The 100 Just Destroyed Everything You Know and Love With One Big Twist

Nothing will be the same after tonight's mind-blowing, heart-breaking episode of The 100

By Lauren Piester Mar 04, 2016 3:00 AMTags
The 100Liane Hentscher/The CW

Did you just spend the last 10 minutes screaming?

Or did you perhaps just wake up from coma only to discover that we're deep into April and you've been unconscious ever since you watched episode seven of The 100?

Either way, you're not alone. Or at least you're probably not alone. While we can't account for the coma patients, we can tell you that everything that went down in "Thirteen" hit us like a ton of bricks and forced sounds out of us that we've never heard before. We're flabbergasted, basically, and we'd bet you are too.

First things first, let's get the really devastating news out of the way: Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey) is dead. Just hours after she and Clarke (Eliza Taylor) finally had the sex we've all been waiting for, Titus (Neil Sandilands) took his Clarke hatred to new levels of insanity and brought a gun out to play. He first went after the Wanheda after she tried to save Murphy (Richard Harmon) from his torturous clutches, and then Lexa just happened to come in at exactly the wrong time and took a bullet to the torso.

As Titus and Clarke rushed to save her, it was as if they all immediately forgot that it was all his fault. Clarke tried to stop the bleeding, but Titus straight up gave up and started pulling things out of his robes. Apparently he carries around an emergency dead commander kit at all times, which is weird.

Lexa told Clarke it was no use, and her fight was over. She whispered to Titus in Grounder language that he was to take care of her "spirit," and told him to do his job, regardless of the fact that her death was entirely his fault.

Clarke kissed her one last time, and then closed Lexa's eyes, and it was the most heartbreaking thing we've ever experienced, which is why we were pretty confused when Titus quickly flipped Lexa's body over, and took a scalpel to the infinity tattoo on the back of her neck. He very grossly then pulled out…the second AI.

Thanks to some truly informative flashbacks, we learned that after Becca's first creation, A.L.I.E., went off the rails and nuked the planet, Becca went to work on a new AI that would actually understand the needs of humans and therefore wouldn't decide to murder them eventually. Her new work, which was being completed on Polaris, would allow the 13 space stations to survive indefinitely.

Her assistant and the Polaris commander didn't see this quite the same way, however, and didn't want to connect Polaris to the Ark with that potentially murderous AI still on board. They wanted it destroyed, but instead, Becca had spent two years injecting herself with gene therapy to help her survive radiation before implanting the AI into her own head and taking off for what was left of Earth.

Of course, she waited until the last second to do that, so Polaris was purposely destroyed when it didn't connect to the Ark in time.   

Liane Hentscher/The CW

She emerged from her little space pod wearing a commander space suit to see multiple figures (the original nightbloods) all coming to greet her—a scene which looked exactly like the cave paintings in Titus' infinity symbol shrine.

Titus took the implant, explained that Lexa's "spirit" would choose the next commander, declared the conclave to be starting, and locked Clarke and Murphy in Lexa's room behind him.

So…what does all of this mean?! According to our chat with executive producer Jason Rothenberg, the answer is incredibly complicated.

E! News: Can you please explain why Lexa had to die like that?

Rothenberg: "When we started the season, I had these two sort of separate big stories… I really wanted there to be a point at which the two collided. In terms of grounder mythology, back in season two, Lexa and Clarke had this conversation about reincarnation and how in the grounder world, that's how leaders were chosen. I didn't want to just say that was not true, but I also didn't want to say it was a real sort of spiritual reincarnation, so I then sort of struck upon this notion of a technological reincarnation. Once I struck upon that idea, then I kind of knew that in order to deal with reincarnation, you would have to die first.

"So it became this incredibly sad thing because I love Alycia Debnam-Carey. She's incredible, but we definitely also were factoring in the idea that we have an actor that was starring in another show. As it was, I had to sort of beg borrow and steal to get her for this season as much as we were lucky enough to get her. So in weighing all those factors, it just became clear."

By the way, I have to say, this is The 100, and nobody is safe. We say this all the time, but it's true. Clarke killed Finn, Wells died, I mean there is nobody in this show that is safe.

E! News: How much of a reincarnation is it then? How much of Lexa's "spirit" really will carry over to the next commander?

Rothenberg: "A lot of the storytelling going forward revolves around the flame, which is the tech that came out of Lexa's head at the end of the episode. The idea as far as what we know in terms of what's been in the show up until that point is that the spirit of the commanders are in the flame, and if in fact that's true, then you could imagine that the spirit of Lexa is in the flame, but that is something we'll reveal or not going forward."

Liane Hentscher/The CW

E! News: Will we be spending a lot of time on the conclave and choosing the next commander?

Rothenberg: "The conclave, as Titus says at the end of 7, is on, it's beginning, and we'll get to understand what that means and who participates and the winner of the conclave would be the next person to receive the flame, so you have to tune in next week, essentially, or later in the season, to find that out."

E! News: What are Clarke's next steps after what she just saw?

Rothenberg: "Her heart is broken, and yet she needs to balance and find a way as always to go forward as an important leader of her people. Right now, they're locked in that room. But if you think about politically what the death of Lexa does is throws any sort of sense that Skaikru is going to be protected even if they get rid of Pike out the window, because who knows what the next commander's going to want to do. Is the next commander going to follow Lexa's nonviolence path, the blood must not have blood path, or is the next commander going to do what Titus wanted all along, which is to wipe them out? And this is something that Clarke is now going to have to navigate from Polis when the story picks back up."

E! News: What was the significance to you to flash back and tell the end-of-the-world story now?

Rothenberg: "I love origin stories, and on some level, this is the origin story of the series. We see how the world ended, which is what led to the formation of the ark in the flashback story of this episode, which is what led to where our heroes came from, obviously. But it's also the story of the second AI and you know, the flame, which now we know is that second AI, and Becca created it to try to right the wrong of her first creation, A.L.I.E., and it does set up the confrontation going forward between the two AIs. A.L.I.E. wants that flame, and right now anyway, we know where it is. It's not in Clarke's possession yet…I'm about to give away the next episode and I don't want to do that, but A.L.I.E. wants that flame and will soon figure out where it is."

So in other words: some s—t is about to go down between the grounders, the Skaikru, and one mostly invisible robot woman. Now if you'll excuse us, we have a lot of grieving, and theorizing, and yelling, and tweeting, and freaking out to do, and we'd imagine you do, as well.

The 100 airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. on the CW.