Clarke turns to Indra after discovering Octavia's barbaric plan to conquer the valley. Echo forces Raven's hand to initiate Monty's cyberattack.
Tropes in this episode:
- Call-Back:
- Monty points out to Clarke that because Bellamy was there with Pike when Indra was shot and 300 Trikru killed, he might not be the best person to talk to her about Octavia. Clarke immediately agrees, and heads over to supervise.
- Octavia refers to Clarke as "Wanheda."
- She also calls Clarke a hypocrite for criticizing her use of human test subjects, citing Clarke's own irradiation of a Grounder to test Nighblood.
- Chekhov's Gun: Clarke finally delivers Jasper's letter to Monty that she discovered at Arkadia six years previously. Turns out it's a belated suicide note from after he was rescued from the City of Light.
- The Coup: The episode ends with Clarke, Bellamy, Monty, and Harper planning to do this to Octavia, since Diyoza won't share the valley without an unconditional surrender, Wonkru will most certainly lose any armed conflict, the plan with the sand worms might kill them all, and Octavia will never surrender.
- Cryptic Background Reference: Shaw mentions witnessing the aftermath of the Battle of San Francisco.
- Death Glare: Too many to list. Safe to say, people are not getting along in this episode.
- Did Not Think This Through: Monty points out that the plan to use the sand worms as a biological weapon is monumentally stupid. If they are released into the valley, neither side will have any way to stop or contain them and they could potentially destroy the last fertile land on the planet.
- History Repeats: As Monty bitterly notes Jasper was right in his suicide note about how there always seems to be a new enemy to fight and a new conflict on the horizon as everyone is once again gearing up for another war and nothing has changed from six years ago.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: Bellamy volunteers to talk to Indra about the human test subjects. Clarke tells him to be diplomatic. Three seconds later, he's trying to politely get the Grounders sitting with her to give them privacy, when Clarke walks over and bluntly tells them to scram.Bellamy: Real diplomatic.
- Internal Reveal: Two of them:
- Monty, Bellamy, Clarke, and Harper finally learn of from Jasper's note of his Interrupted Suicide from the beginning of Season 4.
- Echo reveals to Diyoza that Shaw was the one who locked the prisoners out of the missile system.
- Jerk Ass Has A Point:
- Diyoza deliberately provides Abby with more drugs to feed her addiction. She points out that they can't force Abby to detox effectively as A) the process is difficult and she might not survive, and B) Abby needs to decide to come clean on her own, or she won't have the proper motivation to stay clean.
- When she is called out on the fact that countless people will die if her plan to send the worms succeeds Octavia points out that both Clarke and Bellamy have spilled innocent blood in order to end war. She also calls out Clarke's hypocrisy for human experimentation when she had no problem irradiating the test subject in Becca's lab to create synthetic nightblood.
- Killed Offscreen: Karina died of her wounds between this episode and last, despite Abby's attempts to help her. Considering she had several filthy hands shoved into a gaping stomach wound, and was shot with a high caliber sniper rifle, it's a case of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome.
- Mad Scientist: Kara wasn't exactly sane when we met her, but her scientific work mostly consisted of growing food and medicine for Wonkru. Now she's graduated to full on experimentation of living humans with Chestburster SandWorms, with just as much Body Horror as you'd expect.
- Mama Bear: Clarke's maternal instinct kicks in full force when Octavia claims Madi as her second.
- MacGyvering: Monty picks the lock to Kara's bio-containment lab with pruning shears and a magnet.
- Meaningful Echo: A non-verbal one. In class, Ethan trips Madi, makes fun of her for not being Wonkru, then offers to help her back up only to snatch his hand away. When she bests him the following day, she similarly offers her hand to help him up, but actually does help him up, demonstrating she has a higher ethical standard than he does.
- Mercy Kill: Indra euthanizes Tarik to put him out of his misery while the worms eat his insides.
- New Rules as the Plot Demands: Gaia shows Madi the Flame, to demonstrate her birthright as the last naturally-born Nightblood. Madi is apprehensive, but is also shown to be drawn to it almost magnetically, while hearing whispers in the background. They get louder as she draws near, implying they might be past Commanders. This new Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane angle to the Flame is weird, given all the work put in last season to demonstrate the Grounders' worship of it was misplaced because it's just a continuation of Becca's AI research.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Shaw is on the receiving end after his deception with the missile system is revealed.
- The Reveal: A few:
- Diyoza is pregnant.
- 75% of the prisoners are infected and likely dying.
- Monty brought a sample of algae from the Ring. He claims they can sustainably grow it in the failing hydroponics farm, unlike the other crops, meaning the Shallow Valley isn't as big a necessity.
- Revenge Before Reason: Madi unintentionally reveals the full breadth of her combat skills while drilling under Octavia's supervision, the the one thing she wasn't supposed to do. It's because she gets paired up with Ethan, who had bullied her in class the day before and humiliated her in front of the other students. She takes it a little too far, not only besting him in the same way he had bested her in half the time, but needing Gaia to call the fight when she goes for him while he's down. This ruthlessness impresses Octavia, who makes Madi her second.
- Unwitting Test Subject: Kooper decides to use the defectors as test subjects to see how long the worms can live in living beings. Octavia did not know about the live test subject, but is willing to use it to their advantage.
