The 100 Speculation/Prediction: Titus Has Killing Problem
Titus to Clarke in 3X06: “Lexa listens to you. I fear it will get her killed.”
Oh, Titus. You’re afraid that Lexa’s push for a more peaceful Polis will get Lexa killed?
Tell me…is that because you’re the one who will kill her? Is that because you used your station of trust to kill the four Commanders before her for starting down the same path?
It’s starting to look like that is most certainly the case.
Episode 3X06 of The 100 opens with Lexa having a dream where previous Commanders are showing her their deaths via assassin. She interprets this as them disapproving of her move away from jus drein jus daun (blood must have blood). But what if it’s the opposite? What if previous Commanders are showing her what happened to them when they started down the same path?
Commanders, kings, and other people like them should be some of the hardest people on the planet to kill, yet Titus has been “Flame Keeper” to four of them since he started on as an advisor. That’s quite a quick turnaround for a middle-aged advisor.
Since meeting Titus, we’ve seen a consistent philosophy when it comes to advising Lexa: Kill Clarke then keep on killing whenever the opportunity arises for gain of power. This is how you keep your subjects happy.
Ummm. No, Titus. That is how you keep people afraid.
But as we watch Titus unravel from week to week, we can see how invested he is in Lexa doing as he wills, and how his mind starts to break and grasp for straws when she doesn’t march down the path he thinks is best.
Titus is a control freak.
Even worse, his mindset has almost certainly resulted in the following past and future actions:
Titus gifted Costia into the Ice Queen’s hands to be murdered
Titus assassinated the previous three Commanders
Titus will try to kill Clarke to try to get Lexa back into a bloodthirsty rage
When Titus fails to kill Clarke, he will send her into the City of Light to neutralize her
First, let’s look at #1. Look at Titus now–at how he looks at Clarke–and ask yourself how he would have looked at Costia, someone Lexa was openly in love with and sleeping with. Here he has the best Commander yet, with the greatest potential Titus has seen, and Lexa has someone in her life that she values more than him…someone who makes her soft and empathic. (Read: weak)
Nope, nope, and nope. Titus can’t have that. Lexa has the potential to be the Commander Titus has killed three times to get, but she can’t be who he needs with Costia in the mix. So he talks a little too much to all the wrong people, planting ideas that Costia is the key to Queen Nia learning the Commander’s secrets, then facilitating Costia’s capture and delivery to the Ice Nation.
One decapitated lover later, Titus has the Commander he needs to move forward with his personal vision of the future.
We don’t have proof of that, but we do have a boatload of breadcrumbs. Titus almost certainly facilitated Costia’s death.
Besides the obvious fact that Titus is hardly an old man and we don’t know how long he’s been in his station, it would still be a stretch to imagine that any of the Commanders before Lexa led longer than 5 years, on average. That’s a short shelf life for the wisest, most able fighters in the land.
For so many to die so quickly, something has to be amiss in the inner circle. That’s like any country going through three assassinated presidents in fifteen years. It just shouldn’t happen.
Now Lexa is having dreams that her predecessors didn’t die in battle, but at the hands of assassins. She doesn’t know much more than that, but she does sense that she’s being warned.
An assassin came for them, and an assassin is coming for her.
Lexa’s initial read is that she’s in danger because she’s off track, but what if she’s in danger because she’s ON track. She’s actually on the same track as the people before her–a track of evolving the laws from “eye for an eye” to “turn the other cheek”… um, I mean, from jus drein jus daun to just nou drein jus daun.
Titus stands firmly and vocally against this change in policy. In his mind, blood must have blood, violence must have violence. This is an immutable truth required to build the world he believes in. We don’t know why Titus thinks this yet, only that the further Lexa strays from this path, the more unhinged Titus becomes.
Lexa has the minds of all the previous Commanders in her head and was mentored by at least one of them personally. This has resulted in her being the most openminded and enlightened Commander to date.
So how, logically, does it stand that she’s in left field in relation to all those who preceded her when it comes to creating a more gentle society where blood doesn’t regularly fertilize the land?
I say she isn’t off track. I say she’s closer to accomplishing what many tried to accomplish before her…until they were assassinated by their own advisor(s). Titus has likely killed three of them, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t come from a tradition of Flame Keepers willing to do the same.
Titus needs old Lexa back, and what worked once will work twice, right?
When Titus had Costia killed, he taught Lexa the dangers of individual love versus utalitarian love. Loving and losing on a specific level can bring a person to their knees and make them wish for death themselves. A cold heart with a global mindview is a much safer headspace, and that’s where Titus wants Lexa to live 24/7.
No personal attachments. No friends. No love.
Lexa has experienced the specific loss of Costia, luring her into the safe, cold realm of closing herself off to connection. And yet, with Clarke she’s tripped back into the realms of loving on a person-to-person level. She didn’t mean to fall in love. She actively tried to avoid it, to the point of almost killing Clarke on several occasions.
Killing…Kissing…close enough, right?
But Lexa is in love and Titus knows it…just like he knows that the last time he killed the object of Lexa’s affection, he got his hands on the Commander he’s always wanted.
In Titus’s mind, it’s time for history to repeat itself. Clarke has to either become his puppet or she needs to stop breathing.
He tried for puppet in 3X06, and based on the preview for the next episode, it looks like he tries framing Murphy for Clarke’s death in 3X07. If successful, this would result in turning the Grounders against Skaikru (“They killed their own ambassador!”) and get Lexa back to her broken state of cutting off her heart and thinking with her reptile mind.
If you’re like me, you might have obsessed over the question of how Clarke gets to the City of Light. She’s not the type to voluntarily take the pill, right? Well, maybe if she thought she could go in there and save the day, but that would take a certain level of arrogance.
Clarke is smart, not arrogant, though. To imagine that she can mentally overcome what no one else has and walk right into a lobotomy? Even Clarke might shy away from that and try to fight ALIE in the real world by getting a hold of the backpack or traveling to the City of Light, not entering the Matrix.
So what happens? How does she get in?
My current theory is that Titus puts Clarke into the City of Light to take her out of the picture in Polis. He has the pill found on Murphy.
What is he going to do with it?
I think he’s going to get it into Clarke’s mouth and say bye-bye to his current nemesis. As long as ALIE lives, there is no getting Clarke back. She’s gone. So sorry Lexa. Say goodbye to lover #2, a.k.a. your soulmate.
In a way, this is worse than killing Clarke, because she’s there but she’s not…there. She’s neutralized. ALIE has hacked her mind and turned her into a smiling puddle of complacency. Goodbye Wanheda. Goodbye trusted advisor. Goodbye person who was capable of looking at Lexa with love and passion.
In my mind, this is Titus’s plan…or maybe his revenge after his plans go to pot. (“May you live forever” callback, anyone? He was standing right there when Clarke said it to Emerson.)
The question is, how will Lexa respond?
Is Titus Lexa’s worst enemy posing as her most trusted advisor? If so, what is Lexa going to do about it, and will Titus survive the season?
