Headscratchers / The 100

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As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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If The Oxygen System Had Never Broken Down

• Presuming the oxygen had never run out on the Ark, thus never causing to characters to need to go to the earth, the second nuclear apocalypse caused by the reactors melting down would still have happened. Would Mount Weather have survived if the radiation caused grounders they depended on to die out, in which case they would have died slowly, or would they have died immediately as the increased radiation penetrated the bunker? If the Sky People had never returned to earth, how would they have reacted to the visible destruction of the biosphere as a result of the reactors melting down? Would they have tried to remain in space forever? Or would the leaders have quietly decided their survival was no longer needed, considering there was no longer a planet for them to wait to become habitable again

Going to Mars

• Presuming that before the first nuclear apocalypse technology had developed to the point interplanetary mining operations were possible, wouldn't it make sense that lunar and martian bases existed (presuming they hadn't been completely terraformed, of course)? If so, wouldn't it have been better for the Ark, once unified, to make the journey to one of these bases and settle there, possibly permanently?

Genetic Engineering

• As it has been stated the Ark had the technology to genetically engineer the original founders, wouldn't it have made sense for them to modify themselves to become more resistant to radiation, which has been done in real life using bacteria incredibly resistant to desiccation? That way they could have returned in one generation, not about a hundred years later? They could also have engineered themselves to be resistant to a lot of other things, which certainly would have come in handy had they actually desired to recolonise the Earth.
  • That's exactly what they did, but they either overestimated how radioactive Earth was, or underestimated how well their genetic engineering worked. That was the initial premise of the show: Earth was survivable, but until the 100 made contact, no one on the Ark knew that.

Grounder Origins

• If, as the series has strongly indicated, the grounders were the result of the survivors from the Second Dawn bunker, why did their technology deteriorate, when they had everything in an advanced bunker at their disposal? Cadogan didn't seem like the type to let his followers degenerate in such a way, particularly if it also meant he was at a disadvantage. Presuming the first grounders were allowed to leave the bunker using the nightblood serum from Becca, how did their descendants who didn't have nightblood survive?

Grounders On the Ark

• We are told the last grounder on the Ark (i.e. the last of the founding generation) had died before the series began, but how long ago did he die? For all we know it was only a few weeks prior to the launch of the first dropship, and he was the one who originally suggested it. It might also be supported by the fact the grounders would have been almost worshiped by those born in space, and would likely have held positions of high authority in their society.

Polaris

• Did the destruction of Polaris cause the whole storyline in the first place? If the systems of all the stations, some of which have been shown clearly to have been little more than large space shuttles, were barely enough to keep the Ark going for less than a hundred years, the scavenging of Polaris would surely have been enough to keep them going for slightly longer, while also allowing the Ark to support more people. Would the oxygen have started to run out if they had allowed Polaris to rejoin? Also, what influence would the flame have had on their society? For all we know, Becca's invention might have been enough to prevent any major problems with the Ark for far longer than they would have needed to remain in space.

Octavia Identified

• When Octavia went to that dance and caught by the guards, how was it proven that she was Bellamy's sister? Judging from the context of the episode, it seems like the guards can identify anyone by scanning some kind of ID chip. But that raises the question: If Octavia had such a chip and it identified her as the second child in Bellamy's family, shouldn't she have been locked up earlier? After all, in order for an ID chip to be made, someone would have had to know that this second child existed and recorded her identity in a database.
  • Fridge Brilliance just hit me on this one: Most likely she was initially arrested for not having an ID chip, then an investigation revealed that she was Bellamy's sister. It's just like a guy getting pulled over for speeding and turning out to have drugs in his car.
  • Why wasn't Bellamy arrested and floated as an accessory? He was over eighteen, aware that his mother had a second child and had been helping to hide Octavia. Given that the Ark was on its last legs when Octavia was discovered, I'd have expected Bellamy to be arrested along with his mother and sister, to conserve resources if nothing else.
  • Basically Bellamy may have been spared thanks to somebody higher deciding that a desperate brother willing to do anything for his sister may come useful at a later date. Which it did.

Pregnancy

• How the hell did no one notice that her mom was pregnant? It's PRETTY DAMN HARD to hide a pregnancy past the 5-6 month mark, especially in a place with random inspections where everyone's expected to work.
  • Even harder when resources are all rationed out. And Belamy was probably spared floating on account of not being the parent. Technically he didn't really commit a crime, his parents did for conceiving Octavia. Though from what we've seen his mother has some pull with the guards, it's possible she traded in her silence for his safety. After all, there's a chance one of them was her father. Or it's possible they didn't want to completely eliminate their bloodline for breeding purposes. After all, there can only be so many generations before they all become inbred.

Having a Second Child

• Speaking of, what the hell was Ms. Blake thinking when she decided to have Octavia? "Yes, let me have an illegal 2nd child and doom it to a life of misery and solitude and make both my son's life and mine a hell trying to provide for it and making sure nobody finds out..."
  • Most of the policies on the Ark only make sense if birth control does not exist. Which makes sense, because chemicals for medication were likely conserved for life-saving ones, and latex and rubber were likely conserved for station maintenance. Plus, they were trapped in space with whatever medical technology that the international space stations had on hand at the time, which probably didn't include those sorts of supplies.
  • Given the scarce resources and stringent rationing, I wonder if it is possible that people on the Ark generally need help with conception rather than contraception. Judging from the rations dispensed in the mess hall, they'd have to be very malnourished. Maybe would-be parents can avail of extra rations, vitamins, fertility treatment, etc, when they decide to conceive their first child and that it's very unusual for a woman to be able to conceive without these aids. On the rare occasions when a second child is conceived, there might be a window of opportunity to terminate (if they are willing to allow medical resources to be used for this), other women might miscarry due to the harsh lives they lead on the Ark or there could be black market abortionists operating on the Ark. Maybe Ms Blake didn't realise that she was pregnant with Octavia until it was too late to do anything but carry her to term or maybe she didn't want to end her pregnancy. Once she gave birth, she and Octavia were living on borrowed time so Ms Blake focused on keeping her daughter alive and with her family as long as she could.
  • I doubt the Ark would forbid 3rd trimester abortions in given the whole no 2nd child rule. And without pregnancy tests, it would take at most 3 months to notice a pregnancy. That would give 6 months to abort. Pretty huge window of opportunity.
  • How the hell was Octavia's mother able to hide her pregnancy in the first place? This seems like the sort of place that where it's impossible to get fat and any sort sickness would be taken very seriously immediately. Did she just not show up to work for the last 6 months before giving birth? Did she convince everyone she was just putting on weight?
  • It makes more sense in the novel; conceiving a second child is a crime, with both parents floated for it - the father straight away, the mother after the baby is born - but being a second child isn't a crime.
  • That makes a lot more sense in the context of the situation then. There wasn't any mention of stringent anti-sex laws in the show. If the show's writers ignored it intentionally I can't say I blame them.
  • From what we've been shown the mother worked from home. I guess for those 9 or so months whenever a client came to pick up or drop off clothes she'd probably sit behind the table to hide the belly and have Bellamy answer the door and go pick up rations and stuff.

Scanning the ground from the Ark

• The Ark was in orbit for 97 years with a dedicated "Earth Monitoring Station" full of whatever technology was available for watching the planet: cameras, telescopes, dozens of computers and monitors. In all that time, they never detected anything that made anyone think: "Hey look, there might be people down there on the ground!"? And as the season finale closes, we find there are people with technology living at Mount Weather. And apparently they never turned on a radio that could be heard from the Earth Monitoring Station.
  • Wouldn't Mt. Weather's signal jammer have prevented them from receiving any signals from them since we know it was active before the audience was introduced to Mt. Weather?
    • Who are they jamming? The Grounders don't have radios and if they are pumping out enough radio energy to interfere with everything but a very narrow set of signals they make enough noise for the ARK to now ther is an active presence at Mt Weather.
  • It's even stranger once the 100 are actually down there. The Ark knows where they're supposed to be, and have telescopes. It shouldn't be too hard to find them, but looking is never even mentioned.

Sending more people to the ground

• A major part of the second episode is the dilemma faced by the Council back on board the station of whether or not to start culling people to stretch out their life support- the systems are deteriorating, there are only 4 months of air left, and repairs will take 6 months. Okay. How the heck is this a dilemma? They just sent 100 kids to the ground, and as far as they know ~70 of them are still kicking. But not one person- not even the doctor who's desperately trying to prove the kids aren't all dying horribly -speaks up and says "Hey, instead of outright killing 200 people, let's send them down to Earth where they have a chance of surviving. Yes, they may die, but the other option is killing them anyway."
  • Given Abby's recruitment of Raven to repair a second hundred-year-old drop ship, it seems to be a problem of there being not a lot of drop ships with which to get people to the ground. Which raises another question: even if the Earth is habitable, how do they plan to get the entire population of the Ark down there safely?
  • It was intended that some future generation of humans would return to Earth, so presumably the Ark itself has a re-entry mechanism. How safe it is under the circumstances remains to be seen.
  • It does have a re-entry mechanism but there's too many people to get on board.
  • Even if they can't send everyone, sending the ~700 people they have space for could buy everyone else a lot of time.
  • Basically , two drop ships. One was used to determine life was sustainable. Instead of using it on 200 useful citizens they used it on a hundred disposable ones. Also the drop ship they used the first time could only house about 100 for the drop. The second could only drop 700 so it came down to selecting the best who had a chance to make the survivability of the human race possible. So they were making their decisions based on necessity and logic.

Radios for the kids

• Why would they not send radios (or some kind of two-way communication, instead of a life-signs detector that can't tell the difference between "removed" and "dead"?) with the kids? So they could, you know, actually find out about conditions on the ground.
  • They did send them two-way communications. A scientist in the Pilot mentions that radio and video link functions were programmed into the drop ship, but they were rendered inoperable due to the rough landing.
    • Then the wristbands would be inoperable too as they would need a massive antenna to send the detailed level of health data on 100 people that they are shown having. And that antenna could be re-purposed for Morse code with a wire stripper.
  • OP: Wouldn't it still make sense to have portable radios or comm equipment of some kind? The wristbands transmit some kind of signal to the station; adding two little buttons for Morse code would make more sense than putting all their communication eggs in the dropship basket.
  • What kills me about the life-signs detectors is that in the pilot the MC's mother quips that her daughter's "blood sugar is low because she hasn't eaten". So they are clearly advanced enough to monitor more than just a lack of pulse. Why don't they have a sensor for radiation, which was their largest concern, or just one for "signal lost/monitor removed". A "dead body" signal should be distinguishable from "no body detected" signal.
  • If the wristbands were reporting that kind of detailed health information, it should be easy to distinguish "death by illness/radiation" (various ongoing unhealthy readings before the signal stops), "death by accident/violence" (pulse and blood pressure go through the roof immediately before the signal stops), and "wristband removed" (the signal just stops).
  • plot hole: Clarke's group leave the rest of the 100 before Bellamy starts getting the kids to take off their wristbands. Yet when Jasper gets speared, he isn't wearing a wristband. Had he been wearing one, the Ark would have seen his change in vital signs and potentially assumed that it was unsafe to land.

Floating

• Why is penalty for every crime spacing? I can understand death for every crime, sure. You can't keep people locked up on a space station that's just a waste of resources. But jettisoning people into space is just as big a waste of resources. People are full of all kinds of useful shit: water, protein, blood, organs. They talk about limits on blood transfusion and they are just throwing away entire peoples worth of blood. Also they space people in airlocks full of oxygen, that thing they are rapidly running out of. How many airlocks full of air have they wasted on killing people when it's so easy to murder people with almost anything.
  • Dumping an entire airlock full of air is likely artistic license. The only other explanation is that they tried draining the air out, and it gave the criminal time to escape, so now they do it the fast and inefficient way. As for using the corpses for resources, it's probably one last nod of respect to the dead. They're repeatedly shown to be well aware of how barbaric the All Crimes Are Equal practice is, and wouldn't want to exacerbate the issue by performing what would feel like ghoulish actions.
  • Bodily autonomy maybe? It's illegal to take blood or organs from people without their permission, even if they're dead or it could be used to save somebody else's life. It may be impractical in a society with such limited resources, but as the previous entry said, it's a matter of respect for the executed person. It could also be simply because it's a clean way to kill people without violence or needing to store or dispose of the bodies another way.
  • There are clearly some lines they won't cross, even if it does cost them precious resources (for instance, they're willing to keep juvenile offenders alive even though floating them would be the ruthlessly efficient option).
  • Personally, I agree with the OP. An average sized person can survive about five and a half hours when buried alive in a coffin. The volume of that airlock is significantly larger than a coffin — you could probably fit anywhere between ten and eighteen coffins in that space, by my very rough estimate and memory of how large it was. If it's ten, that's 75 hours of air for one person, if i've done my maths correctly, or just over ten hours for 7 people. Considering the amount of people they probably floated over the course of three generations, thats a fair bit of air they're wasting. I mean come on, Kane tries to float Abby when they are among the only people on the ship who know air is running out.

Anya's shooting

• So, did anyone else get the impression that Anya was basically shot by the Camp Jaha guards for just standing there? (Or walking away, as it were?) She didn't pose any kind of obvious threat and if they were just shooting any unidentifiable person who happened to be near the gate, then they should have taken a shot at Clarke too (who was covered from head to toe in muck and thus was equally unidentifiable until her mother saw her). So was there an actual reason for specifically shooting Anya? Cause if there was, I missed it.
  • They did take a shot at Clarke. Winged her because she moved after Anya got shot. When they saw that she was unarmed they decided to take her prisoner until she was identified.
  • By that logic, they should have taken Anya prisoner too. She wasn't armed either...at least, not in any way that would have been obvious to a sniper. There was nothing at all about Anya that screamed "Shoot me, I'm an immediate threat."
  • The Guards are on high alert, technically outside of familiar territory . Surrounded by unknowns and still rattled by some of their own strung up like meat. Add it all together and you get trigger happy sentries that shoot first and think about it later.
  • Fair enough, but if you take all that into account, why did the sentry only shoot at her when she was clearly starting to leave. She and Clarke were just standing there for a good few minutes talking. It wasn't like Anya suddenly became an easier target after she shook hands with Clarke and started walking away. Those "trigger happy sentries" were showing a lot of restraint, letting Anya and Clarke finish their conversation and all.
  • It's possible they didn't even see them until Anya started walking away; it was dark and they were standing still. They may have not even known she was a person or which direction she was going, they could have just seen movement and reacted.

100 Unsupervised Teenagers

• How did nobody get pregnant? It's not like they aren't banging, because Finn and Clarke obviously do it, then Raven and Finn, then Raven has no-strings rebound sex with Bellamy, and then Raven hooks up with Kyle in season 2. Plus the high chance that others in the 100 were getting it on as well. It COULD be plausible that conditions of extreme stress and malnourishment lowered the likelihood of conception, but if we assume that these events all took place over the space of several months (unless Clarke's 'one month away' birthday as of S1 Ep 1 is alluded to at any point???) there would have to be at least ONE statistically, right? Maybe we could just gloss over it by assuming someone who was knocked up might have died before it became an issue.
  • This timeline indicates that the kids have been on Earth for less than two months. Any one of the surviving girls among the 44 could be pregnant and not showing yet.
  • High chance? When they landed they pretty much had an orgy. It's highly likely a lot of those girls are pregnant, they just haven't shown yet considering the time that passes between seasons one and two is only about a month. It's also possible they neutered them or gave them some contraceptives. Though since they sent them to Earth to inhabit it if possible I doubt they'd do that. It's possible that knowing how teenagers are they start them on contraceptives very young, since with the one baby rule, the last thing they'd want is a bunch of teen moms running around the ship.
  • Actually, in the book (spoilers!) there is a character who isn't featured in the series as far as we have seen that falls pregnant. Not that the series follows the book's concepts to a T (they replaced lethal injection with floating, probably because it was more dramatic) but unless its otherwise stated then we can more or less assume most things are the same. And, while you wouldn't 'show' much in the first two months, morning sickness is still a thing (Kate Middleton got it so bad she had to be hospitalised!) and being caught up in a war and drilled into in the first trimester is a recipe for miscarriage. Though again, they could plausibly have just omitted these events from the story.
  • Season 3 reveals that people from the Ark have contraceptive implants.

Time

• How long have the 100 been down there? When Clarke thinks she's being executed in the pilot, she mentions her birthday is one month away, but it's a little bit of a struggle to believe all these events, including training people to use guns and hunt, building a wall out of strapped-together junk, having a battle, setting up camp Jaha, being quarantined for at least a few days, escaping an underground bunker, organizing a peace treaty, sneaking Bellamy in and then marching on Mount Weather ALL took place within roughly 30 days, without so much as another mention of Clarke's birthday by either her mother or herself.
  • It's possible with all the stuff that's happening that Clarke's birthday just cruised by unnoticed. But it's more likely that this stuff happened in 30 days. Unless specified, like that episode where Abby is given 10 days to prove her point and we find out the days are almost up, everything else happens day by day. So it's possible that all this stuff happened over the span of 2-3 weeks.
  • I have a feeling season 3 will start with her Birthday or at least feature it at some point. Keep in mind the last few episodes couldn't have been that far apart timewise or everyone would have died in the desert.
  • The attack on the mountain has to have taken less than 48 hours because Cage tells his father that's how long it takes for the 'change' after the surgery. If you think about it, who would they give the first surgeries to? The ground team, then the rest of the soldiers right? So for the soldiers to die by radiation poisoning, they would've had to have their transplants less than 48 hours ago, if at all. And we know there's a max of 8 transplants a donor can give before death, but when I think Octavia's group arrives at the tunnel entrance to the bunker, there's only one corpse in there. And towards the end they stop even trying to preserve the prisoners for longer by spacing out the transplants or anything like that, which means they couldn't have had much time to do them. Plus travel time included, it takes 8 hours to reach the mountain from the ark. Not sure how long the other trips are but they can't be that long, otherwise several characters would have died. Plus Tondc can't be too far from the ark, otherwise Clarke would've never been able to save Lexa and Abby from the missile. Though it appears the shooter was waiting for her all along and she might've been able to save her maybe even if she hadn't arrived. Though at the same time, they might have just blown up the place for the sake of eliminating all the other heads
  • The timeline reconstructed by The 100 wiki estimates that 45 days have passed between the landing of the 100 and the missile attack on Tondc.

Why did the Mountain Men wait for bone marrow?

• Is there any particular reason why they've been draining immune grounders for generations but they never thought to do the bone marrow thing earlier? They've been transfusing their blood with grounder blood for ages, and when Jasper's blood has the same temporary effect as grounder treatments, Singh suddenly decides its time to try bone marrow treatments? Why? What's so special about Sky people? If grounder blood works as a temporary solution, their marrow should be just as permanent as the 48's. Don't you think that would have been easier, quicker, more efficient and in general less taxing on resources to attempt the marrow treatment from grounders that were already available instead of waiting for more immunes to literally fall from the sky?
  • Because the Ark crew's blood is more efficacious a treatment than the Grounders', because the Ark crew was exposed to space radiation over the same 97-year period and developed a higher tolerance. The Grounders' marrow doesn't cut it, only the Ark crew's. This is mentioned specifically.
  • True but why skip straight to the kids? Why not try grounder bone marrow just once, just in case. And I think what the OP is asking is why didn't they just try bone marrow with the grounders before. I was wandering why they didn't try on the grounders first too. At the least it would've saved the 100 for breeding purposes, and even if it wasn't a permanent solution, it would've worked better than blood anyway. And even if it didn't enable them to live up on Earth, you can be damn sure next time the life support malfunctioned and some radioactivity got in no one would be sweating it. Or hell, they could've tried breeding with the grounders, they were both there long enough for maybe one generation of trials by the time the 100 landed. And sure they considered them savages, but breeding with a savage sure would beat dying a horrible death from radiation or getting really badly painfully burnt every once in a while.
  • Never underestimate the power of racism. There was explicit mention of the original plan being to breed with the Sky people and introduce their resistance into the gene pool, before realising it was more efficient to steal their innards, but the Sky people are "civilised." It's fully plausible that the Mountain Men consider the Sky people to be on their level, and so acceptable breeding stock, but the Grounders so savage that breeding with them would be akin to bestiality.
  • They've been using the Grounders as Human Resources for 50 years. Odds are someone thought to try Grounder bone marrow at some point, but it didn't work. Remember, Grounder blood could only reverse the effects of radiation poisonig; it didn't grant temporary immunity to it the way Sky People blood does.
  • Genetic engineering exists and is known to the Mountain Men. So why they didn't try to engineer radiation immunity once they had a DNA profile of a Sky Person is never answered.
  • Probably for same reason they dropped the plan of breeding the Sky People. It would take too long. Also given that the events of season 2 seem to take place in less than a month they were probably also facing pressure to find the most time effective solution.
    • Taking the bone marrow in a way that kills all the Sky people means this generation can go outside but their kids are still screwed.

The Culling

• Fridge Horror: Waiting 10 days to vote on the culling might have saved the culled, had the delinquents managed to send them a message in time, but it also increased the number of citizens that needed to be culled at the end of the 10 days. Instead of saving over 300 people, Abby likely 'caused the death of at least a dozen of them as the oxygen they'd have consumed in that time would've had to be compensated by eliminating more of them after the end of that period.
  • While the delay did cause an extra 100 people to die, it's also important to realize that about 12 times as many died during the exodus ship launch. And by the end of season 5, there are only about 25 ark survivors left. So 100 people dying is kind of water under the bridge.

Clarke's Decision

• Spoilers for the final episode of season 2! Since Clarke had the video feeds from the bone marrow harvesting, would there have been any way to broadcast that into the chamber where all the mountain people were assembled (can't remember if there's a screen)? Or even just broadcast the whirring drills and agonised screaming? I know there was some kind of tannoy system. It might not have changed anything, since this series is strongly on the cynical side, but I'm willing to bet from their blase attitude, that many hadn't put much thought into what exactly was happening to the teens. Maybe being confronted with their society's own barbarism could've put the brakes on it?
  • The adults pretty much knew where their treatments where coming from. They accepted it out of necessity . In an us vs them kind of mentality . The resistance that stood against it, that helped the Jasper and friends? They got killed off and there seemed no public outcry about it. So you have the only group that made a moral stand dead. The rest of the adult population not making a fuss about it. Accepting it as one of those things as Maya put it. Clarke had no reason to expect them being shown the brutality of their way of life would change that. Not only that , it would require Monty to rewire the system to patch through the goings on in the butcher room to the rest of the base. On an off chance that the population who have lived underground in uncertainty , would rise up instead of accept the brutal death of the ark population as another of the lesser evils they have had to live with for decades. Also their trusted leadership has pointed outsiders as monsters, threats. All the population knows is these outsiders almost killed them by destroying the dam and forcing them to flee to one level . If the leadership keeping them alive tells the population that harvesting bone marrow from these threats will allow them and their children walk into the sun without fear? Then the population that for decades allowed the murder of outsiders like cattle would have done nothing when another bunch of outsiders who threatened their way of life are killed for the greater good. Also , time constraints where in play . By the time Clarke set it in motion her mother would have brought it. As well as others in the room. Another thing was the leadership knew where their where. So Clarke's position was not one hundred per cent secure . If they did not act then, they could have been taken and with that condemn her friends and family to an agonising death.

So why DID Monty just sit there?

• Does Monty allowing Clarke and Bellamy to microwave his best friends' girlfriend and co. seem kind of violently out of character to anyone else?
  • Monty was scared, exhausted, stretched far beyond the breaking point from the horrors he'd been witness to over the past few months, but specifically the past few days. Everyone he had ever known and loved was chained in a shop of horrors being drilled for their bone marrow without anesthetic. I mean—Jasper was down there. And the one thing Monty had always held out faith on was that once Clarke came, everything would be okay. Clarke would come back for them and then they would be safe. He was there with her, watching her come to the only conclusion she could possibly come to. He understood better than Jasper did. And he trusted Clarke's judgement implictly—he had throughout the series. If anything, Monty making an ultimately futile stand that would only get all of them killed at the absolute worst moment would have been the violently out of character option.
  • Plus, he set it up in a way so that, while he did all the work to irradiate the Mountain, the final decision would have to be made by Clarke. That's a common tactic people use to mentally distance themselves from acts they find repugnant.

Cage going public

• In s2e14, Cage decides to 'go public' with the information that the Ark teens killed 10 soldiers. I don't understand how this is an effective tactic? He's got nothing to lose by doing it, sure, but how exactly would it sway public opinion? Mount Weather people already know that the teens are going to be harvested for marrow 'treatments', so surely they wouldn't expect the teens to just submit and die horribly? It doesn't seem like a shocking reveal that they'd fight back, especially if it's to convince the people who sheltered the teens to turn them in.
  • Human nature being what it is, "they killed our people" strikes on a gut level even if calm consideration of the facts points to justified self-defense.

Lexa's deal

• After Lexa's people are freed from the mountain, why doesn't she just doublecross Cage and still help Clarke? If her people are already out then why not? Sure she'd lose some people in the attack, but if they're successful the Grounders will never be threatened by the mountain men again. After all, does Lexa really think that the mountain men won't cause them problems in the future, once the Arkers are all dead?
  • If they were successful. Which she had no assurance of. If they weren't then she was screwed. Not to mention that there is such a thing as a Pyrrhic Victory, which it could easily have turned in to. She took what must have seemed like a much safer path.
    • Until the Mount Weather people decide to go back on their deal since they see the Grounders as savages and just wipe them out anyway. Lexa was at the gates and victory was in sight, and just decided to trust that the people who had been slaughtering her people for years would stop.
    • Once the Mountain Men are immune to radiation, they'll no longer need to kidnap Grounders to use in "treatments". The Mountain will still be a long-term, potential threat, but in the short-term, they'd have no reason to continue attacking the Grounders, or spending so much time and resources on the now-unnecessary Reaper program.

Blood Must NOT Have Blood?

• One of the defining characteristics of the Grounders in the early seasons was their need for bloody and painful retribution on those who have committed atrocities against them. Did Lexa just... forget about this at Mount Weather? The Mountain Men have been torturing and mutilating their people for decades, and Lexa is presented with the first real opportunity to finally avenge all those atrocities. And she just... doesn't? Accepting the deal is the equivalent of saying "hey, you know how you guys have been abducting and slaughtering our people for as long as we can remember, and transforming some of them into bloodthirsty monsters who slaughter their own kind? Yeah, we're over that now. Have fun torturing our former allies who were helping us get revenge on you, we'll be going back to our villages. Hopefully things will be cool from now on." It seems like this is the most anti-Grounder decision that could have been made, how would any of the Grounders have been okay with this? Yes, Lexa did save their people, but at the cost of peace with the people who had been terrorizing them? It would seem to be more in line with what we've seen for the Grounders to say "surrender or you kill our people? No. YOU surrender to our army, or we shall kill ALL of your people including women and children in payment for what you've done. And for each of those prisoners you kill we shall take one of you and torture their loved ones for hours upon hours until their painful death." This is the same Lexa that was cool with letting a missile wipe out a village if it gave her a tactical advantage, are we really supposed to believe that she would end the war entirely for the sake of a few more Grounder lives, as opposed to the countless number that have already been lost and the countless more that may be lost in the future? Are we supposed to believe that Finn's death could have been avoided if the Ark had a few dozen Grounders rotting in their cells to offer as a bargaining chip? The entire conflict of the first half of Season 3 revolves around the Grounders being willing and eager to die fighting the Skaikru and refusing to accept peace with them, and Skaikru's sins are FAR LESS severe than those of the Mountain Men, even after Pike's massacre. But when Lexa proposes "Blood Must Not Have Blood" this is taken as something that would never be able to work and that no one would accept, going against all previous Grounder traditions, even though we clearly saw it being an acceptable decision last season.

Anya's claims against the 100

• In Season 1 when Anya and Clarke first meet face-to-face, Anya accuses the 100 of being the ones at fault for starting a war, as they'd (if I remember the list correctly) burnt down a village with their flares, invaded their land, and tortured one of their members. While those are good points, Anya completely overlooks the obvious points from the 100's side of things, and Clarke never brings any points up to counter. While she defends the flares, the 'invading land' thing is easily justifiable as the ones doing the 'invading' were unarmed scouts who had no idea the land was 'taken', during which one of those scouts was attacked, kidnapped, tortured, and hung as live bait. They then later kidnapped another one of their people (though Lincoln only did so to save her), held her against her will, then stabbed and poisoned one of the 100 who was trying to save her, after several of them had already been killed by the Grounders' hunters. Basically, the response the grounders had to the 'invasion' was Disproportionate Retribution and the 100 had perfectly legitimate reasons for their own violence against the Grounders, given the fact they were the ones who acted violently first. While Anya ignoring these points is understandable, I find it ridiculous Clarke didn't point these things out, given it would have made the conversation less 'OK we did some bad things but we want to apologize' and more 'hey, you've been dicks to us too, we're just trying to patch things up and be the bigger people'. Didn't she think any of those points were things to bring up?
  • That bogged me a bit too. The very first indication the 100 had that there was anyone alive on Earth was when a Grounder threw a spear into Monty's chest. The 100 made some mistakes, but acting like they were the aggressors and the Grounders were innocent victims was a bit much. (And I don't think the show intends for us to notice this disconnect.)
  • It seems the show generally was aiming for nobody truly being the bad guys, just nobody ever truly gets into a position where they can sit down and even honestly attempt to work through all the madness. The Grounders correctly feel invaded and now that we know about the Mt.Brave people and the general relationship between the clans shoot first and don't ask questions is reasonable. Once they realized the 100 were an entirely new group the damage had been done. Everything past that is just piling on. The 100 are only given more leeway (and YMMV on how much. This troper always thought this was an obvious allegory for the Native Americans and European settlers.) by virtue of being our protagonists.

Preferring camping to a powered bunker

• At the end of season 2, they have killed everyone in Mt. Weather. Now, while it may have bad memories, wouldn't it be logical to set up base in Mount Weather, as it has medicine, technology, its own food supply, and if repaired, their own power facilities? They'll have to deal with a few days of body cleanup and dam generator repair, but after that, living at Camp Jaha would be a hell in comparison.
  • As is established in S3, the Grounder tribes are wary of the "Skaikru" becoming the new Mountain Men; as such the Camp Jaha people are grabbing anything that isn't nailed down and taking it out of Mount Weather, but they will not set up shop in it to avoid being forced into perpetual stalemate (the Camp Jaha people having to barricade themselves inside the mountain in perpetuity) with no true chance of peace.

Diana Sydney's hair

• This is a pretty minor thing, but it's been bothering me. Resources on the Ark are very scarce, right? So how come there's enough spare for Diana to dye her hair? Seems like she must have requisitioned some supplies for recreational use, condradicting her 'woman of the people' public image.
  • What makes you think she's not a natural blonde?
    • She has brown eyebrows, her roots are showing, and her actress is a natural brunette.

Season Two Finale

• At the end of the season two finale, Lincoln injects Cage with the Reaper drug, supposedly killing him. Justified? Absolutely. However, if Grounders turned into Reapers with the same drug never die from their doses, how can Lincoln know for sure that Cage is truly dead?
  • When the Grounder\Reapers took the drug they are pretty immobilised for a period of time. Lincoln left Cage lying immobilised on the ground , with a open wound gushing out blood without the ability to move to counter that. Basically Lincoln left Cage to bleed out like a pig without the ability to prevent it.

Grounders' language

• The Grounders have their own unique language, distinct and unintelligible from English. How did this happen? It was only 97 years from the nuclear war until the 100 made contact with them. That's five generations at most. It is nowhere near enough time for natural language drift. And if their language did somehow drift, how do they still know English?
  • Language can change pretty fast under the right circumstance, plus (in the tv show at least) the Grounder's language is pretty intelligible and obviously based upon late 20thC/early 21stC inner city slang. Retaining English makes sense too, it is what the Mount Weather grounders speak and until Clarke and co showed up they were the local super power. It wouldn't be the first time in history that the ordinary folk had to be bilingual with their own everyday language and a special one for dealing with the lords and ladies. (Also, remember that it's mostly the leaders and the warriors who speak English, AKA the people who would deal with Mount Weather- most of the random villagefolk speak only Grounder.)
  • On a similar note, does it really seem likely that a whole fully-formed clan/tribal culture, with a complex set of traditions and values could have developed in less than a century? This seems more like the sort of thing that would happen over several hundred years.
  • Conditions on the ground are REALLY rough, and were especially so in the first years after the nuclear event. So, lower lifespans, which means generations would happen a lot more quickly. This would probably make it a lot harder for cultural knowledge from before the apocalypse to get passed on, and a lot quicker mutation of what does. Plus, early Grounders probably had to commit a lot of really horrible acts in order to survive, which can result in rejecting "more civilized" social values and embracing a more warlike culture, in order to feel more sane and okay about the violent survival circumstances.

Nuclear Warhead

• So, at the very end of Season II, it's revealed that A.L.I.E. kept the nuclear warhead from the missile Jaha rode down to Earth in, the drones under her control having retrieved it for her. Yet in Season III, it is never mentioned once. So... What the hell happened to it? In the two months between seasons, did they just forget it was there?
  • It was cannibalized to turn into a power source for Jaha's portable backpack doohickey so that A.L.I.E can assimilate people away from base. When Pike tries to destroy it in "Red Sky at Morning" he is warned that the backpack is a nuclear explosive.

A.L.I.E

• So how did A.L.I.E convince so many of the Arkadians to take her chip?
  • Because from what I observed it seems like most of them were tempted to take the chip but only didn't take it because Abby the doctor showed concerns about the side effects from taking it. Then it is shown that after Abby gets chipped that almost everyone starts lining up to take the chip. Though it is implied that they were tempted because of all the things they been through and also because they trusted Jaha as he almost gave his life so that they could get to the ground. Even then some trusted Abby as well which could be why others got tempted when she started supporting it.
  • Though other people probably ended up getting threatened to take the chip as A.L.I.E did get some guards under her control to and they probably threatened them with their guns off-screen.

Eligius IV Crew and Radiation

• If the Eligius IV crew spent most of their cryo in deep space, and didn't earn a generational resistance to radiation the way Skaikru did, how did they survive on the surface of a planet even worse irradiated by Praimfaiya? Remember that this was a major issue in Season 2, with the Mount Weather group.

FTL travel?

• Reconstruction of the parallel timeline for world "Alpha"'s settlement (later renamed Sanctum) suggests that the Eligius III ship somehow arrived at that world circa 2040-2060. That's impossible unless that ship was fitted out with an FTL drive, but nobody from Eligius IV makes any mention of using one on their return to Earth. (Cryo only goes on for so long provided maintenance is done to ensure no disruptions to deep-cold storage, so there must be some assistance from an FTL drive) Even if one argues that Eligius III was a colonization ship and Eligius IV not, it still stands to reason the Eligius Corporation would want the prisoners (and their mined cargo) to zip back to Earth as fast as possible after their time was up.
  • Potential explanation: The Eligius IV was supposed to be a 24 year mission round trip (so, 10-12 each way), but after the mutiny damaged the ship, the return trip took around 100 years. Assuming the damage to the ship caused it to take 10x longer for the trip, then we can assume the 75-year journey that Eligius IV took to Alpha could have been done in ~7.5 years. Now, what solar system you’re finding within about 7 light years is another question for another time.

Jail cell block

• The first episode says that the Ark was constructed by combining all the other space stations. Why would a space station have a cell block capable of containing 100 people?
  • The people of the Ark converted existing space to a new purpose. That said, they clearly have supplies that no one would reasonably have sent to a satellite - like dozens of automatic weapons with thousands of rounds of ammunition.