YMMV / The 100

A-H

• Accidental Innuendo: From Miller. "'Big-ass' enough for you?"
• Actor Shipping: Eliza Taylor and Bob Morley's on-screen chemistry led many to ship them, and this only increased when it was revealed that the two had gotten married secretly. Add to that the fact that Bob is a very vocal supporter of the Bellamy/Clarke ship, and you have a legion of fangirls who love to write fanfiction about them. Meanwhile, a lot of fans ship Taylor with Alycia Debnam-Carey (who plays her on-screen love, Lexa), mainly due to the two's on-screen chemistry and real life friendship, despite both actresses being straight. It helps that Eliza has described Lexa as the love of Clarke's life a couple of times. This has also led to a real life form of Ship-to-Ship Combat between the two groups, though not to the degree of their characters.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Bellamy: A leader or a follower as his later decisions were from taking advice from Clarke and he even starts asking her permission to do certain things. There is also how he later starts blindly following Pike in Season 3, then in Season 7 blindly follows a literal cult leader to the point that Murphy even calls him a sheep.
    • Also is his dedication to Clarke because he has feelings for her? It is shown that he was deeply hurt by her decision to leave after Mount Weather and he also risked his life to try and save her from the Ice Nation despite the fact that at the time he had a girlfriend back at Arkadia. He also willingly leaves his girlfriend again when he finds out that Clarke may be in danger. Raven while under A.L.I.E's control points this out to him by stating that he cares more about Clarke than he ever did for Gina.
  • Lexa: Did she really want peace between the Grounders and the Sky People or did she try to make peace because of her feelings for Clarke and if it wasn't for Clarke would she have just wiped out the Sky People along time ago? For example her desire to make the Sky People the 13th clan only came up when the Ice Nation started hunting Clarke and she could have attempted to do this before during the 3 month time skip, but this could be because the grounders consider Clarke to be the main leader of the Sky People and apparently as pointed out by Lexa they couldn't do the ceremony without her because of this and it seems she was also taking advantage of Clarke's new reputation after she irradiated Mount Weather which earned her respect among some Grounders.
  • Pike: A Pragmatic Hero who really just wanted to protect his people but in doing so made terrible unnecessary decisions that just made things worse or was he just so blinded by his hatred for the Ice Nation that he saw all Grounders as the enemy and used a tragic event as an excuse to justify killing them all? Or could it be a bit of both as it is shown that he does generally care about his people and he seems to have a grudging respect for grounders based on his interactions with Lincoln and Indra.
    • Also because of the later events of the season is it possible that he could have worked with the Grounders if the circumstances have been different? Evidence to this is he didn't seem to have any problems working with Indra when they were fighting A.L.I.E.
    • For an alternative interpretation on his death scene Click Here.
  • A.L.I.E's followers: It is implied that they probably weren't always under her full control because it is shown that they sometimes ask A.L.I.E questions about her creation and other things. It is also shown that A.L.I.E asks them for advice and it seems that they make their own decisions like for example Emori doesn't change her disfigurement in the City Of Light as she sees nothing wrong with it.
• Anchored Ship:
  • Clarke and Finn in Season 1.
  • Clarke and Lexa in Season 2 and the first few episodes of Season 3.
  • Jasper and Octavia in Season 1 until Lincoln is introduced and Octavia and Lincoln become an Official Couple.
• Angst? What Angst?: In Season 3, Ontari forces Murphy to have sex with her, threatening to kill him if he refuses. With the exception of a brief reference in Season 4, that event is never mentioned again during the rest of the series, and Murphy does not appear to feel any trauma.
• Arc Fatigue: Reactions to the arc in the first half of Season 3 really showed that fans were tired of the Sky People/Grounders conflict that's been going on since Season 1, especially how it repeatedly gets restarted by a character making a irrational decision.
• Ass Pull:
  • Octavia is stabbed in a fight with Echo, and then falls hundreds of feet. She survives this because... she just does, with zero explanation. Even the characters comment on this, with some saying the only possibility is divine intervention.
  • Harper abruptly declaring that she's tired of fighting and joining Jasper's suicide club, leading to Monty staying with her. Many fans pointed out that it reeks of the writing crew realizing that with Jasper long having been The Scrappy, the only way anyone would care about this storyline was to contrive a way to get someone they did like involved.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Clarke as some fans hate her for her occasional hypocrisy over other character's actions when she ends up doing worse things. Also some fans just don't like her as a main character, find her annoying, or feel that she's a Designated Hero because of her dark choices, particularly the choice to irradiate Mount Weather that not only resulted in the deaths of the antagonists but the deaths of children and other innocent people, basically wiping out a whole group of people just to save a few of her people. Though she is one of the most popular characters on the show because of her willingness to make dark decisions, which made her an interesting Anti-Hero. She also got even more popular when she is revealed to be bisexual, making her the first lead bisexual character on the CW and on network television.
    • Some fraction of viewers also felt that Clarke putting aside her usual vitriol toward people who put her people in harm's way, and forgiving Lexa enough to start a relationship with her, is extremely out of character and was only done in order to give Clarke the aforementioned badge of 'first bi main.' Speculatively, the producers might have thrown in Clarke's one night stand with a random female grounder in Season 3 to somewhat deflect the feeling that Lexa was a token lesbian relationship.
    • Her actions in Season 5 really split the fandom. Some thought her Mama Bear tendencies justified some of her more hypocritical actions, while others felt there was no justification for leaving Bellamy, Indra, and Gaia to die then teaming up with Mc Creary. The fact that she resorted to physical violence to control Madi also divided viewers.
    • Her Mama Bear tendencies also led to her decision to kill Bellamy in Season 7, which really angered some fans, though others felt it was justified.
  • Bellamy, particularly after his actions in Season 3 where some fans hate him now and feel his actions are irredeemable and that he should eventually die because of what he did while other fans feel he has redeemed himself or that he eventually will. Also his actions also had fans debating whether or not it was out of character for him to make the decisions he did given that in the second season he seemed to learn how to work with grounders and to not always choose the option of violence and because of this some fans felt it was an Ass Pull for Bellamy to suddenly go back to the antagonistic person he was in Season 1 and that the motivation for his actions was not enough to justify his sudden change of character. Other fans however feel that his actions were in character for him because of not only how he was in the first season, but also how Bellamy hasn't had very many positive experiences with the Grounders and they accept the explanation that his actions were partly motivated by the trauma from what he went through in Mount Weather and the decision with Clarke to wipe out all the Mountain People.
    • Bellamy betraying his friends once again in Season 7 by joining the Disciples was the final nail in the coffin for some fans. Some felt that it was out of character for him given that he had previously mocked the cult. Others felt it was entirely in character for him to be a follower (see Alternative Character Interpretation). Upon his death, half the fandom were in mourning while the other half were celebrating.
  • Lexa, because even though she has become one of the most popular characters on the show, there are fans that hate or dislike her. Some fans hate her for her decisions in Season 2 which included convincing Clarke to not warn a village and her mother and friends about a coming missile attack which almost got them killed and later attempting to have Octavia killed because she figured out what happened with the missile in an attempt to keep her silent. Overall she was hated for her decision to abandon Clarke and the others because of her deal with Mount Weather to have the Grounder prisoners released. Some fans also don't like her popularity feeling that she's not that good of character or that she's only popular because of her sexuality. She became more of a base breaker after the controversy surrounding her fate in Season 3 which is addressed in Broken Base and other tropes below.
  • Abby as fans do like her character and the actress playing her, but some fans hate her because of her overprotective nature of Clarke keeping her from getting things done and just like the other adults refusing to listen to the advice of the 100 when it comes to surviving on the ground because of them being teenagers/young adults. Though she does get better with taking advice from the 100 and letting Clarke do what she needs to do later on.
  • Jasper is considered The Scrappy on the show because of his occasional jerkass behavior and how his actions tend to make things worse, but he does have his fans because of his humor and his friendship with Monty and/or they like the actor who plays him.
  • The mysterious Luna became this in Season 3 when Titus reveals that she is a nightblood and another candidate to replace Lexa as the Commander. This lead to debates from fans about whether or not she would turn out to be Lexa's twin sister or a former lover who could become a potential love interest for Clarke, but both these theories are disproved when she is introduced as there is a male grounder who is implied to be her lover and she is older than Lexa and played by a different actress who doesn't look like her. Though Luna being a pacifist has also divided some fans as some feel that it makes her a more interesting character among characters who mostly use violence to solve their problems and how she calls them on it, while other fans are annoyed about it since she refuses to help Clarke and the others because of it and it is shown that she could have helped defeat A.L.I.E more sooner and because pacifists on TV tend to come off as idiots to viewers like for example Morgan on The Walking Dead who's refusal to kill unintentionally caused problems for the protagonists. Though the character was generally praised when she didn't hesitate to break her Thou Shall Not Kill code the moment a child was threatened, while her reaction to the decision showed why she lived by that code and made her final decision to still refuse to become the commander more understandable. She also helped herself a lot with her return in Season 4, where she fully acknowledges how much she screwed everyone over and says they would be justified in refusing to help with her people's medical crisis. And then she's eventually just made into a straight villain anyway.
• Broken Base:
  • Lexa's death: many fans hated her death scene, where she was accidentally shot a few moments after having sex for the first time with Clarke, which they saw as a blatant example of the Bury Your Gays trope. The hatred was also because of how anti-climactic her death was, with fans feeling she should have had a more badass climactic death like going down fighting. Other fans didn't have a problem with her death or how she died feeling that it went with the Anyone Can Die nature of the show and that not all deaths of a popular character need to be climatic or epic and they also accept that the character was killed off because of the actress leaving the show for another show and her schedule only allowing her to film a few episodes to close out the character's story. There are also some fans who are glad she died because of her betrayal in Season 2 or because they didn't like the show focusing on her and/or her relationship with Clarke and taking away screen time from other fan favorite characters.
    • Related to the above, there is some debate whether or not her death should fall under the Bury Your Gays trope because part of the reason she was killed off was because of her actress leaving the show and that the show still has a bisexual female main character and a gay male couple that are still alive; also another lesbian/bisexual female Grounder character was introduced earlier in the season and there could be other LGBT characters yet to be introduced or other characters already on the show that could turn out to be gay or bi. Though as stated above it is considered this trope because of the way she died not why she died and she was also the only major lesbian character on the show. So even if she died another way, her death would probably still fall under bury your gays as the trope pretty much considers the death of all lesbians as this since the other name for bury your gays is dead lesbian syndrome. Though the writers and show-runners argue that they didn't kill her off because she was a lesbian, but the counter argument to this was that even if they didn't kill her off for that reason, her death in the show was the result of a man who didn't approve of her relationship with another woman. Though of course his problem with the relationship wasn't because she was woman, but because of how their relationship was influencing her to make decisions that he and their people didn't agree with, which could have potentially gotten her killed by her people.
    • There is also debate on whether or not Lexa had to die despite Alycia Debnam-Carey leaving the show, as a lot of fans feel that they should have just kept her alive and left it open for the character to return if the actress was ever willing to do so. The fact that the actress was shown filming the season finale on a set visit by fans and set photos which gave the impression that she would survive the season despite the actress leaving the show was another reason the fans were angry at her death, when she instead dies within 6 episodes and they felt they were lied to and that they were manipulated by the showrunners/producers. Though an counter argument to why she had to die besides the actress leaving is that she was to important to the plot of the show and too popular to just be put out of focus and only make appearances as a minor guest star character and there wasn't many plausible ways to keep her alive and keep her apart of the story while only making limited appearances or possibly no appearances at all.
    • Finally, some fans didn't agree with the negative fan reactions to her death which included fans stating they were done with the show, fans sending petitions to the network to try to get the show canceled, and some fans even sending death threats to the writers and producers. They feel that they went overboard with their reactions and they also state that the show was good before she got there and it still will be after.
    • Also, because of the events of the finale there is some debate about whether or not her return and exit makes up for the way she died because in the end, she is still dead. Even then there are fans that are petitioning for her to officially be brought Back from the Dead. Though others argue against this because for one thing there is no plausible way to bring her back since her body is burned and it has been established that the dead stay dead and her death would lose its meaning if they brought her back.
  • Lincoln's death: Some fans felt it was a good send off for the character to die in an Heroic Sacrifice and felt that his final moments were beautiful and well acted particularly his final moments with Octavia, while most fans hated his death or the fact that he even died because they felt the character wasn't given enough to do in the series and they also felt that the way he died (getting executed by gun shot in the head) is inappropriate because of the character being played by a black actor and the character being a victim of prejudice/racism for being a Grounder for most of Season 3. Another reason for the hatred was because the actor quit the show even before he was cast in another show, because he was being bullied on the set and he didn't agree with how the show was using his character and how a lot of his scenes were cut out in Season 2 when he was supposed to be a main character and the fans saw his death coming because of this. They also didn't like his death because they felt it was pointless and unnecessary and added nothing to the main plot.
  • Bellamy's death: Some fans felt he deserved it for once again betraying his friends. Others felt that the character deserved a better death than being shot by Clarke and left to die alone thinking his sister and friends all hated him.
  • Clarke and Bellamy: While a lot of fans want to see them become a couple, other fans feel that their relationship should stay platonic or they want the characters to end up with different people. Though after the controversy of Lexa's death some fans don't want her to end up with a man or some fans say that at least that they allow her to stay single for awhile before trying to develop a relationship between them to give her and the Lexa fans more time to grieve the death.
    • Clarke's decision to kill Bellamy in Season 7 caused a lot of divide even among fans of the ship, with many abandoning the ship once and for all. Some fans also felt that the show had baited them for seven seasons without any payoff as the relationship remained platonic.
  • Clarke and Lexa: Another popular ship, in the same vein as Bellarke except they are canon, which has resulted in Ship-to-Ship Combat among fans. Some fans turned against the pairing after Lexa's actions in Season 2, particularly her decision to abandon the Sky People at Mount Weather, or felt the show focused too much on their relationship in Seasons 2 and 3. Fans are also divided on whether or not Clarke and Lexa should have had sex because of the fact that Lexa dies a few moments after. Some fans feel that the show shouldn't have teased them becoming an Official Couple if they were just going to kill her off, while other fans felt it went with the tragedy of Clarke's story. Other fans didn't like the hook up because they felt Lexa was easily forgiven for her betrayal at Mount Weather or that Clarke forgave her too soon based on how angry she was at her over it and that it was rushed just so Clarke could be with Lexa before she dies. Though in the end their relationship is another reason why Lexa's death is hated as not a lot of female same-sex couples get happy endings in movies and TV shows and fans wanted this couple to be one of the few couples that did.
    • Lexa was confirmed to be Clarke's One True Love in the series finale. Some fans felt this was a good send-off for the relationship, while others didn't like that Clarke never got to move on even years after Lexa's death.
  • Season 3: Some fans enjoyed it or others thought it was good but they didn't think it was as good as Season 2 or Season 1. While other fans hated it for the way it handled the deaths of two popular characters, the Bellamy/Pike story arc, the plot feeling rushed, or the season having more Science Fiction elements because of the A.L.I.E story arc, preferring the show to be more focused on survival.
• Cargo Ship: Lexa/Candles took off like a forest fire when fans noticed how she literally cannot be in a seen indoors without a large number of them around.
  • Clarke and the A.L.I.E 2/The Flame Chip ship that the shippers are calling Clip. It helps that The Flame Chip contains Lexa's spirit, Clarke is shown to be very protective of it and she freaks out when Jasper almost destroys it.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Even many fans who hated Bellamy's story in Season 3 greatly enjoyed it when he finally turns on Pike, but by this time he's so thoroughly alienated all the characters who didn't blindly go along with slaughtering every Grounder they saw that they didn't trust him at first but they later do eventually forgive him or at least they are able to trust him again except for Octavia who's only working with him to take on A.L.I.E but makes it clear that she may never forgive him for his actions leading to Lincoln's death.
    • Some fans thought it was deserved when Octavia gave him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown after what happened to Lincoln and when she and other characters call him out on his actions when he still had a I Did What I Had to Do attitude about the massacre despite turning on Pike and eventually breaks out of this after getting it from A.L.I.E controlled Raven and Niylah who's father was in the massacre.
  • Two big ones in the Season 3 finale with Lexa being brought back and she is given the death/exit most fans feel she should have had in the first place, and Pike getting killed by Octavia for what he did to Lincoln.
• Complete Monster: Seasons 6 & 7: Malachi kom Sangedakru, better known as Sheidheda, was a Commander known for his savage brutality who led his forces to massacre all those who refused to bow to him. Slaughtering many before his downfall, Sheidheda returned to corrupt the girl Madi, swaying her to evil while plotting to dispose of her before returning in a new body. Killing all those in his rise to power and launching a campaign of genocide and torture, Sheidheda even attempts to instigate a final brutal war to massacre all those who stand in his way at his rise to ultimate power.
• Crack Pairing:
  • The Bellamy/Luna ship because they haven't even talked to each other, except for when he was trying to tell her about A.L.I.E.
  • There was also Lexa/Octavia and Lexa/Raven.
  • Bellamy/Echo because of the role she played in his girlfriend Gina's death and their interactions with each other only dealt with each other saving the life of the other and having hostility with each other because of being Sky Person and Grounder.
    • Becomes canonical in Season 5.
  • Bellamy/Murphy
  • There was a surprisingly high number of people who shipped Raven/Anya together (most likely due to them both being Ensemble Darkhorses). This is in spite of the fact that, aside from Anya being part of the team send to kill Raven and the rest of The 100 in Season 1, the two have never actually met and Anya dies partway into Season 2 anyway.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • The Grounders in their first appearances on the show because of how mysterious they were.
  • In Seasons 1 and 2, the Reapers because of even the Grounders being afraid of them and how scary they were.
  • A.L.I.E for how cold and calculating she was and being able to have someone tortured or killed without a second thought and even how close she came to winning.
  • The people who were under A.L.I.E's control because of their inability to feel pain and how persistent they were.
    • Particularly Raven when A.L.I.E takes full control of her and how she almost sounds exactly like A.L.I.E when she speaks through her and her breaking speeches to Jasper, Clarke, and Bellamy.
    • Jaha who acts as her main recruiter in the season and was very successful in doing so, special mention to how badass it was in the finale when he blocked and took all of Pike's hits like it was nothing and Pike has to resort to restraining him to keep him from getting to Clarke.
    • Jasper who falls under her control in the last three episodes of the season because of his dark humor.
• Crossover Ship: Clarke getting shipped with Alicia Clark from Fear the Walking Dead is rather popular due to Lexa's actress, Alycia Debnam-Carey, also playing Alicia and the circumstances of their "break-up" in this show. There's even what-ifs where it's a Reincarnation Romance with Eliza Taylor playing a The Walking Dead universe version of Clarke named Elyza Lex.
  • Three of the top 10 f/f ships on AO 3 for Marvel Comics are shipping Clarke with a woman from Marvel comics (Natasha Romanoff, Yelena Belova, and Wanda Maximoff).
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Fans of the books were livid when it was revealed that Clarke's love interest was going to be a Canon Foreigner, Finn, instead of Bellamy like in the books. Once the show aired, Bellamy/Clarke shippers were already demonizing Finn as a Jerkass, despite him being presented as a Nice Guy, and even wrote fanfics that killed him off in extremely vicious ways. Things only got worse when season two had him kill a village of grounders and introduced Lexa (Clarke's new and far more popular love interest), which led to many Clarke/Lexa shippers also demonizing Finn, notably portraying him as homophobic despite little to no evidence of this.
  • Costia gets demonized by Clarke/Lexa shippers for having been in a relationship with Lexa in the past. There are several AUs that portray her as alive and turn her into an abusive girlfriend. This is despite, from all that we hear about her, her seemingly having been a lovely person who brought out a softer side of Lexa and already being long dead by the time we meet Lexa.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Anya was rather popular with viewers and some wish that she wasn't killed off and that she became a main character.
  • Echo the grounder who was helping Bellamy in Mount Weather in Season 2 is popular with some fans and even has some shipping her with him. She is also getting a bigger role in Season 4 because of this after only appearing in three episodes in the previous seasons.
  • Lexa who became a Breakout Character in Season 2 for being a badass and being one of the few well developed lesbian characters on TV which made her popular with the LGBT community and when her death caused controversy she became more popular, even to people who don't even watch the show.
  • Lincoln in Season 1 for his relationship with Octavia and being one of the few peaceful Grounders introduced on the show and of course being a badass and fans were happy that he became a main character in Season 2.
  • Luna who is mentioned several times in the series by Lincoln is introduced in Season 3 as a Badass Pacifist. However, her popularity fell off over the course of the show, and she eventually became a Base-Breaking Character.
  • Indra who was introduced in Season 2 as fans liked it that she became an ally to the others and their fans of Adina Porter the actress playing her.
  • Monty, due to be a genuinely Nice Guy who hasn't done anything terrible since arriving on Earth, at least not until the Season 2 finale.
  • Sinclair for his Father and Daughter/Mentor relationship with Raven and being one of the few helpful adults on the show.
  • Raven who became popular with fans with her introduction in Season 1 and became a main character.
  • Miller and Harper who started out as minor characters and are now major recurring characters and Miller became more popular as the first confirmed gay male character on the show and Harper is popular for just how much stuff she has survived and gone through and her new relationship with Monty.
  • Roan because of his chemistry with the other characters, being a badass, and having an interesting story arc and back story. Also being played by Zach McGowan who his known for his role on Black Sails.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Many fans felt the conclusion of the series was rather depressing, despite being ostensibly upbeat. Many believe that the concept of Transcendence in the series finale is not much different from the City of Light in Season 3, something that had been portrayed as wrong. Furthermore, as explained here, many feel the implications of the ending are very sinister or even an outright example of The Bad Guy Wins.
• Fandom Rivalry: A nasty one with Fear the Walking Dead after its shooting schedule changed and forced The 100 to kill off Lexa when Alycia Debnam-Carey was suddenly made unavailable. Especially since her character on that show is a Base-Breaking Character in contrast to the hugely popular Lexa.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • At the end of the Season 4 finale the story jumps ahead to six years after the Praimfaya hit and devastated most of the world. During that time Clarke was by herself raising a Nightblood girl named Madi on the surface, Bellamy, Raven, Monty, Echo, Emori, Murphy and Harper are on The Ark and Octavia is the leader of (seemingly) the last pocket of humanity inside a bunker. While many questions will no doubt be answered next season there is plenty of room until then to have characters pair up with one another, have kids, or just survive in enclosed spaces within their new environments.
  • An bunch of AU stories have Raven as Clarke's adopted sister.
    • Lexa or other characters never had their canonical deaths is also a big one.
  • The final episode of the series sees humanity achieve transcendence with the exception of Clarke who is denied entry and her closest friends who decide to reject transcendence to be with her. There is plenty of materiel for what their final days on Earth would be like. Bonus points for using transcendence to bring back dead characters such as Bellamy or Lexa in order to round out the happy ending especially for Clarke.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Bellamy/Clarke, or Bellarke, have been the juggernaut pairing of the show since Season 1, despite Word of God repeatedly stating that their relationship is platonic. Their actors, Bob Morley and Eliza Taylor, having secretly dated and then gotten married while working on the show at least indicates that fans aren't nuts for having noticed the chemistry.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • To a large portion of the fanbase, Season 3 is non existent on account of the problematic tropes such as Lexa's death.
  • Many fans will tell you that Season 7 did not happen or that it isn't canon, on account of the problematic pacing, the new villains stealing precious screentime from the heroes, Clarke killing off Bellamy and the Esoteric Happy Ending.
  • Many fans prefer to consider Season 5 as the final season of the series, as it ends with humanity arriving on a new planet, with a hopeful future ahead of them, and Clarke and Bellamy alive and still friends.
  • Some fans won't acknowledge the last two episodes of season 2 due to the developments that lead to the main characters killing the innocent and likable Mountain Men along with the guilty ones.
• Faux Symbolism:
  • The "City of Light" name and concept evokes some sort of Paradise or Heaven. There, there is no suffering, no pain. You are a servant of A.L.I.E. Or perhaps, you are A.L.I.E.
  • You are fed a Key by ingesting it like Communion bread.
  • While it was already a thing with the Grounders, crucifixion becomes a lot more common in Polis once she takes it over. Isn't that right, Kane?
  • When the group tries to get rid of her influence on Raven, it's rather similar to the idea of exorcising a demon from someone's body. It even gets described as such by Rothenberg.
  • If you put your faith in A.L.I.E., she will (supposedly) save you from a much worse fate.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Josephine seems to admire Clarke as a person, and to really admire Clarke's body. 'Course, she happens to be wearing Clarke's body at the time.
• Growing the Beard: Many viewers agree that the first few episodes of the show are not its strongest. The pilot in particular suffers from exposition overload, cheesy dialogue, and cringe-worthy situations. Thankfully, fans agree that things get a lot better around the second half of Season 1, when the character development, themes, and world-building find their footing.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Lexa's death and the media attention her death brought to the Bury Your Gays Trope after more lesbian/bisexual female TV characters got killed off in other TV shows and also gave more attention to the others that have died before her.
    • Two characters that got killed off were a lesbian couple on The Vampire Diaries, another show on the CW and one of the network's other series Arrow also got accused of invoking the Bury Your Gays Trope when they killed off Sara Lance before this and resurrected her to earn back fans.
    • Also the fact that she died from getting shot after the Orlando mass shooting at an LGBT nightclub and when you consider how big of a deal her death was and still is to the LGBT community before the tragedy.
  • JESUS does omon gon oson ("all of me for all of us"), a phrase introduced early in Season 5, become this after 5.11 "The Dark Year."
• He Really Can Act:
  • Richard Harmon had been a staple of TV Sci-Fi for several years before this series, with entries such as Continuum and Caprica, where he mostly stuck to playing the Emo Teen characters. But in Season 2, he finally was given a chance to show off his impeccable comic timing, and critics were quick to start praising him.
  • While Lindsey Morgan was always popular as Raven, she reached a whole new level in Season 3 when Raven is possessed by A.L.I.E., letting Morgan do an eerily exact replica of Erica Cerra's voice as A.L.I.E, to the point that some viewers were convinced Cerra was dubbing her.
  • No one doubted Eliza Taylor's talents as an actress on the series, but her performance in Season 6, when the villain Josephine stole Clarke's body and tries to pretend to be her to deceive her friends was on a completely different level.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • With the confirmation that Clarke is bisexual, it's pretty fun to re-watch the scene from the pilot where she's just as slack-jawed as all the guys at Octavia taking off her pants in public.
  • With Legends of Tomorrow having Sara Lance as a main character and Clarke being confirmed to be a bisexual, it means that The CW has two lead female bisexual characters that are blonde.
  • Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos) and Murphy (Richard Harmon) both guest starred on the show Fringe in the same episode.
  • Lexa becoming an Artificial Intelligence as a result of her death when (recently) ironically three other lesbian/female bisexual characters in other shows have a similar fate. In the Person of Interest the lesbian character performs a Heroic Sacrifice and the Machine takes on her voice and personality. In the series Black Mirror episode Black Mirror: San Junipero, two women fall in love in a virtual world and their deaths allow them to become apart of it forever which becomes more hilarious when Clarke/Lexa fans started making fan-fics based on that episode's "happy ending" for the couple. Also doubles as Harsher in Hindsight because of the 2016 controversy of the Bury Your Gays trope.
  • Echo always having a bruised and bloody face in her limited appearances becomes hilarious when she is shown clear faced in the Season 4 trailer and most of the websites and fans thought that she was a new character because they didn't recognize her.
  • When they first arrive on Earth, the citizens of the Ark are always utterly amazed beyond belief by simple, mundane things like rain, rivers, the smell of the Earth, or seeing animals in the wild.... After the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, however, it's hardly unusual for people now to be amazed whenever they're able to go outside and enjoy the world outside the walls of their homes too.
• Ho Yay:
  • Clarke and Raven who became close friends after Raven gets over what happened between Clarke and Finn. A particular scene showing this is when Clarke tells her that she would choose her and Raven responds of course you would I'm awesome. Then of course Clarke later turns out to be bisexual but their relationship is still platonic as Raven appears to be straight.
  • In the first episode, Cece calls Abby 'Darling'.
  • Wells and Bellamy, Bellamy admits to liking Wells and seems protective of him in the first few episodes. He stops Murphy from attacking him and even points out how similar they are in that they both came down to Earth to protect the people that they love.
    • Take this one how you will, but they turn out to be brothers in the books.
  • Miller is the 100's resident grump and it's odd for him to be on screen and not making snarky comments. So it was hard for a majority of the fans to not notice the ear-to-ear grin Miller cracks after a heartfelt talk with Monty in 2x07.
    • Miller is later confirmed as gay and to have a boyfriend in Season 3, while Monty enters a relationship with Harper.
  • Bob Morley (Bellamy) has (jokingly?) suggested that he ships Murphy/Bellamy. Joking or not, he wouldn't be the only one.
    • The two of them reuniting in Season 3's penultimate episode, and saving each others lives.
  • Raven and Luna in Season 4. Raven is the one who at least temporarily convinced Luna that the human race was still worth saving. Luna returns the favor by teaching Raven a meditation technique to help with her brain damage. Said technique involves holding Raven gently and murmuring prayers while rocking back and forth and pressing their cheeks together.
  • Raven and Echo, upon meeting again on the ground, use terms like "my girl" in talking to each other.

I-P

• Jerkass Woobie
  • Murphy is this because well he started Season 1 as a sadistic bully which leads to him getting accused of killing Wells and some of the 100 try to hang him and when he tries to hang the real culprit Charlotte who the others didn't want to hang because of her being just a child, this ends up getting him banished. Later he gets tortured by the grounders and gets sent back to the camp to spread a virus among the 100. He becomes helpful during this time and is accepted back but he ruins it by taking revenge on those who tried to hang him and ends up fleeing the camp only to get captured by the Grounders again. Though in Season 2 it is revealed that he was the way he was because of what happened to his parents and he learns from the error of his ways and actually does try to help the others this time but everyone is still angry at him for his earlier actions including Raven who he shot during his revenge spree which resulted in her spine injury. This of course leads him to traveling with Jaha to find the City Of Light as he knows that the others will never trust him again. At the end of Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3 is when he really becomes this trope when he gets locked up in a room for 3 months and almost commits suicide when he runs out of food. Though when he gets out he starts a relationship with Emori the grounder he encountered on his travels with Jaha only to end up getting arrested by Grounders because he was doing con jobs on them. Then he gets tortured by Titus for information and Titus attempts to frame him for Clarke's murder. Then of course that fails leading to Lexa's death and Ontari becoming pretend commander. He then has to keep her happy to make sure she doesn't kill him and him technically getting raped by her constantly since he tried to refuse her because he was with Emori but she threatened to kill him if he didn't. He is later reunited with Emori but she turns out to have been chipped by A.L.I.E and she betrays him and gets him locked up. Then of course he later has to work with Pike who beat him up in class when they were on the Ark. Because of these things he went through in Season 3 your just happy for him at the end of the season when Emori is released from A.L.I.E's control and they hug just happy to be reunited with each other.
  • Jasper is a woobie which he is listed in below but he is also this because of how he was acting in the first season after becoming popular for shooting at the grounders. Also his behavior in Season 3 where he becomes a drunk because of what happened to Maya and Mount Weather in Season 2.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Clarke and Bellamy are shipped with everyone in fandom, both male and female characters.
  • Lexa was shipped with only female characters, but got her share of the attention.
• LGBT Fanbase: In Season 2, the show garnered positive attention from the LGBT community because of the relationship between Lexa and Clarke which revealed Clarke to be bisexual and the first bisexual lead character on network TV. Generally Lexa gained the most popularity from the community for being an interesting character and her being a lesbian being treated as a casual thing. Though in Season 3, the show lost many of the LGBT fans because of Lexa's death and how it was handled, but the attention did make the character more popular with many wanting her to be brought back from the dead or at least make appearances in flashbacks or another plausible way.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Clarke and Bellamy when they torture Lincoln which they did in order to find a cure for a poison that's killing Finn.
  • Also Clarke killing that Grounder in Season 1 though justified by the fact she was trying to escape so that she can save Finn but it is the first time she straight up murders somebody as the first time she killed somebody it was a Mercy Kill and being emotionless when she gives him the "shh" gesture while he falls to the floor dying and later along with the others burning up 300 grounders to defend themselves.
    • There is also when, along with Lexa, she doesn't inform everybody in the village that a missile is about to hit and of course when she irradiates Mount Weather by pulling a switch with Bellamy and kills everyone including the children and including the earlier mercy kill of Finn and the guilt of every thing she has done ends up leading to her decision to not return to Camp Jaha and live out into the woods.
  • Finn caging up Grounder villagers and then slaughtering eighteen of them when they tried to escape. Subverted because it is implied that he was in a PTSD state when he started shooting and as noted he started shooting because one of them tried to escape but the second one was because he was attempting to attack Finn as a result of the first one's death and it causes mass panic that results in all them trying to escape or attack Finn and in his state he just kept shooting until Clarke arrives to snap him out of it and of course the reason he was on edge in the first place was because he was told that the village was holding Clarke captive by a grounder who wanted revenge on the village and to get Finn to stop torturing him. He ends up feeling guilty about this and it is part of the reason he turns himself into the Grounders who were ready to wipe out the Sky People because they wouldn't turn him in for what he did.
  • Tsing was already straddling the line before, but she takes a flying leap over it when the President gets locked away. She stops playing nice and takes them one-by-one, killing them for bone marrow extraction.
  • If Cage creating Reapers by injecting Grounders with a drug to make them murderous cannibals didn't push him over the line, then staging a coup so that he can forcibly remove the bone marrow from the teens definitely does.
  • Tsing and Cage justify their actions as trying to find a cure for their people's illness and being on a deadline because of radiation leaks. But they are not really justified because they basically enslaved Grounders as Reapers. Killed their 100 captives brutally, just to speed up production of the cure. They had a method to cure the populace that would not kill the 100 but decided it would take too long. Deciding to kidnap more of them to literally butcher them for marrow for their own convenience. In fact another reason they where on a deadline was because their actions forced a Grounder/ 100 alliance and as noted by Kane, the Sky People would have volunteered if asked and they didn't ask just because of the possibility they would say no.
  • Pike ordering (and helping carry out) the murder of 299 Trikru Grounders who were there to protect them in cold blood and in "Bitter Harvest", after being told that Lexa would not start a war over his massacre, he doesn't take the reprieve as the one-shot blessing he's been given, and moves right into deciding to take a Grounder village's land to use it for farm land. Then he sentences Kane to be executed because Kane attempted to kidnap him and turn him into the Grounders and he later executes Lincoln who stays behind after Kane and the others escape because Pike threatened to kill the other Grounders prisoners if one of them didn't surrender. Subverted when he later helps in the fight against A.L.I.E and his murder of the Grounders is partially justified by his bad experiences with the Ice Nation that made him distrustful of all Grounders and he believed that they were secretly planning to attack and as stated he sentenced Kane to be executed because he attempted to kidnap him and Lincoln was probably a show of force to show he means business though his killing of Lincoln is what leads to his death.
  • Bellamy participating in the massacre of the 299 Trikru grounders sent to protect Arkadia and supporting Pike's anti grounder movement. It is eventually Inverted when he turns against Pike and eventually sees the errors in his choices even then his actions are some what justified by the fact that he wasn't in his right mind because of his grief over the deaths of many people and someone he cared about and his guilt for what he did with Clarke in Mount Weather when they killed the whole population and really not having too many positive experiences with the Grounders to begin with which includes the fact that they have killed several of his people and Lexa abandoning them at Mount Weather that lead to him and Clarke making that decision in the first place.
    • Before this in Season 1, there is his attempt to kill Jaha and on the ground telling everyone they can do whatever they want and convincing them to take off their wristbands making the Ark think that they died from radiation and destroying Raven's radios which ends preventing them from stopping the killing of 300 people on the Ark to save life support and led to them shooting flares to try to contact the Ark and the flares end up destroying a village which ends up making the conflict with the grounders worse. Though these actions are justified by the fact he did these things for his sister Octavia to protect her from the Ark's harsh laws and protect himself from getting punished for what he did to Jaha. Also what he did to Jaha was part of a deal so he could get on the drop-ship with Octavia to either die with her so she won't die alone or to be their to protect her on the ground if it turned out to be survivable.
  • Jaha not even hesitating to sacrifice one of his disciples to a hungry sea monster is viewed as such by Murphy and when you consider that awhile back he was willing to sacrifice himself so that his people could get to the earth and he also didn't enjoy enforcing the laws of the Ark and started going against them in the end.
    • Then in Season 3 he becomes loyal to A.L.I.E and participates in torture and forcing and manipulating people into taking her chip and falling under her control but this is justified by the fact he is under her control too but he was the first one to take the chip and the one who found her in the first place and it is implied that he made some of the decisions on his own.
  • A.L.I.E's was when she caused the nuclear strike that destroyed the Earth in the first place and in Season 3 when she mentally tortures Raven in submitting to her because before this she mostly got people to do what she wanted by talking to them through Jaha and getting them to voluntarily taking her chip, but after torturing Raven she generally just starts threatening and torturing people to get her way.
  • Ontari was when she killed all the nightblood children in their sleep.
  • Octavia in the Season 3 finale when she killed Pike because yes he did kill Lincoln but he did save her life and even then it was straight up cold blooded murder as he wasn't a threat anymore and Kane and the others probably could have still turned him over to the Grounders to make peace. Even then she just did it to make herself feel better and other people she has killed in the past have mostly been in self defense/defense of others and during war. It is also hinted that this may be a Start of Darkness for her in Season 4.
  • Clarke in "Die All, Die Merrily," when she takes the bunker while the 12 clans are distracted by the conclave, moves Skaikru inside, and seals the door. In doing so, she leaves Octavia, Kane, Monty, Raven, Murphy, and a handful more of her own people to die. To top it all off, she had Bellamy drugged, abducted, and dragged inside the bunker without his knowledge before shutting it, because she wanted him to survive, despite knowing how he would react to Octavia being left behind.
  • Octavia, in Season 5, for several reasons: first, she allows Cooper to experiment on Wonkru people to generate more mutated worms for biological warfare against Diyoza's criminal group in Eden. Then, as the strain of realizing she might never be truly free of the bunker wears on her, as well as the fact that fissures are forming within Wonkru threatening her command, in a last act of spite, and to regain control, she burns down the entire hydroponics section of the bunker even though Monty had proven it could be regenerated. Finally, the origin of the phrase "all of me for all of us" is shown in The Dark Year when she begins — albeit under great stress and after repeated attempts at verbal persuasion — to kill people to force the rest of Wonkru into cannibalism.
  • Abby in Season 5 pushed Octavia into enforcing "full compliance", hinting that she needed to force Kane, in particular, to eat the "meat" that was being provided during the Dark Year. Her insistence on having Octavia shoulder that burden had lasting effects on her, pushing Octavia to become Blodreina over increasingly macabre death matches in the fighting pits.
  • In Season 6, the leaders of Sanctum, Russell and Simone, jump well past the horizon when they take advantage of Clarke having been immobilized by one of the Children of Gabriel spies in order to implant a chip which completely overwrites her entire brain, in effect "killing" Clarke and replacing her with Josephine Lightbourne. It's especially hypocritical because even Russell objects to some of Josephine's ideas, primarly because she doesn't think consent needs to be obtained for her mad plans to breed more "royal bloods".
• Narm:
  • The Wilhelm Scream when a Grounder steps on a mine in the Season 1 finale. You'd think that particular sound wouldn't be used this straight anymore, but no.
    • Then they used it again during the battle for the gorge in Season 5's "Damocles Part 1"
  • Clarke telling Lexa to "go float yourself". On its own the term is rather ridiculous, but it becomes even more unintentionally hilarious when you realize that Lexa, being a Grounder, would have no clue as to what the hell that term even means.
  • The near Villain Sue levels reached by Emerson in Episode 3x12 as he effortlessly captures every single remaining hero. The way most of it happens off-screen is like the show admitting that there's no way it would actually be plausible if we could see it. And the bits we do see of it are so cheesy and nonsensical they could've come straight from a mediocre horror movie: wearing a Halloween skull mask, sneaking up on his victims while they're telling ghost stories, luring others with a "sinister" music-box toy, POV shots with Emerson's night-vision goggles...
  • Kane and Pike bizarrely disappearing for several episodes as they're apparently just wandering around in the woods on their way to Polis. Meanwhile, Jaha manages to get there in just one episode, and after starting from further away than they were.
  • The slow, somber version of "Radioactive" at the end of Episode 3x13. Comparisons of "America, Fuck Yeah" are rather apt.
  • Octavia when she did a battle cry scream and her defeated scream when she thought that Luna's clan was long gone because it just looks unintentionally silly when she does that.
  • Season 4 pretty much makes a Running Gag about almost every episode having the supposed one last chance to survive the radiation be destroyed, until it just becomes impossible to take seriously when you know they'll just pull something else out of their ass so there's no point getting attached to whatever the current plan is.
• Nightmare Fuel: The yellow fog which is basically the fog from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, with the bonus of causing lesions inside your eyeballs.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Season 3 for the controversy of Lexa's death which caused some viewers to not even watch the rest of the season and the episodes that followed her death generally got negative reviews from viewers even from those who stopped watching. The final three episodes that were better received still got the same treatment from some of those viewers.
  • The episode she died is considered the worst episode in the history of the show by those viewers which is shown by its user rating on IMDb.
  • Also as stated before fans tried to get the show canceled and even sent death threats.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: Clarke and Bellamy’s relationship is supposedly platonic, but many fans see it otherwise. The two have a plethora of moments that could be seen as Ship Tease, good on-screen chemistry, and develop an incredibly close and strong bond such that they’re willing to die for each without a second thought, and prioritize saving one another over far more rational goals. Overall, the entire relationship comes off more as Unresolved Sexual Tension than two close friends.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • "Bellarke" (Bellamy and Clarke).
  • Also "Clexa" (Clarke and Lexa).
  • There's at least one for just about every romantic, sexual and platonic pairing on the show: Linctavia for Lincoln and Octavia; Braven, Rellamy and Ravenbell for Bellamy and Raven; Jonty for Jasper and Monty; Kabby for Kane and Abby; Minty for Miller and Monty; and Wicken and Ravick for Raven and Wick, among others.

R-Z

• Retroactive Recognition:
  • One of the unnamed delinquents in Season 1 is played by Manny Jacinto, who became one of the leads of The Good Place a couple of years later.
  • Zoran, a Season 2 One-Shot Character, becomes recognizable a year or so later to Stranger Things fans as Mike.
• The Scrappy:
  • Finn after massacring eighteen innocent grounder villagers. Even before this fans hated him for cheating on Raven with Clarke or/and that they also felt that he was a boring and not really interesting character because of him having a "nice guy" persona and up till Season 2 not showing very many flaws compared to the other characters. Even then some fans didn't like him because they wanted Clarke to end up with Bellamy or just didn't like them together.
  • Jasper is disliked by a decent portion of the fan-base, partly because fans feel like his Mount Weather story-line took the spotlight from less developed characters like Monty and Miller despite not being particularly interesting. The Season 3 premiere did not help his case, either. The amazing thing is that after the first two seasons he has plenty of Woobie points of his own to build a decent character with, yet some see him as such a monumental jackass about it all that it's difficult for them to have any sympathy for him.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • For quite a few fans Season 3 was when the show took a huge noise dive in quality thanks to many questionable behind the scenes reasons. Firstly despite building up a potential war between Azgeda and the other members of the Coalition the storyline is abruptly aborted three episodes in when the Ice Queen is killed off by Lexa, especially since she was established to be the one who killed Lexa's First Love Cosita. Instead that conflict is replaced by the much more divisive Pike storyline which many fans felt was just rehashing the same tired Sky People v. Grounder conflict already covered in the first two Seasons. Next were the infamous deaths of Lexa and Lincoln which was so abrupt and controversial that many fans left the show entirely. Finally the A.L.I.E. storylinge itself thanks to the introduction of an AI that's trying to take over the world. Fortunately Season 4 was considered to be a huge improvement.
  • Season 7 is this to many fans. First, because the pacing is very problematic for a final season, with the writers focusing on several episodes on secondary characters, while the protagonists Clarke and Bellamy suffer severely from Out of Focus (Bellamy even disappears completely from the first ten episodes due to the actor wanting some time off during filming). In addition, the over-focus in Sheidheda and Bill Cadogan, who are far from the most interesting villains of the series, and with the script forcing the heroes to act like complete idiots to justify the pair having staying alive, was also criticized. Finally, Clarke killing Bellamy was extremely divisive among the fandom, to say the least.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Somewhat infamously so between Bellarke and Clexa fans, to the point that it even devolved into name-calling in some circles ('Blarkes' versus 'Clexughs'). The conflict even continued into later seasons post-Lexa's death, with some Clexa shippers vocally supporting Bellamy/Echo solely because they felt it had a shot at finally sinking Bellarke. The final season of the show only reignited the ship wars further thanks to Clarke killing Bellamy after he joined the Disciples, in order to protect Madi.
  • It remains to be seen if the series finale has finally put this ship war to rest, with the revelation that Lexa was Clarke's greatest love after all.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The first few episodes are heavy on exposition and light on nuanced character development and drama.
• Special Effect Failure: The bunker hydrofarm burning behind Octavia is such a blatant greenscreen shot that it's hard to take what's supposed to be an emotionally devastating scene seriously.
• Spiritual Sequel: Due to the high level of cast-crossover and tonal similarities with both, it feels a whole lot like one of the Bad Future(s) seen in Continuum or a distant future following the events of Battlestar Galactica (2003). The media has also pointed out that it has elements of a Canadian Teen-version of Lost.
• Stoic Woobie
  • Anya when you consider that a lot of her people have gotten killed by the 100 either intentionally or unintentionally. A major one was when Clarke failed to save the life of her young second who was injured when the 100 blew up the bridge. Then she loses more people in the finale and would have got beaten to death by the 100 if Clarke didn't stop them only to get captured by Mount Weather and locked up in a cage to be experimented on. Then of course she escapes with Clarke and go through all that stuff with her which includes losing to her in a fist fight only to end up getting shot by a guard at Camp Jaha dying in front of Clarke.
  • Lexa is this because it was earlier revealed she had a girlfriend that was tortured and murdered by the Ice Nation Queen, then she finds out her old First(Anya) has died. Later her decision to abandon Clarke and the other Sky People at Mount Weather because she agreed to a deal to save the Grounder prisoners on the condition that she leaves with her army and lets Mount Weather continue their experiments on the Sky People leads to Clarke who she has developed feelings for to hate her and even spit in her face when they reunite months later. Then her later attempts to make peace between her and Clarke's people lead to the massacre of a peace-keeping force and it puts her at odds with her own people who were already at odds with her because of her desire to make peace with the Sky People, when Clarke convinces her not to retaliate in an attempt to end the Cycle of Revenge between the Sky People and the Grounders. This eventually leads to her accidentally getting shot and killed by her loyal advisor who was trying to kill Clarke and frame a sky person (Murphy) for her death in order to get Lexa to declare war on the Sky People and prevent her from possibly getting murdered by her own people and what makes this sadder is the fact that her and Clarke finally got together moments earlier after Clarke eventually forgave her for what happened at Mount Weather.
  • Indra because she has twice had to deal with the Sky People killing her people, the first time being Finn who killed 18 people in her village including her young second and she is later denied "Grounder justice" on him because of Clarke killing him instead and of course she is forced by Lexa to work them and of course the only one of them she came to care about was Octavia who she made her second, but she ends up removing her from the position when she disobeyed her to stay behind and save her brother. The second time is when Pike massacres the Trikru army she is apart of only sparing her but still injuring her. She then loses her will to fight because of being the only one who survived the massacre. She is then forced to work with Pike to take on A.L.I.E. Also later after saving a chipped Kane from an explosion she ends up getting crucified off-screen so she's probably going have some physical problems from that and her gun shot injuries later.
  • Lincoln who when he first got introduced is captured and tortured by the 100. Then later because of his relationship with Octavia and his desire to help the 100 becomes an outcast to his people and several circumstances continually separates him from Octavia. One of the major circumstances that separated them is getting captured by the reapers and being turned into one them by Mount Weather and becoming a mindless cannibal. Being cured of this was a painful process which included him having to die and having to have his heart started again by a shock lash and then he had to deal with his addiction to the red drug given by Mount Weather which led him to betraying Bellamy for one shot. Having been a reaper alienates him further from his people and attempting to go against Lexa's orders to abandon the Sky People ends up making him a prisoner to the grounders and when he escapes when Indra lets him go earns him a kill order forcing him to live with the Sky people in Season 3. Then, of course, Season 3 he starts having problems in his relationship with Octavia because she is angry with him for becoming more apart of the Sky People when she would rather have him and her live with his people. Later he has to deal with Farm Stations hatred against Grounders which results in some of them insulting him and even throwing objects at him and trying to pick fights with him. Then when Pike takes over the bullying intensifies and he is even locked up with his fellow grounders. This of course leads to his death when he escapes along with Kane and others but ends up staying and sacrificing himself so that Pike won't kill the other prisoners and has to say goodbye to Octavia.
  • Roan who gets banished by his own mother and it is shown that she cares more about her country and gaining power than about him. He also has to work for his mother's enemy Lexa who is the reason his mother banished him to get the banishment lifted by capturing Clarke who attempts to kill him several times and when he finally gets her to Polis, Lexa goes back on her word and locks him up. His mother later has him fight Lexa to the death and when he loses cares more that he lost her the throne then the fact that Lexa is possibly about to kill him and even tells him in that moment that if he dies he dies a coward, so it is no wonder he doesn't seem to care that Lexa kills her instead of him and makes him the king. Then he later gets shot trying to help Clarke take on A.L.I.E and possibly gets tortured off-screen, so pretty much this guy has had a hard time the moment he was introduced on the show.
  • Luna, a member of Lexa's Conclave, who was forced to kill her friends around her and is strongly implied to have been forced to kill her own brother during said Conclave. After witnessing the brutality of the Conclave she abandoned Polis and was branded a traitor as a result. Afterwards she became the leader of the pacifistic Boat People and swore off violence forever. Unfortunately all that changed when Clarke and company came to give her the Flame which let to A.L.I.E. taking over the minds of some of her people and forcing her to break her oath in order to save a child's life including killing her own lover. When she reappears in Season 4 it's revealed that she and her people are suffering from acute radiation poisoning due to ingesting irradiated fish and that only a handful off her people are still alive and have to ask Clarke and co to save them. In private Luna wonders if the death of her people is punishment for her refusal to accept the Flame. Afterwards she tries to have her people treated but they are to far gone and she ends up tenderly holding a dying child who couldn't be saved from radiation sickness. Too twist the knife in further it turns out that her Nightblood makes her The Immune to the radiation and thereby forcing her to become the Sole Survivor of her people.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Raven under A.L.I.E.'s influence gives Jasper a devastating "The Reason You Suck" Speech, which is made even sweeter by coming shortly after he was gloating about Clarke getting the same treatment.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Quite a few fans of the books did not take it well when Wells was killed off. Though it's downplayed as original character Finn is pretty much exactly like he was in the books.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • It would have been interesting to see Anya as an ally to the 100 and interacting with Lexa since she was her mentor.
  • Wells considering he was killed off very early for shock value to show that Anyone Can Die on the show rather than exploring his character further.
  • Callie 'Cece' Cartwig was billed as a main character, was best friends with Abby, was Kane's ex-girlfriend (who he clearly still had feelings for) and she was the Ark's communications officer. Yet she never appears nor is mentioned again after the pilot being completely written out of the show. They could have at least shown or mentioned what happened to her.
  • Ontari could have been a good antagonist in Season 4, but instead, in the Season 3 finale, she becomes a Living MacGuffin, due to being the only Nightblood left (Luna backed out), leaving her to be the only one who can take the Flame to fight A.L.I.E. She ends up brain-dead thanks to Jaha and they improvise by pumping her blood into Clarke to make her a temporary Nightblood.
  • Lincoln is billed as a main character in the second season, yet he was largely relegated to the background during the season as he was turned into a reaper. Even Lincoln's actor, Ricky Whittle bitterly pointed this out and considering his feud with Jason Rothenberg, this is not surprising in the least. Then he gets killed off in the middle of Season 3 because of Ricky leaving the show due to the feud and Lincoln's death didn't really add much to plot except giving Octavia and viewers more reasons to hate Pike.
  • Nia the Ice Nation Queen who was responsible for Lexa's former girlfriend Costia's death seemed to be being set up to be the arc villain of Season 3 but is instead killed by Lexa one episode after her introduction and her actions only end up making Pike the arc villain of the season.
  • Lexa because of the Real Life Writes the Plot circumstances that prevented her actress from becoming a series regular leading to the decision to have her killed off. She could have been a good addition to the main cast and one could wonder what role she could have played in the series if the actress was able to stick around.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Finn's Season 2 story arc seemed to be setting him up to become a sociopath after he massacres 18 grounder villagers when he was searching for Clarke even before that he tortured and killed the grounder who told him that Clarke was in the village. Instead he snaps back to normal after Clarke finds him after the massacre and his guilt over it and the fact that the grounders were threatening war on the sky people if they didn't give him up leads to him turning himself in to the grounders to pay for his crime and Clarke mercy killing him to spare him from their painful method of executing people. It would have been interesting for him to become a sociopath or at least be shown going crazy from what appeared to be PTSD from the final events of Season 1 and it would have made the decision whether or not to turn him into the grounders to guarantee a truce more complicated because he would have been dangerous to the others and would have gave new meaning to Clarke mercy killing him. It also would have really shown more of the negative effects of what the conflict with the grounders and being on the ground has had on the 100.
  • The reveal of a faction of Mount Weather residents who didn't agree with the experiments should have been introduced earlier in the season instead of in the final episodes.
  • Pike's flashback story should have been shown before he massacred the Trikru army and it would have helped show him more as a sympathetic villain, but because they showed it later in the show it was a lot harder for some fans to sympathize with him since he mostly came off to some viewers as an irrational racist who just did terrible and stupid things because of his hatred.
  • It would have been interesting to get a flashback episode of all the things that Farm Station went through with the Ice Nation.
  • Bellamy's reasons for his actions in Season 3 would have made more sense if the plot didn't take place 3 months after Mount Weather. If the plot took place like a couple weeks after it would have, but it doesn't because of the whole idea that he had no problems with the grounders during that time until Pike showed up and the attack happened. Then the idea that he was still angry about what happened at Mount Weather, when it seemed like he had gotten over it. Also it would have been easier to sympathize with him over the death of Gina when she died from the Mount Weather attack by the Ice Nation if she was given more episodes to develop her character or if it was a different character who has been on the show longer was the one who died in the attack. Also they should have had him have more time with Pike before the attack to justify why Bellamy became so loyal to him.
    • It probably would have been interesting to have actually seen the massacre instead of showing just its aftermath and actually seen pacifically how many people Bellamy did kill and to actually have seen him telling Pike to spare Indra and it would have made his redemption arc more believable to some viewers who couldn't buy him participating in the murder of 300 people.
  • Lexa's death scene because despite the unfortunate implications of her death, it just seems idiotic for her to casually walk into or by a room where there are sounds of a gun being fired. It would have made more sense if she got shot trying to take the gun from Titus or if it was made more clear that she was possibly rushing into the room to try and stop him from killing Clarke as that may have been the reason she entered the room in the first place. Even then they could have had it that instead of Titus, they could have had other Grounders try to kill Clarke or Lexa as earlier in the episode of her death one of the Grounders did try to assassinate her. Then in trying to defend herself or/and Clarke one of them wounds her and she ends up dying in her arms and the scene plays out like it did in the real scene. If they did it like that the fans wouldn't have felt that her death was anti-climatic. They also could have had it that she lost her fight against Roan in "Watch The Thrones" as the episode was setting up the possibility that she was going to die and she was accepting of the possibility and said her goodbyes to Clarke. This also would have been a climatic death as she and him were on equal footing as fighters so she could have lost and still showed how badass she was.
  • Generally the conflict between the Ice Nation and the Sky People is a wasted plot in Season 3 as the season seemed to be setting them up as the big bads of the first half of the season before A.L.I.E takes over. Instead as stated their queen is taken out in one episode and the conflict ends up being against Pike and other members of Skykru. Given how the plot went it would have interesting to have a Nia and Pike conflict as it would have made Pike's actions more understandable and as stated Lexa dying as a result of Nia's plan working would maybe have been a better death for her than the one she got. Other things that could have factored in are Kane attempting to make peace with the Ice Nation, Lincoln still being mistrusted because of being a Grounder, Octavia being conflicted about which side she is on, and also Clarke and Bellamy being in conflict about what is the right thing to do and their issues about what happened at Mount Weather. Another thing they could have done is have Ontari turn against Nia as it was shown that she was emotionally unstable and had issues with her upbringing by Nia.
  • Clarke and Bellamy's opposition in Season 7, it ultimately comes down to Clarke arguing against helping Cadogan start the last war and Bellamy insisting humanity is ready. Neither is willing to compromise, with Bellamy willing to torture his friends and Clarke willing to kill anyone who endangers hers. There would have been a lot of mileage in spending time on the relative benefits of one over the other, or even holding back on antagonism until they knew more. The lack of exploration of the two sides is particularly strange as Clarke's shoot first mentality is proven completely wrong and would have doomed everyone to extinction were it not for Raven's actions. Similarly, if Bellamy had his way, Cadogan would have likely taken and failed the test, and humanity would have likewise been doomed.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Between the Grey-and-Gray Morality and the Well-Intentioned Extremists, the show is keen to express just how much the human race can suck when push comes to shove. Even characters who were The Heart or captain diplomacy resort to torture, mass killing and general ruthless logic. No matter how much you want to be the good guy... "maybe there are no good guys."
  • This got worse in Season 3 with Lexa's death causing many fans to declare they were done with the show. Even then the season also featured the death of Lincoln, Bellamy participating in the massacre of 300 people, and several other deaths. Though the season finale arguably remedies this with a Bittersweet Ending with everybody being reunited with their loved ones, Lexa returning and Clarke getting closure with her and getting the exit fans feel she should have gotten in the first place, but of course it is bittersweet because of the reveal that nuclear fallout is going to destroy the world again in the finale.
  • Seasons 4 and 5 are continuing this: in S4, much of the 13-episode plot involved creating hope spots and smashing them simply to draw out the dramatic tension until the reveal of the bunker. Season 5 revolves around a war ignited over the one miraculously untouched parcel of land in the entire world, the rest of it being barren desert at best, meaning that the hopes and dreams of 800 people who lived six years in a bunker were smashed in less than a night. In the end, Mc Creary destroys the valley, making all known locations on Earth uninhabitable for human life. While Earth might eventually recover in the distant future, given the presence of insects and worms in the desert, humanity is left with no choice other than to leave and look for a new home.
• Too Cool to Live:
  • Lexa: She was just too awesome to be Put on a Bus with her actress leaving the show. There is also the fact that her death played a pivotal role in the A.L.I.E story arc with the revelation that she had the one thing that could stop her in her head and there is also the implication that if she had lived she would have been the one to defeat A.L.I.E instead of Clarke.
    • Though it could be argued that they could have furthered the A.L.I.E plot without killing her off, there is the other fact that she is the commander of all the Grounder nations and because of how their culture works her position could only end with her death. Also before Clarke did it in the finale, none of the commanders ever knew that they could just take the Flame out of their heads anytime they wanted to or as pointed out by Lexa none of them have even attempted to do so and so the Grounders wouldn't banish a commander to the wastelands if they still had the Flame in them because as part of tradition they would have to give it to the next commander so of course they would kill them so that they could take it out. Even then if Lexa knew she could just take the Flame out and quit being commander, she wouldn't because she cares too much about her people to just give the position to some one else and she is also a proud warrior, so as shown in the season she is not going to give up her position without a fight and there is also the Grounders' belief that the Flame is the key to reincarnation and is only possible through death.
  • Lincoln: His story is so much a part of Octavia's story and the show that it wouldn't make sense for him to disappear into the background and become a guest character that only appears on certain occasions when the actor is available for filming, even then his actor quit the show so it would have been unlikely that he would have made guest appearances.
  • Anya: The events of Season 2 would have been different if she had lived as she probably would have made the peace talks with Lexa more easier which would have taken out some of the conflict between Sky People and Grounders that was a pivotal part of the story and why it took awhile to march on Mount Weather.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • It's extremely hard to care about Monty's relationship with his mother when we never got to actually see her as anything but a hateful anti-Grounder zealot. The fact that his desire to talk a bit more with this parent who had no problem selling him and his friends out to Pike ends up delaying Raven's attempt to erase A.L.I.E. enough for it to fail is a huge sticking point going forward.
  • Abby's bizarre shaming of Raven for refusing to risk their precious few anti-radiation meds to help some sick Grounders, acting like she's hoarding them just for the hell of it rather than because they're the one ghost of a chance to avoid the extinction of the human race. Making it especially weird is that the meds don't work, meaning Abby just wasted them for nothing, yet the show still expects us to side with her over Raven.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The Ark. It even looks great when crashed and made into a ground base.
  • The glowing forest.
  • The glowing butterflies that surround Octavia in "Earth Skills".
  • While not perfect, the mutated Gorilla looked very good for a TV budget. Fans were quick to point out its similarities to Grodd on The Flash (2014), which aired around the same time on the same network, yet looked considerably worse.
• Watched It for the Representation: Season 2 drew in a lot of new fans with the introduction of Lexa, the cool and composed Grounder Commander who happened to be a lesbian. The character was seen as positive lesbian representation, and her tension with Clarke also revealed the latter was bisexual.
• Win Back the Crowd: Earlier on in Season 3, Lexa gets killed, and the manner it is performed (as in, it came out of nowhere; she literally just had a romantic scene with Clarke, a ship with enough tract in the fandom, only to suddenly be shot without a fighting chance, giving off the impression of Bury Your Gays. To say that this did not go well with the fandom would be an understatement. Come the season finale, and just as how out of nowhere her death was, she suddenly reappears to Clarke, thanks to the Commander chip. This allows her to go down fighting, just what her fans wanted, and Clarke to get closure with her over her death. There was much rejoicing from the fandom. Though her return was foreshadowed since her death as it was made clear the she was still "alive' in the Flame. Likewise for those still understandably steamed about the above point the final episode of the series sees the return of Alycia Debnam-Carey as the Judge taking on Lexa's form proving that she was always Clarke's One True Love. Many fans were delighted by the return since it felt like a nice way to provide some closure for the actress even if Lexa herself couldn't come back in the end.
• The Woobie:
  • Clarke. She spent 11 months in solitary confinement and her mother ''turned in her father and got him executed. Even for someone as bright and spirited as Clarke, that has got to be painful. Then her time on the ground turned her into a Pragmatic Hero which leads her into making very difficult immoral decisions like letting a missile drop on village without informing the others to maintain Bellamy's cover in Mount Weather which leads to many getting killed or injured and could have killed others including Octavia Bellamy's sister and her own mother and the decision to irradiate Mount Weather to save some of her people which ends up killing children and allies that were helping on the inside that leads to her leaving her people for months because of her guilt over what she has done. Also she has lost her best friend Wells, she had to Mercy Kill her former boyfriend Finn to spare him a painful death, and then Lexa dies just after they have sex for the first time which means that two characters that Clarke has shown romantic interest in have died.
  • Jasper gets speared in the chest, thrown against a tree, dragged away by hostile strangers, tied to a tree and left for dead before being brought back to the 100's camp, where he spends the next few days in excruciating pain. Then, when he wakes up, he's obviously much more nervous about things. He's tricked into leaving the camp because he thinks the girl he likes was just assaulted, then he's jumped out at, trips on a fallen branch, and finds Wells's severed fingers. Later, he gets punched really hard in the face and accidentally ruins what seems to be their only chance of communicating with the Ark, so it looks like he just doomed the human race. But hey, at least Octavia kissed him but of course she ends up with Lincoln instead of him. To say nothing of what he actually goes through in Season 2. Also two girls he showed a interest in both died and the death of the first one puts him in a depression and makes him a drunk because Clarke was responsible for her death when she irradiated Mount Weather and he feels if he had more time he could have saved her. The second girl's death leads to him taking ALIE's chip and he was also originally going to kill himself in the Season 3 finale before the producers changed it.
    • He finally does kill himself on an intentional overdose near the end of Season 4.
  • Octavia in "His Sister's Keeper" after learning that Bellamy, the brother she loves so much, has secretly resented being saddled with the responsibility of taking care of her for all these years and that he blames her for their mother being floated. Poor girl... And prior to that,she's lived in one tiny room her whole life, regularly having to hide in a coffin-like hole to avoid discovery. The one time she's able to go out into the ship, she gets caught. Then her mother (one of only two people she interacts with) gets killed. And Octavia herself is locked up. She gets sent to the Earth, almost eaten by a river monster, the guy who saves her is impaled. A guy she starts to get flirty with dies horribly in acid fog. She gets kidnapped by a Grounder, escapes, and then is kidnapped again. Falls for the Grounder, only for him to be nearly killed by his own people, kidnapped by Reapers, made Brainwashed and Crazy by Cage. She sees him die and get revived, only for him to relapse and betray her brother for another dose of the drug. To top it off, when she finally finds a place as Indra's second, she has to give it up to go save her brother. Safe to say that whether she's up in space or down on Earth, Octavia's life sucks and then she sees her boyfriend get murdered and the fact that it was unintentionally her brother's fault has severely damaged their relationship.
  • Raven who went through a lot to get to the ground to get back to her boyfriend Finn and confirm that the 100 are alive to the ark, but instead finds out her boyfriend fell in love with another woman Clarke and Bellamy destroys her radio making her unable to contact the ark making her trip for nothing. Then she later gets a spine injury from getting shot that ends up requiring surgery to take the bullet out to attempt to prevent her from becoming paralyzed. They had to do the surgery without anesthesia which ended up being very painful for her and she still ends up with a paralyzed left leg. Then she later witnesses Finn's death that she was trying to prevent and its revealed that he was in prison on the ark because he took the blame for something she did so she wouldn't get floated because she was old enough to be an adult. She is later tortured by the grounders because of a frame up and she is later put through the painful bone marrow extraction by Mount Weather. Then months later she's having a hard time doing work because of her left leg that has gotten worse because she's been neglecting getting another surgery because of what she went through last time. This eventually leads her to taking A.L.I.E's chip which takes away her pain which she eventually attempts to take out because the chip took away her memories of Finn which eventually leads to A.L.I.E mind torturing her with all pain she has ever gone through to keep her under her control and Raven fully submits to her and just the things her body goes through after being taken over and having to say terrible things to her friends so Raven has really had it bad.

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