I just want to take a moment to talk about how awful Book Two is.
There’s obviously been no planning. At all. I’m not saying that the writers had seasons one to five fully planned out, but they always managed to build up to the next season!
In season one, they introduced Mount Weather by mentioning it several times, and they also introduced the conflict with the Grounders, both of which are central plots in season two.
In two, they continued building on the conflict with the Grounders, and also set up Clarke to become Wanheda. The introduction of Lexa and the Commanders and the grounder culture also played into season three.
In season three, there wasn’t really a lot setting up the Praimfaya plot until the last minute, but they set up a conflict with Azgeda, as well as the issue of not having a Commander which made things problematic in four.
In season four, they were building up to Praimfaya, setting up both the Second Dawn bunker, and they sent spacekru to the ring last minute, and also established Clarke and Madi’s relationship, as well as the prisoners.
Season five doesn’t set up season six at all. Season five is a sort of ending to the show as we know it, and we barely know anything going into the sixth season.
When we arrive in Sanctum, the first couple of episodes aren’t really that bad. It just feels kinda disconnected from the rest of the show, because we are on a new planet with no real idea about anything. And this feeling about not knowing anything is one that sticks throughout book two.
Season six has two clear plots. The body-snatching Primes plot, and the anomally plot. I saw another post pointing this out, but we can literally remove the body-snatching and still have pretty much the same story for season seven. It left no impact at all, save to introduce Gabriel and Sheidheda. We can literally remove everything else, and the Bardo-plot in seven will play out pretty much the same.
And then there is the Bardo plot. I for one do not thing that season six sets that up at all. Yes, it introduces the anomally, but, when we see it, it’s this thing that is constantly open? Correct me if I’m wrong, but the portal is just open, leading to what we will later come to know as Sky Ring. Why? Why would they leave that portal open? It is almost like they changed what the anomally was between six and seven. We have Octavia returning with some strange markings on her back, completely healed, and then we have Hope showing up last minute to take her back to Bardo and that’s it. That’s the only introduction we get.
Seven comes around, and we have absolutely no idea what is going on. At all. Everything is unknown, and the show intends to keep it that way. So many things about this new world is never explained, and I have to check if I am still watching the same show because it is way too much to introduce in the final season.
There is one episode left, and I still feel like I have no idea what is going on. It feels like the show waited until last minute to decide if it is a war or a test, and now we have 40 minutes to solve what feels like Avengers Endgame. It’s too much.
Maybe if they had done the pacing differently, had a third season for book two, rather than just two seasons, or actually planned ahead, it wouldn’t feel like a high school student going off the rails to make his short story long enough to meet the word requirements. I could also talk about how the story itself is super odd, how pretty much all the plotlines feels like they were randomly selected by throwing darts at a board, and how they are most likely written like this because of drama backstage, but that’s for another post.
I’ve compared it to the final season of Game of Thrones before, and it feels like they are gearing up to fight the White Walkers while simultaneously having Jon killing Daenerys because she had a character development that changed her for no reason two episodes ago. And it’s too much.
No matter how the 100 ends, it’s going to be bad. There is no way they can possibly scramble a satisfying ending out of this mess. Maybe if they had been given two more seasons after five to wrap things up, they could have planned things out a bit better.
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
