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The City Of Light
- There is a place for all of us. When I first landed on the earth, I met a woman who spoke of a place beyond the Dead Zone, a place where everyone is accepted — a City of Light.—Jaha
The City of Light is a virtual reality, created by A.L.I.E. It is seemingly reached through the subconscious—through A.L.I.E. or meditation after ingesting a Key to the City of Light. The City of Light was a mythical "promised land" to the Grounders, which many have attempted to reach by crossing the desert known as the Dead Zone.
The City Of Light As A Whole
- "No pain, no hate, no envy."—Jaha
Leader: A.L.I.E
Prominent Members: Jaha, Raven, Abby, Kane, Ontari, Jasper, Emori
A.L.I.E recruits members by convincing people to ingest chips/keys that upload their minds into the City Of Light and take away their emotional and physical pain, but it also takes away memories and makes them devoted to her.
- All for Nothing: The characters discover four separate ways to survive the second apocalypse, without the City of Light, rendering A.L.I.E.'s insistence that the City is the only way demonstrably false.
- Apocalypse Cult: They function as one as their goal could have potentially killed off most of the population of the world with those who refused to take the chip while the ones who take it become a part of the city. Then it is later revealed that they are unknowingly preparing for a second nuclear holocaust that will kill their bodies, but leave their minds uploaded in the city.
- Arc Words: "There is no pain in the City of Light."
- Artificial Afterlife: Originally it was just a virtual world that the living could visit, but it becomes one for all of A.L.I.E.'s followers who die in the real world.
- Born-Again Immortality: If a member's body dies in the real world their "mind" stays alive in the City Of Light.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Members are devoted to A.L.I.E and will obey her even if it means killing themselves or hurting or killing their loved ones.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: They may use forms of torture in order to make people take the chip if they don't voluntarily take it.
- Feel No Pain: Members do not feel any physical or emotional pain which makes them very difficult to deal with in a fight as hitting them or shooting them has almost no effect unless they take a severe blow to the head or if you kill them.
- Hive Mind: All minds are connected in the City Of Light and are connected to A.L.I.E. When she is destroyed the minds are returned to their physical bodies.
- Longing for Fictionland: The people who voluntarily take the chip take it because they would rather live in a digital city than in the harsh reality of the ground.
- A.L.I.E in the Season 3 finale claims that most of the people in the city would choose to stay there despite being forced to take the chip.
- More than Mind Control: People are still technically themselves in the City of Light except without certain emotions and they are mostly seen as happy most of the time, and they also don't remember painful memories or the memories just don't hurt them anymore, though this also includes forgetting everything about dead loved ones making it like they didn't exist. It also appears that they are devoted to A.L.I.E because she took away their pain. Most of the people who voluntarily took the chip did so because they wanted their pain taken away.
- No-Sell: Because of their inability to feel pain hitting and shooting them is mostly this, unless they are killed or get knocked out by a blow to the head, although they also still have reflex reactions from getting shot or hit despite not feeling pain.
- Technically-Living Zombie: Because of their Hive Mind and their inability to feel pain they do act similar to zombies when they attack and they show no regard for their own safety, only focused on their goal.
- Zerg Rush: In the events of the two-part season finale which has many of them climbing up the tower of Polis.
Also see the Main Characters Characters Page, the Grounders Characters Page, and the Sky People Characters Page.
City Of Light Members
A.L.I.E.
A.L.I.E.
Played by: Erica Cerra
An artificial intelligence whose core command is to make life better for mankind. She is the one responsible for the nuclear strike that wiped out most of humanity, having seen it as a solution to a potential overpopulation problem on Earth.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: In Season 3, she reveals that she was designed to make life better. When asked why she caused the nuclear holocaust, she responds that she needed to fix the root problem. When asked what was the root problem, her response was "too many people." Chris, one of her creators, was so horrified by her actions that he killed himself.
- Arc Villain: Of Season 3, alongside Pike and the Ice Nation, though she ends up becoming a bigger threat than them.
- Big Bad: Of Season 3.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: She is just a computer following her programming, and fails to understand what's wrong with the things she has done and truly doesn't understand why people need to have their free will and feel pain.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Those who take her chip enter the "City of Light", where they will do her bidding without question. It compromises their pain, but as for their emotions, A.L.I.E. overwrites memories of what causes their emotional pain, such as causing them to forget who their recently lost loved ones were and have no qualms about hurting the loved ones that are still alive, and they follow orders from A.L.I.E without question.
- Character Death: Clarke destroys her by pulling the kill switch.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: In the finale Clarke tells A.L.I.E that she could have just told everyone about the coming nuclear apocalypse to get them to take the chip instead of torturing and killing. Clarke also considers not deleting the city if A.L.I.E gives everyone their free will back, implying that going into the city would have been okay if it wasn't for A.L.I.E removing free-will/emotions/memories. But subverted because, as Becca mentions, her explicit programming means she is incapable of stopping herself even if she wanted to.
- Dark Messiah: Her recruitment methods resemble a cult leader, and those who are chipped are devoted to her. Her methods include torture, such as crucifixion and/or killing those who refuse to take the chip. This echoes the story of how The Antichrist will force people to take the mark of the Beast.
- Demonic Possession: Technically Puppeteer Parasite, but treated as the former. A.L.I.E taking full control of Raven, which includes speaking through and purposely injuring Raven, forcing her friends to tie her to a bed, resembles typical possessions in media.
- The Evils of Free Will: Jasper while in the City Of Light claims that, by taking away pain and free will, she is protecting humanity from destroying themselves. Without them, her followers can live a perfect life.
- Fun with Acronyms: Becca went to the trouble of making an acronym out of a woman's name and a hologram to match. The show never reveals what the acronym stands for, but
Word of God states it to be "Applied Lucent Intelligence Emulator". - Greater-Scope Villain: She caused the nuclear war aka WW3, which directly leads to every single conflict within the show, and her plan unites everyone to stop her, which puts their conflicts temporarily on hold.
- Hive Mind: A.L.I.E's consciousness is connected to everyone who imbibes her chip. As such, she can both talk through them and see everything they see. Her intelligence also expands with every new recruit.
- Interface with a Familiar Face: Her appearance is modeled on her creator, Becca Franko, with the main difference being that A.L.I.E. is a glamorous Lady in Red, while Becca preferred conservative lab-wear and little makeup. Her personality, however, is completely different.
- Kill All Humans: By starting the nuclear apocalypse, although she intended some to survive..
- Lady in Red: Her hologram wears a bright red dress.
- Last Episode, New Character: She first appears in the final scene of Season 2.
- Loophole Abuse: Played with.
- According to her programming people have to consent to taking the chip and entering the City Of Light. She ends up seeing torture and threatening people and their loved ones as another way of getting consent.
- Becca reveals that she doesn't have the ability to actually stop herself or change her primary goal even if she wanted to, and therefore cannot simply be talked out of her goal.
- No Waterproofing in the Future: Murphy's threat of dumping her mobile processing unit in the lake is enough to alarm her people. She later gets around this by downloading herself into the Ark's computer in orbit, rendering her mobile unit obsolete.
- Posthumous Character: She appears in a flashback in Season 4, chronologically a day or so following her deletion.
- Projected Woman: She originally interacts with people through a hologram, modeled on Becca. Later she upgrades to a digital Not-So-Imaginary Friend for those who have taken the chip.
- Psychotic Smirk: Almost all the time, especially when people refuse her.
- Robot Me: Hologram, technically. She started off this way, and her avatar was designed to resemble her creator, Becca Franko. However, she later moves towards being an Interface with a Familiar Face.
- Three Laws-Compliant: She wishes to bypass them, and asks Jaha to find out how.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: In the Season 3 finale, she reveals to Clarke that another Nuclear Apocalypse is imminent, which she has calculated with kill every human on Earth. Uploading all humans into the City of Light is the only way she can calculate to effectively save them, as digital ghosts would be unaffected by the destruction. The fact that she may have to torture and/or murder humans to convince them to upload is irrelevant to her. Additionally, upon upload she removes their physical/emotional pain and free will, believing this will enable the survivors to live a happy and perfect life in the city.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: She saw nuking the Earth as solving a potential overpopulation problem, and her forcing and manipulating people into the City Of Light was her way of saving the human race from nuclear radiation that will wipe out the world in six months.
Gideon
Gideon
Played by: John De Santis
A.L.I.E.'s mutated servant.
- Character Death: Dies from getting his throat slashed by Emori and can be assumed to be Killed Off for Real when The City Of Light is shut down by the kill switch.
- Implacable Man: He has no reaction to a blow to the head that should have knocked him out, simply saying "Pain does not exist in the City of Light."
- The Quiet One: The only things he seems to say are praises of the City of Light.
- The Stoic: He's always completely emotionless.
- Unexplained Recovery: He's unperturbed by a slash to the throat, although it's possibly just what's left of him in the City of Light.
Otan
Otan
Played by: Mik Byskov
Emori's brother who helps deliver supplies to A.L.I.E.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Becoming a part of the City of Light leaves him willing to hold a knife to his sister's throat to get back A.L.I.E. whose consciousness is in a back pack that allows her to travel.
- Character Death: Killed by the Arkadia guards.
- Satellite Character:
- In the second season, he doesn't speak much and is mostly there as Emori's brother.
- In the third season, his characterization is to show just how quick the City of Light can affect people before he gets killed by trigger-happy Arkadia guards who felt threatened by him being a Grounder.
