The 100 Season 3 Review

Check out my reviews of previous seasons: Season 1 Review. -- Season 2 Review.

Season 3 of the 100 continued the trend that began in season 2 with all kinds of characters changing in infuriating ways, ridiculous science, and the show attempting (and failing) to explore some pretty big themes. Still, it was entertaining and kept me watching.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS BELOW

This season revolves around the AI Allie and her attempt to take people into her City of Light, and the continuing tensions between Skaikru and the rest of the Grounders, especially the Ice Nation: Azgeda. There was a lot of mystery with Allie and Becky, lots of fun snarky lines from Murphy, and some great character development for Octavia who continues to be the most consistent character with an actual arc. On the other hand, there was some infuriating political stuff happening within Arkadia and more needless massacres and more of the show trying to say deep things, but ending up just coming to the conclusion that "maybe we're all the bad guys" or "maybe no one's the good guy" or something, which is so ridiculous and such a colonialist/oppressor mindset. You commit atrocities and, instead of acknowledging that they're terrible, just equate these atrocities with the legitimate concerns of the people who are trying to defend themselves and just go "we're all trying to survive." This goes back to what I said in my season 1 review - I really wish there was an acknowledgement that survival involves all kinds of things that don't necessarily have to be killing.

Also, with Pike's story-line the show continued the pattern of putting Black characters or POC in positions of power so they could say and do evil and completely uncalled for things and be vilified while characters like Clarke get to seem reasonable in contrast. It's not just lazy storytelling, it's racist. I didn't want to say it was outright racist with Jaha and Tsing before, just acknowledging that it bothered me, but now it's definitely become a pattern. And notice that of his followers the majority of the evil ones that don't get redeemed and get hated are people of colour, like Monty's mom Hannah (man, I hate her guts).

Bellamy's involvement in the whole Pike massacre thing was another ridiculous and sudden character turn that made no sense. Yeah, he was the reckless "we do whatever we want" leader in episode 1, but that was... that was episode 1. We're way beyond that now. The character grew to be much more reasonable throughout the seasons, he made alliances with these grounders, he learned to accept Lincoln and learned to see them as individuals and he knew full well that that army was there to protect his people. It is completely ridiculous for them to make him thoughtlessly decide to follow Pike suddenly. And even if they wanted to do it and wanted to have him feel betrayed and play up those feelings, fine, but give it the time it deserves so we can believe that he would do it. Also, what bugged me more than his support of Pike through the massacres and stuff was that even after he realized how wrong this was he continued to try to find excuses for what they did for several episodes.

Overall, they could have done the whole political shift in Arkadia so well, all the groundwork was laid for the conflict. They could have showed us flashbacks to what farm station went through for those months off screen so we could understand their feelings and their irrational hatred of Grounders, but they didn't bother. They could have fleshed out more of the characters in Arkadia so we could see the building fear and resentment that Pike and Bellamy used to make him win the votes and actually cause a rift in Arkadia. Much easier to just have this irrational Black guy be a "dictator" (even though he presumably got elected and people actually supported his ideas) and just go the lazy route.

The only real saving grace for this entire story-line was that they let some other characters get a bit more screen-time, particularly Harper and Miller who were pretty awesome helping Kane in the rebellion he was leading. It was nice to see people do good, needed, smart things like sneaking the medicine to the grounders and so on. (Even Abby had a few seconds of being useful, but let's face it, we all irrationally hate her guts by this point even if she's right and I'm not even going to try to figure out why right now.)

Indra has been completely stripped of her power now and just wasted as a character. Where she was cool, powerful and in control in season 2 now she's just weak and lost and somehow needs Octavia to teach her Grounder strength now. *sigh* Which, again, would be ok if she was given some sort of character arc or more screen time to really tease these things out, but it was just used as a way to sideline her and make it up to Octavia to do all the ninja stuff.

Finally, I just want to add how awesome I thought the whole "finding Luna" missing was. Once you learn to ignore the ridiculousness of any science-speak the show attempts (checks pulse, "she's breathing!) and just accept that it's basically magic that storyline with the nightblood and Octavia leading them to try to find Luna was very, very nice.

Ultimately, I was pleasantly surprised by Luna's choice not to take the flame and get embroiled in everything. I love that she just stuck to her ideals and took responsibility for her people and the choice they made. Yeah, Allie was probably a much bigger threat than she realized, but her choice made sense as a character and it was nice to see one person who wasn't just going to blindly follow Clarke's plans.

I was disappointed, but not at all surprised when it ended up being Clarke that took the flame and did the whole Matrix-like City of Light thing, because by this point it's become obvious that Clarke is this show's "chosen one" and they're always going to make her the one to press the button or pull the lever that saves the day. Whatever. Just glad Raven got to sort of contribute to the save in the end - with a little help from Monty.

I haven't talked about Jasper at all in this review. He was... parts of me enjoyed his race to the bottom of the wells of despair, especially since it involved telling it like it is to some characters who needed to hear it along the way, but by the end I was getting extremely tired of him. His few moments working to save Raven from the chip (but man, was she great at acting Allie!) and uncover that whole issue and his brief time as Allie and the choice to have him recite the names of all the people killed by Clarke were all great. I just hope they don't overuse him again next season and give the airtime to fleshing out some other new characters.

In the end it was another season where I constantly loved and hated the show simultaneously. Lots of interesting twists and turns and lots of missteps as well, but overall worth watching.