Struggling to survive alone in a world scorched by Praimfaya, Clarke makes a startling discovery - and faces a dangerous new threat.
Tropes in this episode:
- Achilles in His Tent: Sometime in the last six months, Murphy has ostracized himself to one part of the Ark, and attacks Bellamy for daring to intrude on his space.
- After the End: Taken to a whole new level. The characters now exist in a world that has seen the end of two entire civilizations, and is almost completely devoid of any form of life.
- Astronomic Zoom: The opening shot of the episode is of the Ring in orbit around a completely gray and lifeless Earth, then a direct zoom in on Clarke as she climbs out of a makeshift shelter, 42 days after Praimfaya.
- BFG: The Eligius Prison Ship has many, a good sign that they are not good guys. Clarke begins sketching them, as their technology surpasses even that of the Ark's.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted, and played straight. Clarke starts the episode with visible radiation burns on her face, and after she passes out in the dessert, her face has a nasty sunburn and cracked/chapped lips. Although she is still in healthy shape for someone surviving on bugs. The survivors on the ring also look pretty good for living on algie.
- Bear Trap: Madi traps Clarke's foot in one during their first meeting. It's shown to be horribly painful, and Clarke has to perform some basic Self-Surgery to save her foot.
- Call-Back: Many
- While scavenging Arcadia, Clarke finds Jasper's goggles, his farewell letter to Monty, and Maya's iPod. She uses the goggles to protect herself from the dust storms and listens to music in the rover.
- Clarke returns to Polis to find it destroyed. She finds pieces of Lexa's old throne and uses one as a walking stick.
- Clarke muses that she has lost track of how many bodies she has burned since getting to the ground.
- Clarke starts drawing again. This time she does a picture of Madi in order to bond with the girl. Later, she draws a visual history of her experiences on Earth.
- The Eligius prisoners descent to the ground and emergence from the ship echoes the 100's original landing in the pilot. Diyoza even echos Clarke's original line "We're not alone here."
- Clarke tells Madi about the Conclave from season 4, and Madi questions how she could ever have doubted that Skairipa would win.
- Monty brings up Jasper's death.
- Echo reminds Bellamy that she once stabbed and nearly killed his sister.
- Clarke gives Madi a pistol to defend herself from the Eligius men, but warns her that if she uses it, they'll hear the gunshot and come running. Madi tells her she'll make sure it's "[her] only choice," one of the oxymorons Clarke and Bellamy joked about.
- The concept of whether or not there are "good guys" comes up again. It now morphs from a "maybe" to a "definitely," as Madi tries to get Clarke to spare the life of one of the men who attacked her by saying that since he tried to help her, he might be a good guy. Clarke tells her "there are no good guys," before executing him.
- Didn't Think This Through: Clarke tells Madi to go to the place she used to hide from the nightblood scouts. This is a space under the floorboards of a house in the village, accessed by a trapdoor and concealed by a rug. Diyoza's men find her, while the nightblood scouts never did, because Clarke didn't consider that the spot is only hidden if someone is there to put the rug back. Presumably Madi's parents did this before Praimfaya, which is why it was a successful hiding spot from the scouts. But since Clarke runs off to investigate before Madi goes in, it leaves her vulnerable to Diyoza's men sweeping the village.
- Evolving Credits: The opening titles have been updates to show Earth burning as the deathwave crosses it, as well as the landing of the Elgius Corporation Spacecraft.
- Feral Child: Subverted. Madi appears to be this at first, but she actually still has all of her faculties, she's just a bit of a Crazy Survivalist.
- Gilligan Cut: Bellamy assures Echo that Octavia is the least of their worries. The next shot shows Octavia in the bunker, overseeing what appears to be a gladiator fight, and looking like she might very well be the most over everyone's worries.
- How We Got Here: The premiere picks up 46 days after Praimfaya, and shows Clarke struggling alone, finding Eden, meeting Madi, and eventually ends up where the season 4 premiere ended.
- Lethal Chef: Monty's attempts at making the algae appetizing are not going well.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Clarke repaired the rover, despite two of the crucial solar panels being cracked and one having flown away in a sandstorm. Presumably she managed to get some from the solar arrays near the island (there's an area marked "solar fields" on her map, where Murphy and Jaha encountered the drone back in season 2), but even then, Clarke has no training as an engineer and no one to help her, making it a pretty impressive feat.
- Oh, Crap!: Clarke's face when the prison ship lands.
- Point of No Return: The Ring crew acknowledges that if they use their fuel to try and dock with the mother ship, they won't have enough fuel to get back to the ring safely.
- Relationship Upgrade: Bellamy and Echo are together. Justified in that it has been 6 years, and Bellamy acknowledges that it took 3 years for him to even trust her before they got close.
- The Reveal: Several:
- The Shadow valley is actually the remnant of the real life Shenandoah Valley in western Virginia and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia.
- The lingering radiation on the ground makes radio contact between Clarke, the bunker, and the Ring impossible.
- The Gagarin Prisoner Transport ship we saw land in the previous episode is only a drop ship, with a much larger mother ship in orbit.
- Saharan Shipwreck: The sea around ALLIE's island was completely evaporated by Praimfaya, leaving nothing but sand and a few of these. Although considering it's been a century since any form of proper maintenance could be done (before the sea dried) they are barely recognizable.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Several examples:
- It doesn't matter how much Heroic Resolve one has. A single human with minimal rations for energy cannot move the remains of a skyscraper.
- Ragnarok Proof means only so much. Solar panels, despite these ones being way more advanced than anything in reality, can only take wear and tear. While the rover can certainly take a beating, it eventually is damaged badly by a sand storm, though not beyond repair.
- The death wave may have jumped over the Shadow Valley, but the radiation did not. It still killed all the human inhabitants of the valley, though strangely not the animals.
- Time Skip: Unlike with Clarke, whom we see intermittently during the 6 years, we pick up with Spacekru 6 years and 7 days after we last saw them. Their opening scene reflects the major changes and status of relationships between the characters:
- Bellamy is the de facto leader of the group
- Harper and Monty are still together. Monty's, "Make algae, not war," apron quickly establishes that he enjoys the quiet life on the Ark, something he outright tells Harper in a later scene.
- Emori has been rooming with Raven since her break-up and the two have gotten very close. She is trained to spacewalk and use the ark's technology.
- Bellamy and Echo have been dating for 3 years.
- Raven and Echo are also close, and Raven has overcome, or at least adjusted to, her disability, as the two are seen sparring intensely.
- Murphy has isolated himself from the rest of the group. While Emori appears to hate him, Bellamy is still reaching out to him and Raven doesn't seem too angry with him either.
- The reason they are stuck in space is because Raven hasn't found a solution to the fuel problem they brought up in the season 4 finale. It's a sensitive topic, and Bellamy is essentially put in time-out for bringing it up.
- Took a Level in Badass: Raven has been training in Grounder combat techniques since we last saw her, and can now at least hold her own in a friendly spar with Echo. For added awesome, she does so with a permanently hobbled leg.
- Wham Shot: The final shot of Octavia in the bunker, overseeing a brutal and bloody fight.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: A pair of Eligus crew members sweep the village and find Madi. She shoots one of them in self-defense, grazing him. He's ready to shoot her in retaliation, while his partner insists she's "just a kid" and that's excessive. Madi attempts to use this information to spare his life when Clarke arrives, but to no avail.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Bellamy insists that Murphy admit he's not worthless before he will release him from a headlock during their scuffle.
