Cate Cameron/The CW Can't breathe? Speechless? That light-headed feeling you have right about now? You can thank The 100's executive producer Jason Rothenberg for all of that.
The mad genius behind the CW's hit sophomore series concocted the most shocking, gut-punch of a cliffhanger on which to end the action-packed and intense season two premiere: Chancellor Jaha (Isaiah Washington), all alone and ready to accept his heroic death on the deserted and failing Ark in space, hears a baby crying somewhere in the halls of the broken ship.
Whaaaaaaat?! Did someone really leave a baby behind in space in the mad rush to get safely to Earth?!
That simple sound left us reeling and completely floored...just like the wide-eyed, slack-jawed Jaha, who never thought he'd hear another human voice again. So we went straight to Rothenberg and Washington to find out what's coming next for Jaha, as well as the rest of the humans from the Ark that actually did make it to the ground, and those stuck inside Mount Weather, unaware that more of their people are still alive outside.
So why did Rothenberg decide to give Jaha a new storyline in season two, rather than let him die the heroic death he earned?
"I love Isaiah and I think he's a brilliant actor," Rothenberg told E! News. "The character had sort of run its course in terms of, it would have been a good ending for him, for sure. I felt like we needed to come up with a really good way to reactivate his character on a creative level."
Hence the baby crying. "When I came up with that idea, at first it was kind of a joke," Rothenberg confessed. "It became a joke around the office! But it then started to take shape and crystalize and it felt like a great story. We just needed him to realize that there was more work to be done. He had taken his people to the ground but he hadn't yet delivered them to safely and to the promised land and that becomes a driving thing for him all season long."
Washington laughed as he looked back on reading that final moment in the premiere script.
"That wonderful little secret!" Washington told E! News. "Yes, I thought we were on to something. Jason and I spoke about where Jaha was going to go once we all decided that the Ark was going to come down in the first season, and we talked quite a bit about what is the value for Jaha now? He did his job. He went through a heck of a lot already. So how are we going to test him now? Eventually the only thing we could come up with is we have to test his mental state. He has to address those demons alone. And no one wants to do that. No one wants to be alone and meditate on their own thoughts. That's what was so attractive about that story, whether what he's hearing is real or not, that's going to make him decide whether he's okay with dying or if he's going to try to live."
Even though Jaha already accepted his fate, the introduction of this abandoned baby is going to force him to make a decision: either help the baby and himself, or let them both die.
"Whether he accepts the responsibility of it or not, his job isn't done," Washington said. "There is more for him to do. Hearing that cry and seeing what he does next gives the audience a chance to really understand how much this particular character loves humanity. Clearly he was willing to sacrifice himself for all of humanity, and now he'll even sacrifice his own heroic ending to save someone else. We'll explore that pretty well with Jaha this season."
But Jaha's new dilemma was only one teeny, tiny part of the jam-packed, epic season two premiere. In the first 10 minutes of the episode, fans were finally able to let out the breath they were holding all summer long when it was revealed that Bellamy (Bob Morley), Finn (Thomas McDonell) and Raven (Lindsey Morgan) are all still alive. Why did Rothenberg make the decision to keep them all alive and not kill anyone after all the carnage that went down in the finale?
"There are several reasons," he said. "No. 1: I love all of those characters. No. 2: It felt certainly un-ceremonial to let somebody die off camera in between the finale and premiere. It's a pretty safe bet that if we're going to kill somebody and the character is going to meet his or her end, then we're going to see that. I wasn't trying to be coy with people all summer, I was just trying to preserve the moment. As a fan, I don't want to read about something like that. I like the anticipation."
After getting the reputation for killing off major characters early on in season one, Rothenberg knows fans were expecting to say goodbye to at least one fan-favorite character in the premiere.
"On some level, I suppose it's kind of conventional that nobody died," Rothenberg said. "I guess if people expect that from our show, than that's a good thing that we've built that kind of credibility or anticipation or whatever you want to call it. This season will certainly reinforce that idea for people, even though the first episode doesn't."
Yeah, you read that right. Start emotionally preparing yourselves now, because if you thought season one was dark, you're definitely not ready for what's to come.
Clarke (Eliza Taylor), along with Monty (Christopher Larkin) and Jasper (Devon Bostick), seemed to finally start to trust the people of Mount Weather by the end of the season premiere, but viewers know that things are not as perfect as they seem, since President Dante Wallace (Raymond J. Barry) told her with certainty that there were no other survivors from the Grounder/Reaper attack and Ark landing...when clearly there were. So should we be viewing the people of Mount Weather as villains? Or is this going to be another case like the Grounders were in season one, when we empathized with them after learning more about them?
"To me, everybody is empathize-able," Rothenberg said. "I like that word! Everybody is empathize-able in the sense that they're just doing what they have to do in order to survive. It's not like anybody is this arch-evil bad guy, evil genius or something like that. This is not a comic book show. This is a show where everyone is grounded as much as possible and they're all doing what's right for themselves and what's right for their people."
He continued, "In that regard, just like the Grounders, and I think that's a very astute observation, we started thinking they were this big bad and they were all just evil, but we realized, little by little, that they're actually the heroes of their own story and someone like Lincoln [Ricky Whittle], who is a genuinely good guy, is not a one-off. There are a lot of people that feel like he feels and I think it's safe to say that the same will be said or could be said of the people in Mount Weather. There will be some who are more hard lined about their own survival versus the moral right and wrong, and then there will be others who have a kind of awakening to realize that what they're doing is actually reprehensible morally. It'll be grey like everything else in the show."
As for poor Raven, we don't envy what she's about to face. Since the bullet that Murphy (Richard Harmon) shot at her is still lodged in her spine, the strong, fierce mechanic is about to endure more pain than anyone should ever have to suffer: surgery without anesthetic.
"Like everything else in our show, when there is violence, people are injured," Rothenberg said. "Even though she survived it, it's real and people don't just bounce back from things like that. In episode two, she has her surgery without anesthesia, and it is one of my favorite sequences so far of the season because it's so f--king hard to watch, and she is amazing in that episode. Lindsey Morgan has found levels of her talent that I don't even think she knew existed, and I certainly didn't. I knew she was good when we cast her but she is just going deeper and deeper and it's a great thing to see. It's going to be something that haunts Raven and will make her life hard for the foreseeable future."
And speaking of Murphy, how much did your blood boil seeing Kane (Henry Ian Cusick) arrest Bellamy and treat Murphy like some wounded hero?! So messed up—his sob story about his parents really seemed to humanize him. But of course, our first thought was: Is he just lying to get back in good with his people?
"He's not lying. That's his story, for sure," Rothenberg promised. "I think your question is interesting because that's what we're going for. It's moral complexity. There are no straight-up villains and there are no straight-up heroes. Our heroes do things that are quite awful sometimes and we'll see that more and more this season. Our bad guys are real. Someone like Murphy has that moment, and it was important to me. I wanted to, not humanize him, necessarily, but for people to understand why and how he got that way. I think that in doing so—and Richard Harmon crushes that performance, by the way—it does start to make you say, okay, he's a real person. He's not just a guy to deliver the one-liner and move on. He's real."
But that doesn't mean Murphy is all of a sudden going to be a good person. That wouldn't be realistic, now would it?
"Now, that said, he's a survivor and he will do whatever it takes to survive," Rothenberg teased. "I think you are your character. It's like the story of the scorpion and the frog. The scorpion convinces the frog to take him across the pond and he won't sting him because it will kill him too, but halfway across the pond, he stings him. Before they both drown and die, the frog asks, 'Why did you do that?' And the scorpion goes, 'I'm a scorpion, what did you expect?' Murphy is a scorpion. We like to call him a cockroach, but he's a scorpion. His true colors will always shine. We're not trying to change him. We're just trying to have people understand him."
What did you think of the pulse-pounding season two premiere of The 100?