Prepare yourselves, The 100 fans.
Now, we start a lot of articles off like that (particularly before every episode of The 100), but we really mean it this time. Tonight's season finale is so game-changing that you might actually need to prepare. Tissues, water, a hand to hold, maybe a respirator.
The time has almost come for the death wave of radiation to wipe out all living things on earth, or as executive producer Jason Rothenberg says, "The clock is ticking. The sand is running out of the hourglass. Literally, the death wave is on their doorstep when this one starts."
"We definitely designed it to be breathless," Rothenberg tells us of the finale. "The whole season kind of had a flow which was [that] it was supposed to get harder and harder and harder to watch in the best sense of that feeling. More and more suffocating, more and more tragic, less and less hope."
When we asked just how stressed he thinks people will be, Rothenberg simply said, "Very." And he's not just saying that. You will and should be very stressed.
As the death wave is on its way, 1200 people are safely tucked away in the bunker, but a good chunk of the show's main characters are all on an impossible mission to escape the radiation a different way, by taking that rocket we always knew would come in handy somehow ("Chekhov's rocket" as Rothenberg called it) and going into space.
"At the end of episode 12 when Clarke and Bellamy and Murphy and Emori and Monty and Harper decide that they're going to go for Raven, they know that means they are not going to go back to the bunker," Rothenberg says. "So they're essentially not leaving their friend Raven behind, and they're all going to risk this crazy last ditch effort to go above the death wave, to go to space. They don't know if they're going to be successful or not, but you know, they have a shot. They have Raven, they have Clarke, they have Bellamy, they have each other, so they have a shot."
While it's unclear if this space situation will actually work out, what is clear is that the show will return for a fifth season. The question we've been asking for the past few episodes, or since the show was renewed in March, is what on earth season five could possibly look like, given the fact that the death wave will make earth uninhabitable for at least five years.
The future will become clearer at the end of tonight's finale, but for now, Rothenberg could say
"Obviously this death wave is coming and it's put people in various places where they're going to have to remain for years," he tells us. "Whether or not that indicates a time jump, we certainly are going to find these characters either on the ground or—if, in fact, anybody makes it to space—in space, or perhaps even stuck on the ground, having changed."
Since the death wave is a guarantee at this point, it's also a guarantee that everything will be very different in season five.
"[Everyone is] having to deal with a very, very different planet," Rothenberg says. "There is no survivable spaces on this planet after the death wave rolls past so I think that sets up for a really intense story in the bunker where we know 1200 people are safe--at least from outside threats. And you know, the same thing will go for any survivors wherever they happen to be. It's going to be a changed landscape literally and figuratively and psychologically."
And as if you're not freaking out enough already, we tried to ask Lindsey Morgan if there was any message she could give the fans to make them less stressed heading into tonight's finale. Her response?
"You'll sweat a lot."
The 100 airs tonight at 9 p.m. on the CW.