The 100 - 'Wanheda'

"I'm on a horse."

With the Arrowverse in mid-season hiatus and Sleepy Hollow having spent the last of its goodwill capital with us, it's time to go back to The 100 and see what we missed in the entirety of the last season. You know, since the next one is coming up(1). We begin with the two-parter 'Wanheda'.

When last we left our ragtag band of post-apocalyptic survivors, Jaha had led Murphy to an island where they found the AI who scorched the world, and we open with Murphy going insane in a bunker until finally being allowed up to the mansion where Jaha and the AI, ALIE, offer to let him in on their little salvation game. Having spent a couple of months watching the tapes made by ALIE's guilt-wracked creators, Murphy is, to say the least, unconvinced. He not only knows that her sexy lady appearance is an imitation of one of her creators who suggested that she needed an avatar, but that she was built to 'make life better' and swiftly diagnosed that the Earth had a 'too many people error.'

I don't know which makes me more sad; the severe haircut or the loss of the
signature goggle.

Back at the former Fort Jaha, now renamed Arkadia since Jaha went nuts and took off looking for the City of Light, the survivors of the Ark are doing pretty well. A peace with the Grounders continues as the 'Skaikru' search for the populations of the other crashed Ark stations. Chancellor Griffin is wary of drawing too many supplies from Mount Weather given the risks of associating themselves too strongly with the Mountain Men, and the understandably bad memories the place brings up; especially for Jasper, who has gone, how you say, cray cray. During a mapping mission with Bellamy, Monty, Octavia and Kane, he tries to snatch a locator beacon from an Ice Nation raiding party who are searching for 'Wanheda' and laughs as one tries to cut his throat. Meanwhile, Lincoln is going stir crazy staying in to duck a Grounder kill order, and Octavia is giving him evils for putting on a guard jacket. Indra, Octavia's mentor in the Trikru, shows up to explain that 'Wanheda' means 'the Commander of Death' and refers to Clarke. Grounder belief is that you command what you kill, so if the Queen of the Ice Nation can kill Wanheda, she will be able to defy the Commander's peace and make war on anyone they like.

"It's a grunge thing, apparently."

Out in the wilds, Clarke is living rough and killing panthers. Straight up; we are reunited with her as she kills a panther so that she can sell the pelt for butchering services and supplies at a trading station run by a lass who shields her from bounty hunters looking to hand her over to the Ice Nation. She explains that she is grateful for the end of the Reaping, and the two of them get groiny with comparatively little foreshadowing. Compared to her awkwardness with Lexa last season, it's apparent that mass murder and living in the wilderness like a feral animal is a grand way to get over your coming out nerves. I guess you would get perspective.

"This also is a grunge thing."

Bellamy, Kane, Monty and Indra set out to look for Clarke, but run into a group of survivors from the Farm Station, including Monty's mother, Hannah and Captain Pike. Having crashed in Ice Nation territory, they have lost a great many of their number to Grounder attacks, including seventeen children who went out of the station to play in the snow (thanks for that, The 100, although actually thanks for not feeling the need to show it.) Understandably, if incorrectly, the Farm Station survivors are still very much in the 'all Grounders must die' phase, like the 100 in season one, despite Kane's assurance that not all Grounders are alike. I strongly predict that shit is going to kick off when Pike (or possibly Hannah) kills someone who is actually on their side.

After making a walk of shame from the trading station, Clarke is captured by a warrior of the Ice Nation who turns out to be Lincoln levels of unbelievable badass, taking out three members of an Ice Nation patrol who try to swipe his bounty. He coshes Bellamy when the latter tries to rescue Clarke, then takes her on her way despite having already received a nasty stab wound at her hands. This, we will later learn, is Roan, banished Prince of the Ice Nation, and he is taking Clarke not to his mother, but to Lexa, where Clarke responds to the hand of friendship with the fury understandable when meeting up with the woman who punked out on a military victory that would have prevented the need for all that gassing and then had her dragged across the countryside to ask for her help.

"Of course I'm a prince; check out my coat."

Murphy and Jaha are picked up by Emori, the scavenger who robbed them on their way to the City of Light. Emori is a tech-scavenger, and tries to rip off Jaha, forcing she and Murphy to kill ALIE's giant major domo. They discover that the tech they have stolen is ALIE herself, but Emori's brother is converted to the City of Light and they have to exchange the AI core for their freedom. In the City, essentially a VR environment generated by ALIE in the minds of her followers, the major domo assures Jaha that here there is no death.

So, somewhat unexpectedly, Season 3 of The 100 turns out to be less the Tom Hanks section of Cloud Atlas and more like the fourth Matrix movie. It's still the same great-looking, well-acted ensemble piece we know and love, although I am a little worried that the Farm Station survivors will be retreading the same blind hatred subplot that we followed with the Skaikru in Seasons 1 and 2, where we could be doing something new.

(1) And the problem is of course that leaving it so long means that you look for a background detail on some new character and find out that they're due to die in five episodes, or worse to kill a former regular.