diyoza in, but we have no idea how it got them there to begin with.
As far as Season 7 told us, people had to have the codes, or what have you, to bop in between planets. And nowhere on Bardo or anywhere else did we hear about the Anomaly making collect calls. So why/how did it have an effect on O, Diyoza, and Gabriel? It isn’t a Magic 8 ball, it doesn’t predict the future, right? Did someone bloop on through at the exact right time, invisibly from Bardo or some such thing? I need the scoop.
Maybe it has a 90’s style beeper….
Speaking of Anomalies and other planets… what happened to everyone who wasn’t Alpha or Beta? We know things didn’t go great for Beta, but where were the others headed? I’ll kindly take some intel on Gamma, Delta, and/or Epsilon. This would be another killer spinoff idea. Ragtag group from Earth finds themselves trapped on an Outpost-esque planet. Guest Starring Erica Cerra. Call me, The CW, I’m available.
Can we find some realistic way to also Guest Star Chuku? No?
Okay look. Maybe we’ll still get the prequel. All hope isn’t totally dead, I guess. But regardless, they probably wouldn’t have enough time to answer all my Cadogan-related questions, so let’s dump them here! Like okay, Cadogan’s kids became Grounders, got it. But then what? When did ol’ Billy C. leave? Why did he leave? And frankly, what made him decide that Bardo was the best place for a nap? He could have gone back to find Callie, but he didn’t, so again, why? Where else did he go? Did he ever try to get the fam to vacay on Etherea or something? My questions are quite literally endless!
Meanwhile Billy C. over here hears “Field Day” I guess. ?♀️
This is basically one of the only long-term unsolved mysteries that we never got any kind of answer (or even callback) to. The Reapers were presumably “freed” once Cage (and everyone else) was dead, but… to what end? Did they all die of withdrawal in the tunnels? Did they terrorize Grounder villages until they were all killed? Did Lexa figure out how to replicate Abby’s trick? Did Indra sneak them into Arkadia one by one to save them? Did Nyko roam the tunnels for 3 months with Abby-provided instructions and AEDs? (That one’s my favorite, let’s pretend it’s that one.)
Thanks, Nyko!
Yes- where ar all the doggos??? And the cats? Did Pauna kill everything?
The Jordan thing is weird. Almost like they were going to go in a certain direction there, and then just… didn’t.
And yes the 4%. I’m voting for the Rig and surrounding area but i know… ain’t happening. Maybe Tahiti?
I feel like there are sooo many mysteries related to the other planets and we’ll never get those. that’s a bummer.
Reapers lol. THANK YOU
Bwhahah Pauna didn’t survive Praimfaya, silly! I mean- we have to assume they brought…. dog embryos with them on EIII? Otherwise how’d she get there? But why only ONE dog?
Exactly! Like they had a plan and then just dropped it. Like when you go into a room and forget why you went in, so you just walk back out again ?
Well- I think we see the area where they were picked up to go to the Rig, post-Praimfaya, and it’s just desert, so that is likely out. But like- there HAS to be somewhere else, right? Or was ALIE just *that* wrong? But truly, the statistical probability of Shallow Valley being the ONLY livable space, and it’s only a mere day’s drive from the only humans on Earth is just… silly, at best. I am all in for the Tahiti theory, frankly.
Do you approve of the headcanon for the Reapers? I am so going to write more of those “Where Are They Now?” for the people I never got good endings for. Like BRELL. I need Brell.
We need more TBH. Alternate “what if”‘s for all the balls they dropped. I DO like your reaper ideas! At least you’ve given it more thought than they did. I mean realistically they probably just died in the tunnels, but nooooo… there has to be more. I like to still think there were reapers running around in the forests being terrible. The AED’s :))):))))
That is just it- after two full seasons of Reapers being A Big Thing™, how did they just disappear!? Especially on this show, where frankly, finding this many “unsolved plots” was hard to do. I think Ryker may end up living in a robot that Raven makes ?
OMG Yes! I’d forgotten about….most of these. But a few of the big ones that felt like a narrative set up and then fizzled (notably between seasons 6 and Half-Assed) point to a change in writing team or last-minute plot upheaval or something. And that upsets me because the writing team was clearly focused on moving the story forward with as few deus-ex-machina plot bits as possible. I can stomach “grieving happened offscreen” a lot more easily than “dude was brainwashed but then he had a cookie and snapped out of it”. What?! Ugh.
Honestly, they need to hire you to write some spinoff books set in the universe, to address some of these questions. Why not? They do it for major syndicated shows (or did in the 90s?) all the time.
Omg you are right, they DID do that! I owned some! Honestly I would be amazing at it. Who knows more about the world and characters than me? ? If it helps, I already have some fitting stories in my head for some of these! I think the biggest problem is whatever the hell went down in S7, frankly. Like. HOW!? Sure a lot of the writing room WAS new, but not all of them! And also, it didn’t exactly take a Pulitzer winner to figure out that some of this shit didn’t make sense, like come on. Unless they let the Riverdale team take over, I cannot imagine how they messed some of this up so bad. And THEN- at the same time, some of it was FLAWLESS, like everything with Hope and Dev, and Memori, and Mackson, and Indra and O, and Indra and Gaia, hell even Indra’s struggle with Sheidheda was decent, especially because she became a leader. The point is…. how could the same incredible writing come from the same people who… killed Bellamy easier than Clarke killed the panther in S3? Legit, she was more upset about the fucking panther, I cannot.
Yeah, it’s a mess and my logic brain sees two possibilities: The new writers had carte blanche to write episodes without having to tie them into existing episodes and the experienced writers just has to sit with that; the producer/EP/head writer overturned whole chunks of plot and scenes because of whatever (*coughcoughJasonTantrumcoughcough*) and they had to scramble with short-term-focused stuff to fill in those gaps (or even with decent stuff but there was still a scramble that left holes.
Either way, I am sad for the damned good plot writers on that show whose ideas never saw the light of day. And you would make a great The 100 show spinoff serial book writer. Or even graphic novel writer! Come on, Simon and Schuster, make it a thing!
(And now I want to read some good The 100 fanfiction…..which….do you write?)
I think that it’s mostly the second thing- but also some of it was genuinely because they ended up rewriting it all SO close to filming- they genuinely did have to wing parts of it, which I totally get and am actually fine with. BUT the whole Bellamy/Clarke situation was a million percent a Jason Tantrum™ and legit if the prequel falls through he literally only has himself to blame there.
Aw thank you! So. I don’t write it as a rule (like- I don’t do AU or anything) BUT I did write a better finale bwahah. And I write (or well, have written and intend to write more) endings for things we didn’t get endings for! Frankly, I am not creative enough for anything beyond the canon world, BUT I feel like within that world I can do a lot!
P.S. Bellamy is FINE, remember?