Now what? No, seriously, now what?! Because the Adventure Squad is so fucking screwed 90 ways from Sunday. Grounder Stevie Nicks Luna peaced out on our heroes, Raven screwed up in Arkadia, and ALIE is now untouchable on the Ark. Up in space. WHERE THEY CAN’T GET TO HER CODE. Because space and shit.

So. Screwed.

This episode was written by long-time The 100 scribe Kira Snyder and first-time series writer Lauren Muir. Congrats on a great episode ladies – and good luck to Kira on A Handmaid’s Tale. Of course congrats to Lauren on her first script! No big deal, right? Yes, big fucking deal! This episode was dense with ALIE shenanigans and some really, REALLY questionable moral choices that will likely only complicate how you feel about Clarke and Luna. Which is a good thing…because no one wants one-note protagonists.

This review WAS powered by: Wyoming Whiskey Small Batch Bourbon, until it started sending shooting pains through my jaw. Alcohol sometimes does this to me, I have a weird issue, so I defaulted back to Monkey Shoulder scotch. I love how scotches have names like Glenmorangie and Lagavulin, while American whiskeys have names like Hickory Holler Hoedown Brown Fire Water. It doesn’t matter what it’s called, as long as it’s whiskey. Because remember kids:

Let’s get into it!

Do You Like Fajitas, Flautas, Quesadillas And Other Tex-Mex Specialties?

The Adventure Squad finds themselves aboard Luna’s oil rig and since it’s Cinco de Mayo, they chill with some margaritas at Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup.

Now, there you go again, you say you want burritos. I sure hope that you can keep ’em down. It’s only a flour tortilla, used to wrap around your meat now. Have you any beans you’d like to share with the loneliness?

The Adventure Squad gets plenty of chips and queso, but you know what they don’t get? Grounder Stevie Nicks Luna giving a single fuck about their situation. Because guess who’s a different sort of cat? Luna, that’s who.

I betcha $100 Grounder dollars (which is just wood chips and squirrel pelts), that Luna reeks of patchouli. LOOK AT HER. She resembles the girl that lived in the dorm room next to mine in Allen Hall at the University of Illinois in 1990-1991. Allen Hall was the “eclectic” dorm, full of granola boys and girls with their hackey sacks and their plaid and their Birkenstocks and their weed. So, of course they were unkempt patchouli users. Dirty fuckin’ 90’s grunge hippies.

(I secretly wish I could have been one of them)

Luna is NOT your average Grounder. We learn a lot about her this episode. She’s a peacenik. A non-interventionist. A ninja. She absolutely fucking refuses to take the flame. And for good (???) reason? We find out she left her conclave after having to kill her own brother. She would have been paired up against Lexa had she not fled. She’s not a coward or a traitor to the blood, as Titus stated. Luna straight up believes she would have won, but the cost was too steep. She was done with all the killin’ and shit.

So Grounder Stevie Nicks Luna left and started her own little commune of “sick of this crap” Grounders, presumably writing witchy music, amassing an impressive shawl collection, and workin’ that tambourine like a boss.

I guess we can assume that killing her brother was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I suppose she thought she could do as her Nightblood/Commander training had instructed: win and become Commander. But the personal cost to her was too high, likely realized after killing her bro. Which, you know, hindsight and all. She eschewed the Grounder ways and traditions and ran, becoming a pacifist in the process and giving like-minded Grounders a safe refuge to call home. She is the living embodiment of jus nou drein jus daun (blood must not have blood).

But there’s a price. There always is with this show.

Luna can obviously fend for herself and she’s certain she would have become Commander, but what kind of leader would she have been? I don’t know if her peacenik tendencies were inherent to her character or if killing her brother was a sea change, but Luna as we come to know her in “Red Sky At Morning” is passive. She is the Grounder embodiment of “keep calm and carry on (even when an evil AI is threatening your very way of life, but hey, no big whup, right?)”. And this is not a very effective or realistic way of living in a world with ALIE looming.

And Luna comes face-to-face with the threat of ALIE when Captain Sexy Low Voice Grounder and his crew from Boaty McBoatface turn on her and her boyfriend Derrick. ALIE has somehow chipped them and tries and force her to take the key through ‘Murica’s favorite torture pastime, water boarding. Luna gets to show off her skills, but in the process is forced to kill Derrick. You’d think at this point Luna would understand the gravity of the situation. She and her people are NOT safe. ALIE can get to her. ALIE knows where she lives. She has eyes and ears everywhere.

Nah, fam. Not Luna. She makes Clarke and Co. believe she will take the flame and ascend to the Commander’s position. She had to kill people she loved and she vows she won’t let that happen again. It seems as if she’ll fight ALIE, but OLOLOLOLOLOLOLO, of course things don’t go as Clarke hopes.

Luna: “You believe that to defeat an enemy that will stop at nothing, you must stop at nothing. How is that different than blood must have blood?”

Luna serves the Adventure Squad roofied strawberry margaritas and they all pass out as Luna nopes out of the whole situation.

Peace out, fam.

Now, where does this leave us with Luna? Is she a coward? Is she selfish? Is she naive and myopic? Since we probably won’t see her again this season, I would say: it depends. There’s a famous saying: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” There’s an argument to be made here that Luna, by not getting involved, is weak and selfish. She seems fine with leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself, even after witnessing first-hand the horror that ALIE can inflict on the people she loves. How can Luna be fine with leaving the world in the hands of that AI?

I don’t rightly know. I do think that she’s too far on one side of the moral spectrum to be the same type of leader that either Lexa or Clarke are willing to be (and trust me, the Lexa v. Luna debates are a’ragin’ on the internets). Clarke and Lexa realized that breaking a couple eggs to make an omelette was an unfortunate necessity of leadership to forge a lasting peace. And yet, both Clarke and Lexa have paid dearly for their decisions as leaders. But that’s the burden of leadership. Heavy lies the head that wears the crown. You’re either willing to take up the mantle of leadership, or you’re not.

I hope we come to see more of Luna in season 4…it would be fairly interesting for Clarke to have another Grounder to debate morality and leadership styles with, ala Lexa. And Luna is a very different sort of Grounder than we’ve seen on the show before…I don’t even know if she considers herself a leader at this point, or just begrudgingly takes on the role of caretaker for her little band of hippies. I think she’s rife with narrative potential and could play a good moral foil to Clarke, especially given how far gone Clarke is on the moral front (more on that later).

Spoiler alert: there’s good reason to believe Luna figures into season 4. One thing…why introduce a 3-season-long teased character never to see her again? Another thing…why have her dick over the Adventure Squad if we never see her again?

And oh, the biggest thing…Isaiah Washington welcomed her to season 4 in a tweet he later deleted. So, hello Luna! I kinda hope you get punched in the face for the afore-mentioned dicking over of Clarke.

Harper And Monty Do The Thing!

Y’all, Harper and Monty have the sex! Yeah, it came out of nowhere, but if you don’t like Marper doing tha thang (slang kiddos!), then you don’t love life. And it’s not like these two didn’t sort of build up a bit of a connection in Mount Weather.

So, to Harper and Monty…

Missed ALIE By THAT Much

Oh man, you guys. Murphy et al. and Raven et al. had ALIE sweating on two fronts. Murphy was close to destroying her power source in Polis and Raven was close to flipping her kill switch.

Now, I will confess to not completely understanding how ALIE works. I’m not savvy with the computer programming side of stuff, despite working in the tech industry for 20+ years. Look, I’m in marketing. I write stuff about technology, but I don’t know the ins and outs of how the stuff works on the back end. I don’t have to…I write value props, baby. ALL DAY, SON. I assume programming involves a lot of ones and zeros and emojis.

So, I will try and parse ALIE’s story line the best I can. Hoo boy.

From what best I can gather, ALIE is in the process of migrating her code to a safe place (the remnants of the Ark in orbit, as we later learn). Her power source is the backpack in Polis, which also seems to be a hard drive that contains her code. Her code is also on the mainframe in Arkadia. Destroy both, and ALIE can be destroyed.

I think. I was really trying to pay attention and understand all the technical stuff, I promise.

Murphy, Pike, and Indra have the backpack in their grubby little hands, but chippie Emori warns them off of destroying it, claiming that doing so will irradiate all of Polis. So Pike does some stuff and hooks up a doohickey to a thingamajig to make it possible to destroy ALIE’s hard drive without releasing and bad noo-clear waves.

At the same time in Arkadia, Raven – working for two days straight and slamming Monster energy drinks and vaping like a mo – is using her new-found savant coding skills to try and find a way to destroy ALIE from her end. Which means finding a back door into ALIE’s app and using a kill code. Which she doesn’t have. The flame contains the kills code, according to Raven. I’m unsure about this bit…how does Clarke and/or Raven know the flame contains the kill code? Did Raven learn this from her time with ALIE? Is this info in Becca’s journal? Did I miss this somewhere? Shame on me if I did.

Raven is warned off of accessing ALIE’s code by Monty, stressing that they need to wait for Clarke to return with the kill code. But Raven defies orders and gains admin access to ALIE and her “citadel,” discovering that ALIE is hiding something (I assume this means the kill switch…or is it something else?). Raven begins unlocking “doors” (I have no idea what this even means at this point, I’m just along for the ride) before getting blocked at the last door by…Hannah.

So. Yeah. Just ALIE doing ALIE things, which is being a fucking asshole and putting Monty through the emotional wringer. Again. Oh, but wait, there’s more! Let’s not forget that mofo Jaha has a huge role in this. He actually says “if it’s Monty, I can stop him,” so it’s Jaha’s idea to use Hannah against Monty. DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICK.

You guys, if you’re wavering between who is the Big Bad this season – ALIE or Jaha – you’re on the same page as me. Because while ALIE may have the means, Jaha has the method. These two are a very dangerous tag team. Like the Road Warriors, Animal and Hawk, but with a lot less face paint or spiky shoulder pads. Wait. How awesome would ALIE and Jaha be WITH face paint and spiky shoulder pads? You’re welcome, The 100 costume department.

ALIE uses Monty’s mom as a gambit, thinking there’s no way they would delete her from the system in order to get past her.

WRONG BITCH.

In an unexpected move, Monty, despite being absolutely gutted by the situation, deletes his mom from the City of Light. FOREVER. Thereby killing her twice. With no more blockers to that last door, Raven discovers ALIE’s kill switch. But before Raven can use that kill switch, ALIE pulls out of the Arkadia mainframe.

Fuck. A. Duck.

Monty goes a little apeshit at this point, realizing that they failed and re-killed his mom for nothing. Raven got a little too big for her britches and kinda screwed them out of accessing ALIE from Arkadia for good. So, fail whale on Raven. This is what you get when you don’t wait for Clarke, who is fail whaling it up quite nicely herself on Luna’s rig.

Back at Polis, ALIE stalls Murphy and Pike from destroying her power source and interrupting her code migration by appealing to Murphy’s humanity through Emori, a call back to that old “love is weakness” theme. Emori claims that destroying ALIE will destroy the minds of everyone in the City of Light and they’ll be gone forever. We don’t know if this is true or a stalling tactic by ALIE, but it’s enough to stop Murphy. He can’t bring himself to destroy the backpack, so Pike has to do it, but not before ALIE successfully migrates her code using the Polaris pod to upload her shit to … the fucking remnants of the Ark in orbit!

ALIE is now untouchable.

The Adventure Squad and Pindry are – I believe the technical term here would be – FUCKED. So fucked. Like astronomical levels of fucked to the fucked degree of fucked. Like fucked times infinity fucked.

Clarke, No Means No

There are two things I learned from TV this week:

1. If your deep-cover KGB agent mom tells you to go to Bible study, you better FUCKING GO TO BIBLE STUDY. Holy shit, Keri Russell (and her forehead vein) is putting in some goddamn work on The Americans. I hope that forehead vein got the going actor day-rate for that episode.
2. Clarke sorely needs to work on her: stand-up game, take-down defense, and grappling skills. Her MMA skills are just pathetic. How did she defeat Anya again in S2? Indra, get with this girl and gives her some training, like now.

The needle on Clarke’s moral compass is spinning wildly out of control and I don’t know how to feel about Clarke right now. Girl is lost.

After Grounder Stevie Nicks refuses to take the flame, Clarke goes full-on Dark Clarke mode and tries to forcefully stick the flame in Luna. This isn’t awesome Dark Clarke, this is desperate, willing-to-do-anything Dark Clarke who makes me question if this decision is something I can get with. I’m conflicted. As I should be, because that’s what this show do.

I know that this series is all about the moral grey areas, but our characters have swung out of the grey and firmly into the black at times. This season has explored the themes of free will and consent, two things at the very core of our humanity. ALIE found a work around, and Clarke is forcing her own work around on Luna. Clarke decides that Luna has been given a similar choice and if Luna won’t willingly become Commander, Clarke is going to force the issue, literally. Join or die Clarke will make you join.

Of course, we all know how that turned out. Luna was having NONE of it.

Is Clarke any better than ALIE simply because Clarke seems to be doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, whereas ALIE is doing the wrong things for the wrong reason? Is doing the wrong thing ever justified if the end goal is seemingly noble? And who judges if the end goal is a good one? It’s simply a matter of bias and perspective at this point, because couldn’t the thousands of people in the City of Light make an argument that their painless existence is a desirable state, and that ALIE is doing the right thing by humanity?

Clarke has been struggling all season, suffering from the guilt over her actions in season 2 – Finn, TonDC, Mount Weather – and it seems she’s not gaining any ground in atoning for her actions or finding forgiveness. Every time she tries to do something “right,” like showing Emerson mercy, it comes back to bite her in the ass tenfold. So if doing the right thing yields shitty results, what’s the point? Besides one’s personal moral code and conscience? What if that moral code means losing to ALIE for good?

I feel for Clarke because she has been shoved so far into a corner by circumstance, and the situation has never been more dire. It’s no longer a question about protecting her people from larger threat, it’s about protecting ALL people against a pervasive and extremely dangerous foe. It’s twelve people versus ALIE and her legion of thousands.

I’m at the point with Clarke’s character (and I expressed A LOT of frustration with her in my last review) where I’m going to need to see the emotional and intellectual ramifications of her choices sometime soon. Trying to forcefully insert the flame into Luna has to have some sort of resonance or consequence. That was a shade too far, and I’m not seeing any guilt over her dark and desperate action. Yet.

I want to see Clarke express her frustration, anger, and grief in a human way, because pushing emotions down and forging ahead is starting to chip away at my ability to empathize with her. Eliza Taylor is having to emote so much to wordlessly give us a glimpse of Clarke’s internal pain and struggle, but that’s a heavy burden to carry through just giving (great) face. I’m ready for exposition from Clarke because I don’t think her character is benefiting at all from the audience having to make assumptions about her psychological state without narrative assistance.

Jason Rothenberg had indicated a couple times that Luna would “re-calibrate” Clarke’s moral compass and he questioned whether Clarke would be able to rediscover her humanity. So we have two episodes left to see how Clarke moves forward in the narrative and what sort of decisions she’s forced to make…and if she’ll back off from a decision that will result in killing a great many people in order to take ALIE down. Because that’s where we’re headed: the destruction of the City of Light. And if what Emori said is true – that destroying ALIE will destroy the minds of everyone in the CoL, well…you can see where this is headed.

Thoughtful Guests Would Just Bring A Nice Bottle Of Pinot Grigio When They Visit, But The Adventure Squad Brings Death. It Pairs Nicely With Fish.

It really is true, isn’t it…where ever Clarke goes, she brings death with her. She leaves a slime trail of death and destruction behind her (in addition to an actual slime trail…soap, shampoo, and conditioner, girl) like a damn Snail of Death. It’s not like she’s actively trying to fuck things up, it just seems like a natural by-product of trying to save the world from the bad guys…well, badder guys than Clarke and Co. Remember, maybe there are no good guys. There’s just bad guys that suck less than other bad guys.

Both Octavia and Jasper remark on how they tend to make things worse where ever they go. They are the absolute worst party guests. They come uninvited, drink all your beer, piss on your dog, and then steal your PlayStation while you’re trying to clean up the puke they unleashed into your toaster.

But bless their hearts, these guys simply CAN NOT get a win this season. And their failure to convince Luna to help them has sting just a little bit more than some of their other dead ends because even after appealing to her, then trying to force her, then Luna actually seeing the reality of the foe they face, she’s STILL all like “naw, take your shit and leave.”

This was the absolute worst Cinco de Mayo for our friends. Clarke looked so confused and lost when she realized her margarita was spiked with sleepy juice and Luna wasn’t going to cooperate.

This isn’t top-shelf tequila.

With their options shrinking, we have to wonder how exactly the rest of the season will play out for the Adventure Squad. They are really out of good ideas at this point and if trying to force the flame into Luna was bad, I can only imagine how much worse it’s going to get.

Now, with Luna presumably off the board, there’s only one Nightblood left – Ontari. Who has been chipped. And it seemed from what Clarke said this episode, they cannot put the flame into a chipped person without ALIE finding out their plan. So, what is Clarke’s next move…we know she’s headed back to Polis as Roan’s “prisoner,” but is it so she can get close to Ontari? To see if the flame can override the chip in some desperate move? It’s getting a little too late for an 11th hour nightblood infusion into Clarke or anyone else, so I’d hazard a guess that Ontari is the flame endgame. Although I just can’t then work out a way for Clarke to get into the City of Light and maintain any autonomy to work towards destroying ALIE from within without the flame in her own neck.

Put me down as 50/50 on the flame going into Ontari versus Clarke.

WHO THE FUCK IS CHIPPED AMONG THE DELINQUENTS? [INTERNALLY SCREAMING RIGHT NOW]

Uh, you guys. YOU GUYS. YOU…..GUYS. Not only is the Adventure Squad backed into a corner, but one of their own appears to be chipped. You all had to catch this little bit of dialog:

ALIE: “Jacapo Sinclair is dead.”
Jaha: “How do you know that?”
ALIE: “Unimportant.”

Wait…WHAT? UNIMPORTANT?!

No, NOT unimportant. How does ALIE know Sinclair is dead? HOW? Someone among the delinquents is chipped, right? Initially everyone on Reddit thought it was Harper, especially given the out-of-left-field coitus with Monty. But this is unlikely, because if Harper was chipped, ALIE would damn well know it was Raven accessing her code from Arkadia. Harper would have been instructed to kill Raven and Monty to prevent them from harming ALIE.

The current theory is that Jasper is chipped. If you watch the back half of “Red Sky at Morning,” the timeline CAN support this idea. Luna, Derrick, and Jasper are captured by the chipped boat captain and his crew. Luna is getting waterboarded and Jasper is off camera for a bit when he could have taken the chip without Luna noticing.

There are a few things that don’t jive completely with this theory:

1. The window of taking the chip is extremely short and if it did happen, how come no mention of it is made?
2. ALIE would know that Raven is back at Arkadia accessing the mainframe – ALIE and Jaha essentially guess that Monty is poking around in ALIE’s code, so they’re wholly unaware that Raven is working against them.
3. There’s no reason for Jasper to take the chip after he’s turned it down and has seen first-hand the shit it did to Raven.
4. ALIE didn’t use Jasper to fight Luna during the struggle in the machine room.

But there are also indications that Jasper did take the chip.

1. He’s largely unaffected by Shay’s death, simply remarking “it’s what we do.”
2. He’s the one who asks if Luna changed her mind about the flame.
3. ALIE seems to linger in the machine room a second or two after Derrick’s death, which would indicate someone else is chipped.
4. Jasper’s aspect seems a bit more flat than usual – this could just be my paranoid read on him, however.

There are some good for/against points, but it’s hard for me to believe right now that he took the chip because the points against are far stronger. ALIE’S knowledge gaps about who’s back at Arkadia alone are the most telling.

So, if it’s not Jasper or Harper, who could it be? Moreover, knowing that there’s only one physical chip available to the Adventure Squad (taken off of Hannah’s body by Octavia) and Monty is holding it in this episode (after ALIE shut them down, so the timing is important), how could another delinquent get chipped?

There are other possibilities, and Bellamy mentions one that we should consider – ALIE’s drones. He guesses that’s how ALIE found Floudonkru and the rig, and it is conceivable that she has drones monitoring Arkadia as well, but again, one would think the drone would have seen more going on at Arkadia than ALIE seems privy to.

But what if none of this is true and there’s something else entirely going on?

I’ve come to expect crazy shit from this show and its writing staff, and hearing those involved with the show describe the finale as “mind-blowing” makes me wonder if there’s not something or someone else in play that we haven’t seen yet.

Stay with me here. Kinda fringe theories, and I don’t know how they’d be pulled off, but for your consideration:

1. What if there’s another entity behind ALIE, pulling the strings?
2. What if a matrix-type overlaying reality exists, and everything we’ve seen on the show occurs within it without the knowledge of the humans?
3. Who is the other tech buyer that Emori mentioned early on in the season? We haven’t revisited this in the plot yet.

How dramatically would you lose your mind if they pulled a complete 180 on us and did some crazy-ass shit in the finale? I would fall the fuck out, y’all.

I don’t know if any of this is likely or if they’re going to go with a straight-forward “Clarke has to destroy the CoL from within” story. If you’ve been following my theories throughout my reviews, you know that I don’t know fuck all and am wrong on most everything I pull out of the dark recesses of my conspiratorial mind. But…what if there is something deeper that will be revealed? I’m not saying, I’m just saying.

Some Random Observations About Jaha and ALIE In The City Of Light

I think there a couple interesting things to notice about Jaha and ALIE’s scenes together…just some things to turn over in your brain bits. Maybe significant, maybe not.

The Citadel – the Citadel is ALIE’s stronghold in the City of Light, separated from the rest of the city via water. What is in the Citadel? Can we assume this stronghold also holds the key to destroying her? Raven seems to have found the kill switch in the Citadel behind one of ALIE’s many locked doors. Will Clarke need to enter the Citadel to get to the kill switch?

The bird sculpture – this is a bit of a fun one. In the Citadel, as ALIE and Jaha are standing on the balcony, you can see a very large metal sculpture that is a huge flock of birds. The shadows of these birds are often seen behind Jaha in his iso shots. This probably means nothing, because this is likely an installed art piece at their shooting location, but I think it’s a very interesting presence in the background as Jaha and ALIE are trying to fend off Raven’s hostile takeover. Just pretty cool coincidence, right?

ALIE touches Jaha – again, probably nothing, but I find it very interesting because I can’t remember ALIE making physical contact with anyone in the City of Light. She’s always a very controlled character and seeing her reach out and touch Jaha’s arm is a very HUMAN moment for her. Given Erica Cerra’s very deliberate and considered portrayal of ALIE, I wonder if this signifies anything.

ALIE blows off Jaha’s question about Sinclair – what should we make of ALIE being somewhat dismissive of Jaha’s question about how she’s aware of Sinclair’s death? Is it truly unimportant to the conversation, something that she perceived would waste their time, or is it something more? Is she trying to hide something from Jaha about her awareness of the world, her capabilities, or anything deeper?

The pops of red color – this isn’t specifically about ALIE and Jaha’s dynamic, but I think the use of the color red in the first City of Light scene is interesting. Red balloons (seemingly only held by children), red umbrellas, a red beret, red cups, and the red table umbrellas. There are also a few people wearing red, but a deeper red than ALIE’s bright color. I wonder what these pops of color – ALIE’s color – signify. This is very deliberate. I wonder if we’ll see color changes in the City of Light once Clarke gets her happy ass inside and starts fucking shit up. Blue is Clarke’s color, so let’s see if anything goes from red to blue.

Oh Raven, What Did You Do?

Raven has apparently gotten very little sleep since her exorcism at the hands of her friends, and the weariness around her eyes reminds me of my favorite cray-cray seestra.

Raven and Monty have very explicit instructions…they’re only to spend their time mapping ALIE’s mainframe code, but they’re not supposed to access ALIE using Becca’s backdoor admin password. They’re supposed to wait for Clarke to ride in triumphantly with her new Commander so they can access ALIE, enter the kill code from the flame, and go out for burgers after.

Well, we know that Clarke’s plan is going to complete shit over on the oil rig, but Raven destroys whatever remaining hope they have by cracking ALIE open using the admin password while Monty is getting his snooze on. Raven finds a kill switch to shut ALIE down, but ALIE removes herself from the Arkadia mainframe before Raven can do her damage.

We RARELY see Raven fail. She’s the Adventure Squad’s closer, the one that usually finds a way to save the day using her brain. And her brain is now super-charged with new-found knowledge and abilities from her time spent in ALIE’s sway. Raven is sure she can shut ALIE down without waiting for the flame’s kill code. And she was right…she could have, if the timing had worked out better.

But consider this: had Murphy and Co. not compromised the backpack in Polis, ALIE would have immediately pulled out of Arkadia, shutting Raven out completely before she made any head way. That Raven got as far as she did was a result of ALIE getting stuck trying to migrate her code while not allowing the backpack to be destroyed or letting Raven get any further into the Citadel. Not failing straight off was a fluke of circumstance.

I wonder what Clarke’s reaction is going to be when she learns Raven ignored orders and tried to maverick her way to victory.

LOL, I would love it if Clarke got Gordon-Ramsay pissy with Raven. It would be unequivocally awesome and you damn well know it – c’mon, Clarke calling Raven “a fucking donkey?” Yes please.

I wouldn’t call Raven’s attempt to take ALIE down completely fruitless, although Monty might vehemently disagree. She got a look at the City of Light and more importantly, discovered ALIE’s Citadel, which I would hazard a guess will be the nexus of defeating ALIE in the finale. It’s just hard to see Raven’s hubris get the better of her in this episode, after she sorely needs a win to restore some confidence and prove herself to be a key asset to the Adventure Squad. Her value is never in question, but I’m certain after giving into ALIE and putting herself and her friends through the ringer, she’s feeling a bit vulnerable and crestfallen.

Remember, Raven is often the strongest of the whole team, and giving in to ALIE was a low point for her. She was pushed into a corner by her own body’s pain and didn’t completely understand the ramifications of becoming a chippie. Her story parallels Clarke and Bellamy, who have been pushed into similar bad decisions by circumstances, so how Raven navigates her way to seeing past her mistakes (real and perceived) will be interesting in contrast to other characters that have their own guilt to atone for.

Tree Fucking Adams, Folks

This season’s soundtrack has been amazing thanks to composer Tree Adams, but this episode was musically epic. Adams has brought such quality and gravitas to the sound of this show and he needs all the accolades.

The season 3 soundtrack is available on Amazon and iTunes. Buy it. It’s fucking great.

Mr. Adams, I need that beach scene ending music. That was amazing. Why is it not on the soundtrack? WHY? We need b-sides, stat.

This Week In FanTASTIC

Oh, so you thought I’d put my sassy pants on and find some Twitter warriors to demolish? Well, I found some middling stuff, but I’m kinda sick of bashing dumb people for being dumb with their dumb selves. Besides, it’s hard to get down in the mud and splash around. You gotta be in the mood. But guess what. I’m happy. I’m drinking. The Cubbies are 23-6. And…AND…Radiohead is dropping a new album this Sunday and if that doesn’t tweak your nips and get you moist, then I don’t know what to say. Ain’t no one bringing tarnish to my shine this beautiful weekend.

So let’s celebrate fans that are a joy to be around. And there are legions. Go take a look in the mirror, because you’re one of them, you amazing mother fucker! You rule. You’re awesome. You’re the most beautiful broom in a broom closet of brooms.

It might seem like the negative voices on social media are often the loudest, and they generally are because it’s far easier to criticize than praise. It’s human nature. People seem to want to bang away at one another. But man, you kinda see the same people bashing folks over and over again like it’s their life’s mission statement to be miserable all the time and drag other folks under the dark waters with them.

Fuck that shit. Let’s get our happy on.

We’re nearing the end of the season. The two-part finale is upon us and we should try to go out with a bang and be kind to fellow fans, express gratitude for great performances, and give the writers/creators some props for the stuff we enjoy. It’s been a tumultuous season, to say the least. Not everything has been great or positive or correctly executed, but you know what, if you’re still watching this show and enjoying it, then let the folks involved with the show know you support their work.

Get on twitter and give them some props. Take a little time out to find the writers or actors and give them an “atta boy/girl” and be that positive voice and support that cuts through the crap they usually get from the shippers yelling “Clexa” or “Bellarke” or the passive-aggressive folks that claim not to watch the show anymore but spend EVERY THURSDAY NIGHT trolling The 100‘s writer’s room twitter account with their masturbatory negativity.

Imagine if you had a little gnat-like troll that followed you to work every day and criticized every little thing you did.

“Oh, Jen, you forgot to use the Oxford comma. Loser. You should be fired.”

“Your product brochure has too many words, quit now.”

“No one likes your software, you should feel bad about yourself.”

Could you imagine? Well, the people working on the show get tons of that shit.

There are plenty of people involved with the show, and some mega-fans (William Shatner and Stephen King), who interact with folks, who appreciate kind words, and happily interact with positive fans.

So go out there on social media and show some appreciation for the work they’re doing. Fill up their timelines with love and kindness and awesomeness like a boss.

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Miscellany

• My ship, Slarke (soap + Clarke) had some good times this episode. And then Clarke woke up on a beach, so you know, sand in places where sand doesn’t belong. Doesn’t matter if she’s fully clothed. Sand has its ways. You’ve come back from the beach and found sand in places you didn’t know exist, right? Sand is the devil.
• How did I get from Luna to Stevie Nicks to an obscure SNL skit from 1998? Well, donut aficionado and my twitter wife (how did this even happen?) McKenzie posted that Luna pic, and my mind immediately went to Nicks upon seeing the frilly sleeves and scarf…but my mind doesn’t usually stop until it reaches silly, absurd destinations. And it came to rest on the Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup skit, starring the impeccable Lucy Lawless.
• So, uh, how does ALIE sense what’s going on in the Arkadia mainframe? Does the mainframe have Google Fiber that connects it to her? I’m unclear how a seemingly discreet system is accessible by ALIE. Can I get the brand of that wifi router?
• What gives me life? Raven saying “finally!” after walking in on Harper and Monty post-coitus.
• I love saying “coitus.”
• You know what I could totally deal with? An episode entirely devoted to a snark-off between Raven and Murphy. You want this too.
• Emori fucking rocks. ROCKS MY SOCKS, YOU HEAR ME?! Not only is she all like “I’d fix my defects, if I had any, motherfuckers!” she’s also downright bone-chilling in the temple when she happily tells Murphy that they were too late to stop ALIE’s migration. Holy fuck. I love regular Emori and I love possessed Emori.
• Please don’t kill Emori.
• Roan is back next episode!!! Please let him be shirtless. I need shirtless Roan. I feel strange sidling up to my sexy beardy Kane body pillow now that he’s chipped, so I’m going to slip next to my Roan body pillow instead. I need comfort in these dark times.
• Ah, Hannah Green. So nice they killed her twice.
• Hey people who like sounds entering your ear holes! I have a Spotify playlist, which is music from and inspired by The 100. You can find it right here and marvel at my musical tastes. I keep it up to date with anything featured on the show.
• Thanks for sticking around and reading this review, folks. I’m doing this for the love of the game, I’m just here so I don’t get fined, I’m just trying to be the best teammate I can be, I’m giving 110%, defense wins championships, I have a lot of hustle out there on the field, I’m taking it one game at a time, I’ll be happy with whatever team drafts me, OH GOD please don’t let the Browns draft me, and I’m ready to take it to the next level.

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FINAL VERDICT!

“No Way Out”: 8.5 out of 10 bowls of guacamole

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There are some The 100 bloggers you should absolutely be reading, and I offer them up for your enjoyment; I have no affiliation with any of them, save for being a fan:

• Jo Garfein – doing some great intellectual lifting when analyzing the show, and check out her The 100 podcast with AJ Mass, also found on Scifi Mafia at this link.
• Erin Brown – unfairly beautiful writing. Like seriously, stop being so good.
• McKenzie Morrell – recapping her damn face off and great interviews with the cast!
• Toni_watches – piss your goddamn pants funny photo recaps.

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If you’re a fan of the show, join us on Reddit for deep discussions, wacky shenanigans, Trigedasleng lessons, and clan flair! It’s the least toxic place you can find right now for The 100 fandom. Mods got that shit on lockdown.