Murphy’s Law (not the episode, the actual Murphy’s Law) is the guiding rule of The 100: everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Well, not exactly: sometimes you think a situation will explode into a disaster – the “tinder box” here first seems to be the imminent war between Sky people and Azgeda over Arkadia as a shelter from the upcoming radiation disaster, but everything gets resolved peacefully… but then another disaster strikes no one (or almost no one) was expecting, and it all becomes a moot point by the end, when Arkadia gets blown up by a third party for an unrelated reason.
Meanwhile, Raven’s big storyline of season 4 starts, and we get some important world building info that will be crucial for seasons 5 and 6.
Ilian finds Octavia and takes her to Arkadia, claiming he ran into her on his way home. Octavia manages to warn everyone about Azgeda troops coming to take Arkadia, before losing consciousness.
Another character who has found herself in Arkadia is Niylah, returning for the first time since 3x11. She has been coming to do trade. Clarke tries to make her stay there, whether that’s just because she wants to renew their FwB relationship, or whether she’s thinking about potentially saving her, but that’s unlikely – it’s not she’s likely to get a chance to participate in the lottery? But maybe she could be saved with the Nightblood solution.
Since Azgeda doesn’t have the element of surprise anymore, they find themselves surrounded by Arker snipers, as a backup to Clarke, who proposes to talk to Roan. It reminds me of the season 1 bridge meeting, on a larger scale. Roan orders archers to target Clarke, but Arkers surround them and target Roan and the rest. Clarke is shocked to see Bellamy and Kane as hostages – well, mostly Bellamy. Echo says it could be a trap, and Roan points out that it is, and they are already in it, so he agrees.
Bellamy’s state of mind completely changes when he realizes that Arkadia has been warned – which means that Octavia is alive.
Roan and Clarke have their argument in a cave, negotiating over the places in Arkadia, and arguing over Roan’s distrust in what Arkers say they are doing with the Nightblood. When Clarke tells Roan that she is trying to save everyone, Roan utters probably the most puzzling lines in the entire show “You grieve for Lexa, but you haven’t learned anything from her. She rose above loyalty to the clan..” Wait, what? Didn’t he get it all backwards? Also, since when is Roan a Lexa stan? The guy tried to convince Clarke to murder Lexa in 3x03 and claimed she was awful and worse than his mother. Clarke was the one trying to save everyone in season 2, when Lexa betrayed her and left Arkers to die at the hands of the Mountain Men, under the justification “for my people”. She then tried to make everyone including the Arkers a part of her coalition, but that’s not “rising above the clans” if you’re trying to make everyone accept your authority – that’s expanding your power. And while she was doing that, Roan was claiming she’s awful and trying to make Clarke murder her. What has changed and when? The fact she decided not to take revenge and start a war against Arkers for the killing of her army? She did that because Clarke convinced her to. This all seems like fanservice/desperate attempt to appease Lexa’s fans for killing off their favorite character in a rather crappy manner, which resulted in over-compensating with these idealized references to her that bear little resemblance to the real character we saw in seasons 2b and 3a. The only way this makes sense is if you interpret it as Roan bullsh1tting as a manipulation tactic. Which, to be fair, is in character for him.
He also calls Clarke Wanheda, Commander of Death, as a way to insult her, and I’m so over the people, especially Grounder leaders, doing that. Oh, you mean Clarke is bad because she managed to defeat and kill all the Mountain Men, as the only way to save her people from being horrifically murdered, after you guys, Lexa and all Grounders minus Lincoln, betrayed her and the alliance and left Sky people to die? The nickname she got because she actually was able to do it – because you would have probably killed all the Mountain Men, too, if you could have, only you wouldn’t need to be backed into a corner to decide to kill them all indiscriminately, because you have the “Blood must have blood” thing and are always threatening to kill everyone – you just weren’t ever able to defeat or even seriously threaten the Mountain Men without the Sky people? I’m never going to be over this.
Anyway, Roan wants half of the places, literally 50:50, and threatens to execute the hostages, Kane and Bellamy, if she refuses. Clarke tries to bluff, reminding him that she was willing to let her own mother die to stop ALIE. Roan says, I was OK with mine dying to help you (was he? It wasn’t exactly his choice) and then he’s like. OK, then it is war, and Clarke folds. Roan may piss me off a lot of times, but at least he’s smart – he remembers what happened when he threatened Bellamy’s life in front of Clarke in 3x02, and knows to what lengths those two would go to protect each other, and he was able to use Clarke’s “weakness” to get her to do what he wants.
Meanwhile, Riley, who is obviously suffering from PTSD, goes rogue and obviously wants to kill Roan, because he had been enslaved by Azgeda for months and had just been freed. Harper points out he shouldn’t be there. Exactly! Why is he there? Are these people so dumb? Monty goes to talk to the Azgeda warriors to stop the war. Bellamy says Riley shouldn’t be there (exactly!) – at least he has learned something since season 1, when he didn’t realize the guy who had been speared by the Grounders shouldn’t be guarding the meeting with a gun. Bellamy manages to convince Echo to take him to talk Riley down, she says they put chains on Monty instead and make him the other hostage
One of the best parts of the episode is Bellamy getting to demonstrate his new way of thinking, and what he has learned from his mistakes in season 3. He points out to Echo that the whole tribalism thing, “my people”, “my king”, is pointless, as Praimfaya doesn’t care about which clans they are. Echo says that Queen Nia used to say “War makes murderers out of all of us”. Oh, how profound… not. Coming from Nia, it obviously meant ‘oh well, we kill people in war, so then it’s OK to do any kind of awful thing with the excuse of war, right? Like blow up civilians, kill children, enslave people… why not?” But Bellamy successfully talks down Riley, by paraphrasing that line and saying ‘War made me a murderer” and that Riley should not allow himself the same, that the freedom he has now should be used in a better way. Echo seems affected by this. If this is supposed to be buildup for their relationship, it’s very one-sided and unsatisfactory, because we see how and why Echo could fall in love with Bellamy eventually, but there’s no setup whatsoever, in the entirety of season 4 for Bellamy falling in love with Echo – we’re supposed to take this a completely off-screen time jump thing.
Everything has been agreed on and no one died, but then disaster strikes – thanks to Ilian, who is on his “destroy all technology” war path, and after destroying tech in Polis, has come to Arkadia, which has a lot more tech. Octavia wakes up (the framing of the scene where she wakes up and sees Niylah’s face is interesting, it’s also similar to how she saw Ilian’s face earlier) and realizes that Ilian just used her as a way to get into Arkadia, and immediately tells Niylah that the server room is the simplest way to destroy all tech. Octavia is too weak and can’t even walk, Niylah has to carry her. Octavia tries to talk down Ilian, but her efforts are in vein. Which is not surprising, since her choice of arguments is pretty poor “This won’t bring your family back”, “I was a prisoner on this ship and hated it, but now we need it” – how about you tell him why it is needed? Tell him about Praimfaya and that it is needed as a shelter! Try that! I hate it when character doesn’t use the best argument. Ilian says she can’t understand if she has never been in the City of Light, and blows up Arkadia.
He doesn’t target people, though, so saves Octavia and Niylah and carries them out, Bellamy takes care of Octavia , while Clarke does so with Niylah before checking out on Octavia, and everyone else gets out and just stands and watches Arkadia go out in flames. Only Ilian has a happy look on his face. Everything has been for nothing and the B-plan for saving people just blew up. It’s all about the Nightblood now.
Meanwhile, in Becca’s lab, Raven has hallucinations, feeling like she can spacewalk in the lab, and knows things she would have no way of knowing, and has a seizure. It turns out that the EMP ALIE used on her to upgrade her brain means she still has some of Becca’s mind in her. Does that mean she now an upgraded half-AI like the Commanders? She thinks they can use the space pod from the lab to synthesize the Nightblood in space. Bad news – it will probably kill her.
First mention of Eligius Mining Company and that Becca was synthesizing Nightblood for them – the Nightblood was supposed to help the convicts they used as labour withstand radiation caused by two suns. (Later, Becca used Nightblood to ensure that the human body could accept the chip.) This is info relevant for both season 5 and season 6.
Jackson figures out that Abby also has upgraded mind just like Raven, though she denies it. She ends up having a hallucination of Clarke dying from radiation and telling her they’re out of time.
Body count: No deaths! This is the first time ever? Bellamy even puts it in words: “no one died today.” But Arkadia being blown up means that at least 100 people who could have survived Praimfaya now won’t.
It’s funny how everyone likes to question Clarke and her leadership abilities. Always knocking her down for the choices she makes. Nothing she does is good enough, every decision is judged. Yet when it comes down to it, no one else puts themselves forward, they come running to Clarke when they are faced with a serious situation. In ‘Tinder Box’ when Octavia is found not to be breathing, panic and shock kicks in and no one knows what to do. It’s Clarke who pushes her worries and fears aside. In fact she doesn’t leave time for her feelings to cloud her judgement. Her only goal is to protect her people, make sure they survive and it’s always been Clarke that steps up and takes charge of the hard situations so the others don’t have to. No matter how difficult they may be.
That look bellamy gives Clarke when they take off his hood... it's almost like he's realizing something. Or like he's looking at her like "this is it" idk I can't describe it
