On The 100, everything is either great or terrible.
We may have Kane and Abby hooking up (great) and a bit of hope thanks to the idea of patching up the ark (great), but the clans are still on the verge of war and the new apocalypse is still hurtling closer and closer every day (really, really terrible).
Tonight, as part of the effort to fix up the ark, making it viable for the hundreds of people it could potentially save from the radiation, Bellamy (Bob Morley) led a team to Farm Station in the middle of Ice Nation territory in order to take their hydrogenerator, which would allow for drinkable water on the ark. Once again, Bellamy found himself in a situation where he had to make an impossible decision.
"They go into Asgeda, this adventure squad group, and they see something more horrific than they've seen in many seasons, and it's a decision of morality of what happens out there, and not just the practicality of getting the machine and coming home," Morley told us of the episode.
When the group arrived at Farm Station, they found that the same Ice Nation jerks who had caused so much pain for Monty and other sky people were still keeping and torturing prisoners, and realized that they could use the hydrogenerator as a bomb to blast a way out for the prisoners.
However, that meant they would also have to find a different solution for saving everyone else, since there was no other option for getting fresh water onto the refurbished ark. Bryan and Harper wanted to save the prisoners while Monty and Nate wanted to save everyone else, meaning it came down to Bellamy's vote. He decided to save the prisoners, meaning that the ark won't be a viable solution, and they're going to need a new idea as to how to survive, especially now that Clarke has revealed the truth to the rest of the sky people.
While Bellamy and Clarke certainly seem confident that they will find a way to survive, Morley says that Bellamy also knows that there's a chance that they might not actually succeed."
"The great thing about Bellamy's story this season is that even though he's willing to do everything to save everyone he can, there's still this modicum of him, this tiny bit of him that thinks that maybe we can't do it," Morley tells us. "He'll do everything he can to make it happen, but there's a part of him, I think deep down…and it will come to fruition later throughout the season that he thinks maybe there is a slight hope that we don't deserve to live, and that we can't even possibly live. So it's been a lot of fun for me to play him."
"I mean it's been tricky because his ideas and what he's going to do each episode change quite a lot, and that's with everything that happened with Bellamy throughout every season," Morley says. "But this one in particular, it's subtle shifts that he goes through throughout the season. There's part of him that will do anything to save everyone, but I also think there's another little festering seed of doubt that's happening."
Elsewhere in tonight's episode, we met Ilian (Chai Romruen), a grounder who found himself part of a small angry revenge-bent rebellion against King Roan (Zach McGowan) and his plan to continue the alliance with the sky people. The episode opened with Ilian's heartbreaking backstory, where Alie forced him to murder his entire family just before Clarke shut Alie down.
Executive producer Jason Rothenberg says that was part of an attempt to help us understand the motivations behind one of this season's villains.
"That's to show his side of the story and to understand him as a character, and why he is so driven to do the things that he's doing this season, the vendetta that he's on," Rothenberg explains. "And partially that was a lesson learned in some ways from the Pike story in season three and the realization that I had in watching people's reactions in that they didn't see what happened to Pike when he landed, and the Ice Nation attacked and killed…he told the story in an amazingly emotional performance by Michael Beach, but the audience didn't viscerally experience it, so they really didn't like him for a very long time, and I didn't want that to be the case with Ilian. So I really made it a point to try and go back and see what happened to him."
Is it pointless to hope Ilian doesn't cause quite as many problems as Pike did? We're going to guess yes, since this is The 100, after all.
The 100 airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on the CW.