The 100 Recap: Getting the Band Back Together

The 100 3×09 “Nevermore”
Written by Kim Shumway
Directed by Ed Fraiman

The internet meme of referring to your favorite characters as your children was invented specifically for me, and specifically regarding this episode of The 100. Actual children, whom I would actually give my life for, finally working together as a unit again! And there’s tension!! and friendship!! It’s almost more than my little fangirl heart can bear. Almost.

Jasper (Devon Bostick), Clarke (Eliza Taylor), Clarke’s Weave, and an unconscious Raven (Lindsey Morgan) are sharing a cozy awkward silence in the van. Jasper is still really clinging on to the whole “Clarke melted my girlfriend’s face off” thing, so he’s not being too forthcoming with information regarding the giant clusterwhoops the Best Friend Squad currently finds itself in. I literally just want to punch him. Let’s away.

In the Cave of Best Friendship, Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos) has grown tired of sitting around looking hot. She’s ready to bounce, but Bellamy (Bob Moreley) isn’t on board with that plan. Octavia doesn’t seem to care what plan Bellamy is on board with, however, since she’s signed up for the Jasper Jordan Never Letting Go of Accidental Manslaughter seminar. She and Bellamy exchange very sharp and pointy words, mostly regarding Bellamy’s 10000 poorly thought out decisions this season. On an unrelated note, this is the hottest Octavia has ever looked, right?

Their argument may have continued were it not for the arrival of Jasper and Clarke, who are in a hurry to tuck Raven in before she wakes up and transmits her location to the ALIE Network. The Best Friend Squad quickly mobilizes, including Octavia, who had been literally on her way out the door when they arrived. Isn’t that always the way? They manage to secure Raven under the watchful eye of her own Dad friend, Sinclair (Alessandro Juliani), who since Kane has dipped is now the adult supervision for the BFS. Jasper fills the gang in on the City of Light/ALIE/Kool-Aid Chip plotline (including Raven’s brilliant wristband invention that she accidentally forgot to share with them) while still irritating me.

Clarke, the new Flamekeeper and love of my entire life, produces an idea light bulb when realizing that she also has a chip, which contains the brain of her old boo. Literally the second she pulls it out though, the embodiment of nightmare-hell that is ALIE-Raven opens her eyes and begins to flip out. ALIE (Erica Cerra) recognizes version 2.0 of her code, and is now hell-bent on figuring out where Raven is. But not today, Satan! Raven is detained by the BFS and re-tranquilized. And never fear, for Clarke has pulled a Murphy and recalled a plot point she was conveniently there for. Credits!

You guys remember Niylah (Jessica Harmon), right? Trading post girl Clarke hooked up with back when she was boxing jaguars and Rambo-ing her way around the forest for three months? You know, Niylah! Remember how she had that wristband?  Yeah! Well, this twisted little cruller is gonna help us save Raven! Hopefully. She doesn’t look particularly hospitable when her first reaction to the BFS’s arrival is to pull a machete on them. Turns out her dad was one of the extras killed in the Worst Plan of All Time Ever, so she’s not too keen on Skaikru anymore. Unfortunately they’re out of negotiating time, as Raven is waking up and they’re fresh out of tranq-shanks. So Bellamy uses his old-fashioned diplomacy (read: guns and shouting) to convince Niylah to let them stuff Raven in the back, where no chipped zombie has gone before.

Speaking of chipped zombies, our lord and savior Raven Reyes has seen better days. She begins a full on freakout session, compelled by ALIE to find out where her program is. I’m actually messed up by how good Lindsay Morgan is in this scene (and throughout the episode). ALIE-Raven is a strong injection of horror in a sci-fi arc, and I’m eating it the heck up. The BFS manages to tie her down (presumably on sheets that have been changed since Clarke’s last visit). And now it’s time to sort all this mess out.

Sinclair and Monty (Christopher Larkin) are assigned to inventing duty, in order to whip up something that can de-creepify our dear Raven. Clarke attempts to mend fences with her old flame, which only involves minor lying (telling her they weren’t involved with the Skaikru massacre was a little bit sketch), and hovering from Bellamy. Really, I’m just solely focused on the fact that all my baby delinquent chicks are all in the same place for literally the first time since season two I think. With the delightful addition of the Rabbit Wizard, it’s a solid team we’ve returned to (though Raven is currently out of commission).

The main problem it seems our heroes face is that none of them are as smart as Raven Reyes. This is of course, not their fault. However it does make reverse-engineering her plan to disable ALIE within her brain more difficult. Science Squad does deduce it has to do with the EMPs the wristbands give out, but require an electromagnet to power it; something I’m not sure Niylah stocks in her shop. Solution? The drop ship! Whee! I am getting so much more of it than I thought I would or deserve. Truly blessed. Monty and Octavia volunteer to fetch the equipment for Sinclair, as they are the only two heroic and hot enough to ensure that the job gets done. They leave, but not before one more reminder that Bell and O are definitely not chill.

In the other room, ALIE-Raven is still stuck on this whole “getting free” deal. It’s not going too well. I’m going to give continuous props to Lindsey Morgan throughout this recap, by the way; that shoulder-popping and feral growling were 2 spooky 4 me. Bellamy, Clarke and Jasper attempt to calm her down and re-stitch her slit wrists from last episode, with the expected amount of success. That is, until Jasper addresses ALIE directly and demands she let Raven go. ALIE-Raven (with extra creepy!) proposes a deal: Raven for the Flame. This doesn’t vibe with Clarke, who is still very much attached to her potato chip girlfriend. “If you let Raven die, you’ll never get it,” she spits with trademark Khaleesi fierceness; which succeeds. ALIE allows them to stitch up Raven’s wounds, and pop her shoulder back into place (yuck). Bellamy has the not-terrible idea of having someone guard Raven so she doesn’t try to Wile E. Coyote her way out again. Clarke generously offers to take the first shift, because she is a self-sacrificing goddess of benevolence and gorgeousity, but which causes Jasper to have a bitch fit. Will Jasper ever do anything that doesn’t annoy me? Stay tuned to find out! (SPOILER ALERT: The answer is no)

Dad-Friend-In-Training Bellamy Blake attempts to comfort Professional Walking Disaster Jasper Jordan, for some reason. Jasper asks Bellamy if he’s alright with Clarke’s return, which is a gross misunderstanding of their dynamic on his part. Bellamy points out that they’re all there to save Raven; because he is a mature adult human with the ability to put other’s needs before his own. Try it some time, JJ. Bellamy gently and patiently advises Jasper to get his act together before he gets the tar beat out of him. Jasper responds with a burn, because this is just not Bellamy’s day.

There’s a brief scene in which Jasper cries because who cares, I’m over it.

Inside the hut, things that actually matter are happening. Clarke, who has remembered that she is a doctor, finishes up stitching ALIE-Raven, who is pretending to be just Raven. She tries to get under Clarke’s skin by bringing up the scores of people she’s killed (baller) and her doom harbinger tendencies (double baller), and Wells! Wells!! Here’s a fun game, go back and re-watch the past two seasons of this show, and take a shot every time Wells is mentioned after his death. I guarantee you will be stone-cold sober by the time you get back around to this scene. Anyway, ALIE is pushing all the buttons. The final straw is only reached after she brings Clarke’s dearly departed dad into the mix, which still sets Clarke off after all these months. Feral Clarke makes an appearance (heart eyes!), receives a mild injury from her possessed former gal pal, and has to be dragged away by Bellamy. I’m honestly so happy with all these characters finally interacting with each other that I don’t even care. (Oh, and ALIE-Raven deduces the Best Friend Squad’s plan, which was her plan to begin with. Something spells disaster for our Montavia!)

Monty seems to be the only one as happy as I am to see the drop ship again. Before they get down to business, Monty confronts Octavia about her designs to leave the BFS. He’s not a fan of the idea. Octavia is single-minded, however. She claims since Lincoln’s death she has no allegiances to anyone. “I’m not Trikru, I’m not Skaikru. I’m nothing,” Octavia Blake says with a heartbreakingly flat voice, summing up her entire character arc succinctly. But no, Monty corrects her, she’s one of The 100. As one of my explicit weaknesses is show titles being casually name-dropped, I can’t even describe the face I’m making. It’s something like this:

Sorry, I just have some Monty Green Is Wholeheartedly Devoted to His Friends in my eye. Octavia still isn’t convinced, however, which bums me and Monty out.

Back at the Best Friend Squad’s temporary headquarters, a mix of cute and terrible things are happening. Cute: Bellamy attempts to wrap Clarke’s ALIE-induced injury and offers to switch guard duties. Boom! Fence mending! Friendship isn’t dead after all! Terrible: Jasper makes another infuriating attempt to confront Clarke about Mount Weather. I just can’t deal with it. Clarke’s crying, I’m crying, everyone’s crying and I just can’t. Even a genuine and tearful apology from Clarke, who has honestly just been doing her f**king best, isn’t satisfactory for this man. At this point the only logical solution is to drive Jasper out to the middle of the woods and straight up leave him there. Let him fight jaguars and stew in his own bitterness for a while. Just don’t make me have to listen to him anymore.

After that suck salad, let’s see how Montavia is faring with that electromagnet. Good news: Heroic angel Monty Green has found it. Bad news: Heroic Angel Monty Green’s bitch mom Hannah (Donna Yamamoto) has found them. This is remarkably suspicious as Arkadia is a zombie wasteland, and it seems unlikely a member of the Douchey Murder Patrol could escape. Of course it turns out she’s chipped to hell, which Monty figures out fairly quickly because he is a genius as well as an icon. This quickly devolves into a demented game of “open wide for the airplane” as Hannah attempts to bring Monty into the City of Light. But again: not today, Satan! Octavia Blake to the rescue! Man, is it satisfying to watch her beat the crap out of Monty’s Mom, but it becomes distinctly less fun when the tables are turned. Just when it looks like Octavia’s thrown her final punch, Monty pops out of the gate and does the unthinkable: shoots only surviving parent straight through the heart. It’s a testament to how in love I am with Monty that I am still heartbroken by his mother’s death despite the fact that I hated her Douchey Murdery guts. He’s gonna be feeling that one in the morning. Crying emoji.

Khaleesi Griffin checks in with New Dad Sinclair as he finishes up his latest invention (which is actually Raven’s). To the dismay of my tiny little heart, Sinclair is distraught over the possibility that the operation might damage Raven’s beautiful mind, since as he says, “She’s all I have left, Clarke.” That one hit me right smack dab in the feels. Clarke comforts him because she is an angel, and also a Dad Friend in Training. She does this by reminding Sinclair that as per usual, they have literally no other options. Do we ever get tired of that?

With Montavia on their way back to camp with the final piece of the device, ALIE-Raven is running out of time to metaphorically blow everything up. She does this by attempting to turn Jasper against Bellamy, and utterly roasting him in the process. “Let’s all protect Jasper, Jasper’s so sensitive. Everyone cater to his feelings. We’ve all lost someone. You don’t see us falling apart,” she says venomously. I know I’m supposed to empathize with Jasper in this scene, but it’s hard when she’s spitting some extremely valid points. Including how Jasper pins the blame for Maya’s death on Clarke and Monty, when Bellamy was just as culpable. Her tea-spilling causes Jasper to crack once again, which causes Bellamy to Dad him right on out of there.

This leaves ALIE-Raven and Bellamy all on their own. ALIE continues her streak of pushing buttons, and of course Bellamy has many buttons to push. Mount Weather, the culling, the death of his mother, and of course, Gina Redshirt. But damn, Bellamy Blake’s poker face is a force of nature. He doesn’t give an inch when ALIE is straight up calling him a murderer, but does bristle when it’s suggested that Bellamy holds more pride in being Clarke’s “Knight” (her words) than Gina’s boyfriend. We would have a definitive answer to that had we seen over three minutes of Bellamy and Gina interacting, but I guess the world will never know. What we will know is how Niylah reacts to finding out Bellamy is the one who killed her dad after all; which is badly. Badly enough that she storms to the back room to give him the business, but is of course spotted by Raven. Now knowing where the Best Friend Squad is hiding out, ALIE starts sending out her forces with a bloody smile. Another big thumbs up emoji for LM.

Bellamy leaves to have a brief freakout in the front yard, involving the Blake Family Coping Mechanism of punches and kicks. He is discovered in this manner by Niylah. I smell an exchanging of words. Or not. It looks like Bellamy and Clarke’s playbooks are similar, and he offers up a tearful apology. “All I wanted was to protect my people,” he admits. It makes me sad. Niylah, who looks like the kind of person who drinks coffee out of a mug that says “Male Tears”, however, is not as moved. Bellamy might have said something else that probably would have just made me even more sad, but a rover arrives. Montavia’s back! And it’s tense and awkward! He shot his mom, guys!! It’s gonna be weird!!

That means it’s time for the Best Friend Squad’s latest and greatest plan: lighting Raven’s brain on fire. Once ALIE-Raven (who is still the scariest thing I’ve ever seen—Big ups, Lindsey!) recognizes the device as her doom, she proceeds to go nuclear and try to destroy Raven before she can be disconnected. This is not done pleasantly. The BFS struggles to contain her until Clarke whips out her old Flame (I’m actually kicking myself that it took me three weeks to put that together, by the way), promising it to ALIE-Raven. ALIE, being a moronic fool, believes her long enough for Bellamy to attach the device. Teamwork! Friendship!! Squad goals!!!

Of course, for suspense reasons, the battery they have isn’t strong enough to power the device, so Bellamonty run to fetch the rover’s. They’re spotted by an ALIE drone, which Bellamy disables through diplomacy (guns!). They fire up the device, and it appears to have half-worked. Raven is breathing, however unconscious. This worries her squad. Side note: Lindsay Morgan’s eyebrows look better after eight sustained hours of sweating than mine do on any given day. She’s my new hero. I would die for her.

The BFS is in emotional turmoil. Could they have vegetized their smartest and hottest friend? The boiling point is reached when Jasper “The Literal Worst” Jordan decides to smash ALIE 2.0 (aka the Flame aka Clarke’s GF) into smithereens. Clarke obviously isn’t a fan of this plan. She begs him not to since Lexa is in the chip (which she is self-aware enough to know sounds crazy nanners), but the memory of Lexa’s death (RIP) and the removal of the Flame prompts Clarke to get a head start on her new side gig. With the help of Titus’ Flamekeeper Starter Kit, she cuts into Raven’s neck as Titus did to her pre-potato chip girlfriend. No chip, but a bubbly black goop comes out of her neck that Sinclair presumes to be the what remains of the Kool-Aid Chip. This leads me to wonder: is Raven a nightblood now? Who cares!! She’s alive and un-zombified, and she and Octavia have some adorable interaction!! Evolving relationships!!!!!!!!!!! What I’m here for!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAHhhHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Jasper takes another dig at Clarke because I hate him. But this rebooting of Raven comes at an emotional cost: Monty realizing he could have spared his mother’s life if he had waited like fifteen minutes. We are both distraught. I think Jasper makes an attempt to comfort him, but he is rightfully rebuffed. We’ll probably get to see more of this heartbreaking plot unfold in later episodes (on a related note to self: buy more wine), but at the moment time is of the essence. ALIE’s network is on the way and they make people very uncomfortable. Also, they murder.

On the way out, Octavia snags some new duds from Niylah and I would like to take this one and only opportunity in my life to say yowzah. I’m all here and ready for Octavia 3.0, it’s gonna be a trip, I can tell. Clarke hangs back to apologize to Niylah for lying about Bellamy, and advises her to get the hell out of her house before it’s overrun by zombies. Always good advice. Niylah takes it, making her smarter than half the characters on this show.

Feelings time! Clarke gets to help Bellamy recover from the emotional fallout caused by realizing that he kind of sucks. “What do you do when you realize you might not be the good guy?” He asks sadly. And now we’re in Clarke Griffin’s wheelhouse. Trying to deal with the emotional and mental repercussions of a terrible crime you’ve committed? Pssh. Been there, done that, killed a panther. Time to spread the Griffin wisdom. “Maybe there are no good guys,” she replies, echoing the sentiment of one goddess Abigail Griffin after the Mount Weather genocide last season. Those words helped Clarke process her emotions, as they seem to help Bellamy now. Oh man, I’m here for supportive friendship moments again. Drown me in them, Shumway.

The Best Friend Squad prepares to roll out before being descended upon by the hollow shells of all their friends and loved ones. Raven reveals that the key to stopping ALIE is in the Flame, making everyone super relieved that Jasper didn’t destroy it four minutes prior. The delinquents ponder their next move, and in the end it’s Octavia kom Skaikru that suggests they take down ALIE as a team. “We survive together,” she repeats (echoing Monty). So Octavia Blake, who ten minutes ago had no allegiances to anyone at all, takes her rightful place in the Best Friend Squad’s core four. It’s sweet, but honestly after Monty shot his own mother to save her life, anything less would have been a dick move. The delinquents share meaningful glances all around, and then it’s off to adventure! And death. Presumably.

The final scene is ALIE and Jaha plotting to kill the Squad, not quite a cliffhanger as I presumed that was their plan the entire time. But oh man, feelings!! As a huge fan of season one, I love the dynamics between the core delinquents the most enjoyable part of the show, and this was no exception. Other than a few things I could have done without (Jasper), and some things I could have used more of (I have fully boarded the Octavia and Raven ship by the way, #TeamOctaven), this episode was perfectly balanced for me. I’m not going to miss Monty’s mom, although I am looking forward to Monty becoming a Full Fledged Main Character™ now that he’s killed one of his parents. Clarke had to do it, Bellamy had to do it, and at this point I think it’s basically just an induction ceremony into being Plot Relevant™ and above a shock-value death. So score! Thanks, Hannah. Your sacrifice is appreciated.

 

The 100 airs Thursdays at 9/8c on The CW.