Warning spoilers for Season 2 as all spoilers will be uncovered.
Mount Weather Characters
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The Mountain Men
Mountain Men, or Maunon (in Trigedasleng) is a term used by the Sky People and the Grounders to describe a person who comes from Mount Weather. The Mountain Men alive today are descendants of humans who survived the nuclear apocalypse 97 years before the show by taking shelter inside of Mount Weather’s government facilities. They seem to be descended from the remnants of the US government, even referring to their leader as “President”. They are responsible for creating the savage Reapers as well as the deadly Acid Fog. Because of this, the Grounders have a negative and superstitious view of Mountain Men.
The Mountain Men As A Whole
Mount Weather
- All for Nothing: Season 3 reveals that their plan to retake the ground would have been pointless, as Praimfaya would have rendered the planet inhospitable to them. They would have been much better to simply invite survivors of the Ark to live with them and take donations of bone marrow, which would have allowed them to shelter within the mountain until Earth recovered.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Subverted, because not all the people in Mount Weather agree with the experiments, and some of them are innocent children who don't know what's going on. The villains of Mount Weather are just trying to find a cure for their people by any means necessary.
- Anti Villains: Tsing, Cage, and the Mountain guards are just trying to find a cure for their people so that the radiation from the outside doesn't wipe them out in a few months and it leads them to being the antagonists against Clarke and the others because of the fatal experiments they're doing to members of the 100/Sky People in an attempt to find a cure.
- Apathetic Citizens: It is revealed that mostly everyone knows about the experiments or they pretend not to know. Subverted when it is revealed that there is a faction of Mount Weather residents who didn't agree with the experiments and even tried to stop them; they later try to help Bellamy and the others by hiding them from the guards.
- Artistic License – Biology: The Mountain Men are unable to metabolize the radiation outside their mountain home. They break out in instantaneous lesions and bleeding wounds when exposed to radiation, which are treated with blood transfusions from Grounders or members of the Ark. The blood transfusions not only prevent further damage, but heal what has already occurred. They then move on to bone marrow transplants from Ark members to cure their radiation weakness.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Cage and Tsing could have just asked Kane and the other Sky People from the Ark to volunteer for the bone marrow experiments which, and then there would have been more subjects and they wouldn't have had to take so much from one person each. This is mentioned by Kane during the finale. Though the reason why they didn't could be justified by the fact that Mount Weather was technically holding their children against their will despite the fact that they were feeding them and clothing them and Dante kept making excuses to make them to not try and leave because of his own plan for them to breed with his people.
- The Dreaded: The Grounders have been scared of the Mountain Men for many years because of Mount Weather abducting their people. Their fear of them is also the reason why they are afraid to use guns, due to legends that if a Grounder picks up a gun, the Mountain Men will come and take them and their family. It’s suggested this is done to keep the Grounders in technological stasis, so that they can’t fight back.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: By the end of Season 2 almost the entirety of Mount Weather are wiped out by Clarke after she is forced to irradiate the mountain in order to save her people. The few members that were given the bone marrow treatments that allowed them to survive the radiation are gradually killed with Emerson, the Sole Survivor, being killed by Clarke near the end of Season 3 thus making the Mountain Men truly extinct.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Most of the residents who helped Bellamy and the 48 are killed by the guards and the others are killed when Clarke irradiates Mount Weather.
- The Plague: As stated the people of Mount Weather suffer from radiation weakness and break out in lesions when exposed to outside radiation.
- The Remnant: It's strongly implied in the series that the Mountain Men are descendant from the corrupt US Government before the start of the nuclear apocalypse. This is given more credence in Season 7 in a flashback episode which refers to the presidential party at the time being the Wallace Administration.
- Town with a Dark Secret: The mountain is effectively this.
- Well Intentioned Extremists: The antagonists of Mount Weather are just trying to do what's best for their people.
The Wallace Administration
Dante
Dante Wallace
Played by: Raymond J. Barry
"I bear it so they don't have to"
President of the Mountain Men.
- Affably Evil: He's a very decent guy, if you overlook the fact that he's the head of an organization that kidnaps people and subjects them to deadly experiments.
- Cool Old Guy: Despite his flaws, Dante is still a thoughtful and compassionate man who prefers diplomacy to violence.
- Even Evil Has Standards: He staunchly refuses to experiment on the 47 against their will, saying he will only accept volunteers. He called his son out on using a missile to bomb the meeting of the clan heads since that was meant to be used to protect them.
- Evil Old Folks: He's the geriatric leader of the Mountain Men, and despite his desire for peace, still allows kidnapping and torture on his watch.
- Fantastic Racism: Like the rest of the Mountain Men, he sees Grounders as animals and has no problem harvesting them for their blood.
- Hypocrite: He denounces his son and Tsing's experiments on the 47, even though he's been knowingly treating Grounders as animals his entire life. Cage calls him out on it.
- Pragmatic Villain: It's implied that he also didn't want to experiment on the 47 because he didn't want conflict with the Sky People if the day ever came that his people could walk on the outside.
- President Evil: Subverted. Despite clearly being set up as a shady president hiding behind a doddering old man facade and despite seeing Grounders as animals, his son and Dr. Tsing have shown themselves to be more ruthless than him.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: He tries. Even after Jasper holds him at swordpoint and he disarms him, he goes with him to try and figure out what was happening to the 47 who kept disappearing and had Tsing arrested — although subverted when it's revealed that he, not Cage, was the one who brokered the deal with Lexa, and that he prioritizes his people above everyone else.
- Shoot the Hostage: Clarke kills him to make a point to his son.
Cage
Cage Wallace
"The ground is ours."
Played by: Johnny Whitworth
"We've been bleeding people to stay alive for generations. That's our legacy."
Head of security at Mount Weather, and the President's son.
- An Arm and a Leg: Lincoln chops off his hand before killing him outright.
- Big Bad: He becomes the main villain of Season 2 after wresting control of Mt. Weather from his father. He attempts to take on the Ark and the Grounders so that he and his people can finally live outside, starting a war that gets both himself and his entire society killed.
- Dragon Ascendant: He stages a coup and locks up his father, seizing power for himself because they disagree on treatment of the 47.
- Dragon with an Agenda: He served as his father's right-hand man, while secretly working to advance his own more brutal agenda.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Despite their adversarial relationship, Cage does love his father.
- Even Evil Has Standards: He's a bit more torn up about killing innocent children than Tsing is.
- Fantastic Racism: Anyone who isn't from Mt. Weather is considered a subhuman savage by Cage.
- Karmic Death: Cage is killed by Lincoln, the man he tortured and conditioned into being a Reaper. Bonus points for Lincoln injecting him with the Reaper drug as the finishing blow.
- Meaningful Name: Someone named "Cage" is in charge of security.
- Playing with Syringes: He's in charge of the government-sanctioned Cerberus Program, in which strong Grounders are tortured into Reapers by way of injection with a Psycho Serum.
- President Evil: After supplanting his father.
- The Usurper: He takes over his father's role because everyone wants to go to the ground, meaning they were more than willing to betray him for the opportunity.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: His main goal was to cure himself and his people of their illness and he was willing to do it by any means necessary.
- You Killed My Father: Clarke kills his father, so he starts on her mother.
Dr. Tsing
Dr. Lorelei Tsing
Played by: Rekha Sharma
"I hope you know... you're all incredibly special to us."
One of the doctors of the Mountain Men.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Of Season 2, with Cage Wallace... but not for long.
- Evil Counterpart: To Abby. Both are female doctors and influential women in their respective societies, but while Abby is caring, tries to keep everyone alive and attempts to work out peaceful solutions, Tsing believes that the ends justify the means (ruthlessly experimenting on Grounders, Sky People, and Mountain Men).
- For Science!: She sees everything as a means to discovery — she's even willing to experiment on her own people.
- Karmic Death: When the floor gets irradiated, Jasper makes damn sure that she's the one who dies since she was harvesting their blood to prevent it.
- Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Almost never seen without one, as she seems to be the Mountain Men's primary medical researcher.
- Mad Doctor: She performs inhuman experiments behind the back of her superior in order to get bone marrow of the 48 and subject her own people to cruel treatment in the name of science.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Sees no problem with keeping Grounders in cages and harvesting them for their blood or killing an innocent girl with radiation for the sake of research.
- The Sociopath: She has a Lack of Empathy and it is implied to be because of all her years harvesting the Grounders.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Just like Cage she is motivated to finding a cure for her people's illness.
Emerson
Lt. Carl Emerson
Played by: Toby Levins
"I don't want mercy. I want revenge. I want you to suffer the same way that I've suffered. You can kill me, Clarke. You can never escape what you did. My pain ends today. Yours has just begun."
A high-ranking soldier loyal to Cage Wallace.
- The Brute: For Cage, leading the soldiers loyal to him against the 47.
- Character Death: In Season 3, Clarke kills him with the A.L.I.E 2/The Flame chip that kills any host that's not a nightblood.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He has two children. They're part of his motivations to kill Clarke who killed them when she irradiated Mount Weather.
- Left Hanging: He fled the mountain when he realized that Clarke had gone ahead and irradiated the mountain. Don't forget, he's the last solider left standing who received the marrow treatment. His fate is revealed in Season 3.
- Oh, Crap!: Realizes the 47 were faking being knocked out by the gas only a couple seconds before they began to slaughter his men in a brutal ambush.
- Sole Survivor: Among the Mountain Men, as he'd received the bone marrow treatment before the mountain was irradiated and thus survived it.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: His fate isn't confirmed by the end of the Season 2 finale, and it isn't until Season 3 that it's revealed that he went to the Ice Nation and offered Queen Nia the means to activate Mount Weather's self-destruct mechanism.
Civilians
Maya
Maya Vie
Played by: Eve Harlow
One of the Mountain Men, who works in sanitation and decontamination.
- Almost Kiss: She and Jasper move to kiss each other but are interrupted by guards.
- Character Development: She starts out as a Satellite Love Interest to Jasper, but she gradually gets more personal development as a person, undergoing a Heel Realization.
- Defector from Decadence: Maya grows disgusted with what Mt. Weather is doing to the Grounders, and chooses to help the 48 in their escape attempts.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: She dies in Jasper's arms after being exposed to radiation.
- Face Death with Dignity: When faced with death by suffocation she faces it stoically, preferring to die than allow the 47 to surrender to Mt. Weather.
- Fake-Out Make-Out: With Jasper, to avoid being caught in the warehouse while they were tapping into the radio.
- Heel Realization: She begins thinking that what Mount Weather is doing to the Grounders is wrong when she realizes that Jasper could be harvested for his blood.
- Kill the Cutie: She's one of the sweetest characters in the show, but she ends up dying at the end of Season 2.
- The Lost Lenore: Jasper was still grieving her death in Season 3 that takes place 3 months after Mount Weather and he was a angry drunk as a result of this and he was still mad at Clarke, Bellamy, and Monty for their part in her death.
- Nice Girl: Maya is just a sweet, earnest girl who wants to be a good person.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Her efforts to do what is right ends up getting all of Mt. Weather and herself killed.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Too nice for the post-apocalyptic world.
- Trauma Conga Line: Maya has an absolutely terrible time from the second the 48 turn up at Mt. Weather. She's taken hostage by Clarke, irradiated until she's close to death, finds her father's dead body and ultimately dies with the rest of her people.
Vincent
Vincent Vie
Played by: Ian Tracey
Maya's father who is with her on assisting the 47 and leads a rebel faction.
- Alliterative Name: Vincent Vie.
- Aloof Ally: He is at first hesitant to help Bellamy and the others and when he does he is trying to be secretive about it so that the guards don't catch on.
- Character Death: He is shot by a Mount Weather Guard.
- 11th-Hour Ranger: He isn't introduced until later in the season and ends up helping Bellamy and the others.
- Neutral No Longer: He is against the experiments on the Grounders but he stopped trying to stop them after his wife died and to protect his daughter. He eventually helps Bellamy and the others after his daughter convinces him to and he helps hide them, and also gives Bellamy a plan to take out the acid fog.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Helping the Sky People ends up resulting in his death.
Reapers
REAPERS!!!
Reapers are cannibals seen towards the end of Season 1. They survived on Earth, living in abandoned mines in the tunnels, after the nuclear apocalypse destroyed the majority of the human race. They are greatly feared by Anya's clan. They keep humans that are alive in carts close to where they set up camp in the tunnels, and are shown to be very savage. They have mutated faces, whereas the standard Grounders look normal. In Season 2, it is revealed that they were former Grounders who were turned into reapers by Mount Weather through the Cerberus Project.The Cerberus Project/ The Harvest Project:
The Harvest Project started 56 years prior when the Mountain Men realized the Grounders had adapted to the outside radiation, making them immune to it. Mountain Men were not able to adapt to the outside as they had remained in the Mountain the entire time. They eventually realized they could use Grounders to filter their blood of the radiation that was poisoning the Mountain Men. The Grounders, however, were presumably not willing to volunteer for this task so the Mountain Men would take them by force. To make things easier, through the Cerberus Project, they turned the strongest Grounders into vicious monsters called Reapers in order to reap other Grounders into the Mount Weather Mines. The Mountain Men inject a Red drug into the Reapers in exchange for Grounders. Once the Mountain Men had finished harvesting the Grounder blood, they would dispose of the dead and dying Grounders back into the mines for the Reapers to feast on.Once the Grounders had been sorted into either Cerberus or Harvest, they would then go through decontamination where they are blasted with boiling water and doused with something that "burns even worse," according to Lincoln. They are given shots and pills as well as visually inspected before being placed into holding cages for later use.
Phase 1 of the Cerberus project had the subject securely strapped down on a gurney and injected with the Red Drug every two hours while sounding a tone generator and accompanying it with electric shocks to the wrists for approximately 15 seconds.
Phase 2 commenced once the Grounder had become conditioned to show fear towards the tone generator (within a day or two). One newly made Reaper is pitted against another newly made Reaper and the Red Drug is left between them to fight over to the death.
Once they have passed Phase 2, the newly created Reaper is then sent out to collect more Grounders in exchange for the Red Drug. Until Lincoln, it was believed that the conversion to a Reaper was irreversible.
Reapers
Reapers (In General)
- Brainwashed and Crazy: In Season 2, it is revealed that they are being controlled by Mount Weather through their addiction to a red drug given to them by Cage and Tsing.
- Cannibal Tribe: They are this to the Grounders.
- The Dreaded: The Reapers are feared by all Grounders because of their cannibalism and their taking their people and eating them alive.
- Fantastic Drug: The red drug that they are addicted to because of Mount Weather.
- Radiation-Immune Mutants: The red drug their given eventually mutates them, giving them many deformities, but as former Grounders they are naturally immune to the radiation on the ground and it is why Mount Weather uses them as foot soldiers as they are not immune.
- Technically Living Zombies: They're this because of their cannibalism, their savagery and their single-mindlessness about accomplishing their goal.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It is never addressed in Season 3, whether or not the last of them died off or got cured.
