Madi’s arc is so pointlessly sad. 🙃
She’s hunted from the moment she’s born, for being a nightblood. The only time in her life when she doesn’t have a target on her back is the six years she lives with Clarke after Praimfaya. Otherwise, she’s constantly targeted and used by adults in wars that ultimately end up being pointless.
She spends the first few years of her young life hiding out from fleimkepas. Then, literally everyone she’s ever met dies in a horrifically brutal fashion. Until Clarke comes along and burns the bodies, Madi was forced to live among them, constantly reminded of the people she had lost and constantly re-traumatized by the sight of their slowly decaying corpses.
She meets Clarke, and slowly comes to trust her. But then, Eligius comes back to Earth, the bunker is opened, Spacekru returns, and suddenly, Madi is thrust back into lying and hiding and dealing with demands much bigger than her, from adults with a lot more experience.
Everyone wants something from her, and so few people ever think to ask what Madi wants.
Octavia wants to control her as a protege, Clarke wants to control her as her daughter, Bellamy wants to control her by putting the Flame in her head. All of the people who were supposed to protect her and care for her either didn’t, or went way, way overboard in their mission to.
Bellamy puts the Flame in Madi’s head and suddenly, Madi is now burdened with all of these thoughts and memories that aren’t hers, and with the responsibility and power of being Heda.
And she manages it, she does, but it all ends up being for nothing. Earth is destroyed. They leave it behind, but Madi carries the Flame with her, even still.
Then s6 comes along, and an old evil Heda possesses her. And she spends an entire season as his meat puppet, basically, as tries to wrest control of the Grounders through her. She almost dies as the others rescue her.
So the Flame comes out. For a moment, it seems like she might be safe.
And she gets the tiniest, most tragic taste of a normal life. She gets to meet other kids her age, and pet a dog, and play soccer. She gets to make new friends and she starts to learn more about empathy and kindness and stability. She starts to talk about the things she’s gone through, starts to find something like recovery -
- annnnd then she’s targeted, yet again, because of the Flame, for the memories that the Flame left in her, memories she can’t even access herself, memories she barely knows she has, she’s only been told she has. She gives herself up willingly just to protect Clarke, only to be betrayed by Cadogan when he ruins her brain by delving too deeply to retrieve the information he needs.
Giving up those memories leaves her completely paralyzed, but fully conscious and aware. When her mom finds her, she tries to mercy-kill her, all with the justification that it’s what Madi would want. But again, no one thinks to ask her, even as she’s hooked up to a futuristic thought-harvesting machine.
Then she dies. Sorry, “transcends.” She doesn’t even get to stay with the one person she’s considered family the longest. She doesn’t even get to say goodbye, with her own words, her own mouth. All we get is implied messages from her, words spoken through other people.
The last time we ever see as fully herself, she’s struggling with all of her might, about to be tortured nearly to death for Becca’s memories.
She never got to live a normal life. She never got to grow up. She lived for less than a decade and a half, and most of that time was spent hiding, or facing horrors, or carrying way too much responsibility.
So many choices made for her. So many horrible situations that she was forced into, all because adults saw her for nothing but her nightblood, or as a child to be controlled, or for the memories locked inside her head.
Yu gonplei ste odon, Madi kom Louwada Kliron Kru. You deserved so much better.
