The reason for the season
Alright friends, I’ve been sitting on this meta for two seasons and I’m finally (updating it and) hitting publish on it.
Each season of The 100 is predicated on a central Aesopian lesson that is the root of all conflict for that season.
Or in plain English: each season has a “moral of the story” that is woven into the main plot line.
And - that “moral of the story” is always in (some) way the name of finale.
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Season 1
Finale title: “We are grounders”
English idiom/saying: “I’m only human”.
What it means/moral of the story: All humans make mistakes, or can be tempted into making bad decisions.
Examples from the season:
Clarke’s accusation of John Murphy as Wells’ killer.
Finn cheating on Raven with Clarke.
Bellamy shooting Jaha.
Bellamy’s efforts to prevent the Ark from contacting those on the ground.
Octavia and Lincoln falling for each other despite it being against their best interests due to them being on opposite sides of a war.
Other reasons:
A lot of the issues of this season were centred around base human trappings and weaknesses.
Repeatedly throughout the season we start the episode with the Clarke voice over saying “we will be tested by the earth, the secrets it hides, and most of all, by each other.”
Season 2
Finale title: “Blood must have blood”
English Idiom: “An eye for an eye (makes the whole world blind)”
What it means/”moral of the story”: If you take out vengeance on others, they will turn around and take out vengeance on you, and everyone will be left the poorer.
Examples from the season:
The “on the nose” sci-fi twist of this being that Mount Weather is literally stealing blood from the grounders, and now the grounders are demanding blood in return.
The Grounders demanding that Finn be killed after killing the village of grounders.
Abby being whipped in front of all the Arkadians to make up for her crimes.
Clarke, Bellamy, Monty, activating and using the lever to kill all of Mount Weather to stop them from killing more of their people.
Season 3
Finale title: “Perverse Instantiation”
English Idiom: “The ends don’t justify the means”
What it means/”moral of the story”: As Becca put it in the show “how you get there matters”. This scientific term has a particular spin to talk about unintended consequences.
Examples from the season:
Lexa’s accidental death - where Titus thought he was just going to kill Clarke but ended up killing Lexa by accident. This was a perverse spin on what he wanted to accomplish - ending the positive treatment of Skaikru by the grounder leaders.
Bellamy, Pike, and others, choosing to murder the Trikru guard as a means to protect themselves. This action, which they thought would help keep them safe, actually resulted in putting Skaikru in more danger.
ALIE’s motives for bombing the earth, as explained by Becca in the finale.
Other comments
It is perhaps the greatest irony that Lexa’s death was an in real life form of “the ends don’t justify the means” due to the backlash it caused - because the story’s goals didn’t justify revisiting a harmful LGBTQ+ trope.
Season 4
Finale title: “Praimfire”
English idiom: “Playing with fire”
What it means/”moral of the story”: The full idiom is that “if you play with fire you’re bound to get burned”. Or that if you take big risks/are reckless, you are bound to hurt yourself.
Examples from the season:
Clarke lying to her people to convince them to praimfire-proof the Ark, and the being exposed by Monty that she was actually making a list.
Clarke lying to Roan about praimfire-proofing the Ark, and then being exposed and having to negotiate even less space for her people in the Ark.
Clarke/Jaha stealing the bunker when they were convinced Octavia wouldn’t win the conclave, resulting in having to gas and remove numerous Arkadians from the Bunker.
Illian in the most literal example of this burning down the Arkadia station - where his short sighted needs hurt the entire human race by taking away the one option for survival they knew about at the time.
Clarke choosing to stay behind in Praimfire was a huge risk - but one that did pay off since she did survive.
Comments:
The alternate possibility for this season is that it was meant to be more about Prometheus - both the Greek version and Frankenstein (or known as its full title: “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus“). This would be because:
Octavia is described as “stealing fire” - in a way, the baton wasn’t passed to her, but she stole it.
Clarke does the Frankenstein version of Prometheus where she even literally turns herself into “a monster” by injecting herself with nightblood serum.
Season 5
Finale Title: “Damocles”
English idiom Literary reference: the sword of Damocles
What it means/”moral of the story”: Positions of leadership come with perilous circumstances.
Examples:
The entire Blodreina arc. Octavia was psychologically tortured by the decisions she was forced to make as a leader. This turned her entire regime into one where perilous circumstances surrounded her (and Wonkru) at all times.
Charmaine Diyoza being outed from her leadership position by McCreary
Clarke going to drastic lengths to prevent Madi from becoming Heda.
Bellamy being sentenced to death by Octavia when he chose to be a leader, rather than follow her commands. (Also Indra, Gaia, and Clarke).
Comments:
This was the first full season written after the big blowup when Lexa died. A big part of why this season fell apart at the end is because they seemed to at the last minute decide in rewrites to not commit to this lesson with Clarke. (Aside: Jason has revealed in old interviews that they did some rewriting after they found out that the actress cast as Diyoza was pregnant).
Confronting Clarke’s fears related to the perils associated with leadership would have made MUCH MORE SENSE for her aversion to giving Madi the Flame (as opposed to the weakly given “mama bear” lines in and out of the show). Instead they last minute deviated from the plan, and the end of the season didn’t really show Clarke learning this lesson and how to move on from it. Instead she just had a sudden change of heart that made no sense, and then she was backseat to the story for the rest of the season.
Season 6
(Note: I am posting this before the finale goes live so I miiigghhhttt be wrong on this)
Finale title: “The Blood of Sanctum”
English idiom/saying: “The Blood of the Convenant is thicker than the water of the womb”
What it means/”moral of the story”: The bonds formed in friendship are stronger than familial ties. (note: this idiom is frequently misquoted as “blood is thicker than water”, inferring the reverse)
Examples:
Bellamy’s huge rescue mission to save Clarke - one of his found family.
Bellamy saying “you’re not my sister” to Octavia and kicking her out in favour of his found family.
The Primes of Sanctum literally changing the blood of others to help turn them into their family is the sort of… “on the nose” sci fi twist of this saying. It’s like they said “well, why not both?”
Kaylee Lee recognized Josephine immediately when she took Clarke’s body (yes, she was goaded, but still). Bellamy recognized it wasn’t Clarke nearly immediately when Clarke’s body was stolen. And yet, Abby didn’t notice Josephine was in Clarke’s body, and Russell didn’t notice Clarke had taken back her own body from Josephine right away.
A last note on idioms
As I went through possible idioms for the the seasons where I didn’t quite have it figured out I stumbled upon a ridiculous amount of other idioms referenced in the show.
“Bob’s your uncle”
“It’s not rocket science”
“knocking on heaven’s door”
There’s literally been an 800 lb gorilla on this show.
