Finn Collins is probably the most misunderstood character on “The 100” TV series. His is a story of a noble boy trying to maintain his moral identity in a struggle for survival while up against a malign universe, a ruthless environment, and his own human weaknesses. Unable to cope with the pressures put upon him, however, Finn was broken and ultimately destroyed. His tragic story should move an audience to pity. However, some viewers are unwilling to see him as the sympathetic character he was intended to be. Rather than seeing Finn’s weaknesses and failings as part of the human condition we are all subject to, they preferred to define him by his mistakes. Thus, they missed the whole point of the character and his valuable contribution to the greater story. There can be a variety of reasons for the unfavorable view of Finn, but weaknesses in the writing have to be among them. My purpose is to examine what viewers were intended to understand about Finn and to point out some of the problems in the writing that might have led to misconceptions.
The first problem is that Finn was not clearly defined. He was introduced as a reckless adventurer and possible love interest for Clarke. However, Finn soon emerged as the proverbial good guy. Then somewhat abruptly, he revealed himself as a pacifist. We were never given much about his background on the Ark. All we knew was that he was arrested for an illegal spacewalk, and that he had a girlfriend, Raven, whom he took care of from childhood. But who took care of Finn? What happened to his parents? Other than his kind hearted assistance to Raven, we had no foundation and backstory to support his actions until the end of his journey in “Spacewalker”. But those flashbacks revealed that even his recklessness on the dropship didn’t have a valid basis since it was Raven who actually took the spacewalk; and it was carefully, not recklessly, planned by Finn.
To begin an understanding of Finn, we can define him in general terms as a tragic hero in the classical Western tradition. A tragic hero is a character who has noble qualities, but through some combination of fate and his own human flaws, commits an action or makes a mistake that leads to his demise. The tragic hero is suppose to evoke sympathy and pity; and to do that, the audience has to be able to relate to him. He can’t be too morally superior, nor so flawed that we can’t share his failings.
To achieve this balance, Finn’s heroic qualities were manifested by the writers through a series of good deeds like rescuing an injured Wells from the bullying Murphy, helping Clarke save Jasper’s life, risking his own life to help find Octavia, trying to stop a lynching, and helping protect Charlotte. On the other hand, Finn’s imperfections were revealed through his mistakes, like his reckless behavior in the dropship that resulted in two boys being killed, and sleeping with Clarke without telling her about Raven. The audience was supposed to see that most of Finn’s mistakes were errors in judgement rather than a deliberate intent to do harm. Therefore, instead of judging, viewers should have tried to understand why he behaved the way he did. Hopefully, they would conclude that Finn tried to act for the best but his human weaknesses got in the way, something we should all be able to identify with. Thus, the audience would still want to pull for Finn as the good guy in spite of his mistakes.
Unfortunately, not everyone was willing to do that. Again, this could be for a variety of reasons. Nonetheless, the character suffered from neglect, and a lack of consistency and coherence on the part of the writing which may well have contributed to some of the negative opinions. To be fair, the constrictions of a TV series make it difficult for writers to be as thorough in their portrayal of characters as they need to be. They have to choose what aspects of the overall story are most important to present to the viewers on screen. Unfortunately in Finn’s case, we were too often forced to read between the lines. This was not something that some viewers were willing or perhaps capable of doing. So let’s have a look at Finn’s story to determine how his actions should have been interpreted and what weaknesses in the writing might have factored into the misconceptions of the character.
The Dropship Accident
First, I think it’s important to address the dropship incident since some like to count those two boys among Finn’s kills. If you do that, you might as well count the one-eyed grounder among Murphy’s kills. After all Finn was acting under his influence. Of course, that wouldn’t be fair because ultimately, people make their own choices regardless of the influence. Even allowing oneself to be influenced is a choice. Finn didn’t force or even actively encourage those boys to imitate him or to ignore Clarke’s warning. It was certainly not his intention to get anyone, including himself, hurt. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t bear some responsibility. People should always be aware of the effect their behavior can have on others. But those boys were old enough to understand the danger and make their own choices. Bellamy chose not to listen to Murphy. Finn did, and it was he who ultimately pulled the trigger, just like it was those boys who unlocked their own seatbelts. So it’s unfair to hold Finn directly responsible for those two deaths.
That being said, if you want a character to be sympathetic, should you give the audience a negative first impression? Even after the accident, Finn was made to look like he didn’t care. Of course, those who paid close attention would know that wasn’t true because they saw the sad expression of regret on Finn’s face when he saw that the boys were dead. But that moment was too brief and too subtle for some viewers to notice. What they remembered was Finn ignoring Clarke’s reprimand of his conduct. He just kept teasing her about being called “princess”. Soon after, however, Finn rescued Wells, and continued to do good deeds; but for some, the damage was done. If a character is supposed to be the good guy tragic hero, it’s not helpful to start him out with his mistakes and make him look like a uncaring jerk.
For some reason, cheating seemed to resonate so strongly with some viewers that their hatred of Finn began right there. Considering how this incident came about, that was an over-reaction to what was not intended to be an unforgivable sin. Rather, it was a way to expose Finn’s two major flaws, that is, his impulsiveness and his failure to control his emotions. These two foibles would factor into Finn’s demise.
When this so called “cheating” incident began to unfold, the audience knew that Finn was making a mistake because we were in possession of information that Finn was not. We knew that Raven was alive and on her way to earth, but Finn didn’t. So, he acted out of ignorance. As far as Finn knew, Raven was lost with everyone else on the Ark. It should have been clear, therefore, that this wasn’t a deliberate intent to deceive. But some viewers held Finn guilty because they felt that his failure to tell Clarke about Raven at some point in their previous associations still constituted deliberate deception. Given what we knew about Finn’s nature and his sense of right and wrong, that would have been completely out of character. If we look at this from Finn’s point of view, it’s also not unreasonable that he hadn’t told Clarke.
Finn and Raven grew up together. They were childhood sweethearts, and as teenagers, they were also lovers. Finn, like Raven, had probably never been with anyone else in his 18 years. Then through fate, Finn found himself without Raven in a totally new environment, experiencing new things, and probably for the first time, attracted to another girl. As he was getting to know Clarke, he began to develop feelings for her. But he had only known her for 10 days. That was hardly enough time for him to process these new feelings and sort out what to do about them while, at the same time, being distracted by all the other problems they were encountering on the ground. Thus, he hadn’t made any overtly romantic advances toward Clarke either. The closest gesture Finn made to that was perhaps giving her the deer he made, but that wasn’t exactly an invitation to go steady.
Finn certainly didn’t plan to sleep with Clarke that night in the bunker either. It came about as a result of an emotional crisis brought on by what, to Finn, was a devastating development. With the group being unable to get supplies from Mt. Weather, the camp in chaos (thanks to Bellamy), and the threat from the grounders, Finn knew that their survival, as well as the survival of the people on the Ark, depended on the Ark learning that the earth was survivable. When Monty fried the wristbands, Finn believed that all hope of getting that information to the Ark was gone. As far as he knew, the Ark was doomed and the 100 was left on their own in an environment where their chances for survival were slim.
Overcome with frustration, hopelessness, and fear, Finn lost control. Knocking over furniture and throwing things was Finn’s only way of releasing the stress, that is, until Clarke showed up. She took his face in her hands and assured him that he was not alone in this, that she was there for him. So Finn did an impulsive, but very human thing. He acted on his attraction to Clarke and his need for comfort. Afterwards, there was no point in telling Clarke he had a girlfriend on the Ark since he thought that he’d never see Raven again. There was no way Finn could have predicted that Raven would make it to earth in a pod made from scrap. Yet, ironically, she arrived on the very morning after Finn slept with Clarke.
The audience wasn’t suppose to be too hard on Finn because they should have understood that he didn’t intend to cheat on Raven. With the only contact between the 100 and the Ark gone, it was a valid assumption that Raven was lost. They should also have identified with Finn’s weakness in a moment of need. But it’s the devil in the details that was problematic. The writers didn’t have Finn display any pain specifically over losing Raven. Of course, to do that in front of Clarke would be to expose that he had a girlfriend, and that wouldn’t work with the writers’ purpose here. But the appearance that Finn was indifferent caused some viewers to think unfavorably of him. As so often happened with this character, the writers were more concerned about plot movement than coherence. Even the tantrum didn’t really ring true.
Still, we’d seen nothing in Finn’s character to suggest that he would deliberately cheat or be that insensitive to the feelings of the two people he cared most about. Thus, the audience was left to speculate or make assumptions, like when Finn said “They’re going to die up there…” he was also thinking of Raven. Also, when a person acts on impulse, he is prompted by the sudden influence of a particular feeling or mental state, and he is not inhibited by thought. So we could conclude that Finn’s mental state was not just that of fear and frustration, but also included grief over Raven; and because he had feelings for Clarke, the impulse was to take comfort in her for all of that. But we’re still left with another problem. Often when a person loses a romantic partner, he or she is unable to be with someone else while still mourning the loved one. So sleeping with Clarke only works if Finn’s feelings for Raven were already evolving into a different kind of love. Finn made the distinction later that while he still loved Raven, he was in love with Clarke. But at the point Finn thought Raven was lost, mourning her was an omission by the writers that left some viewers unwilling to give Finn the benefit of the doubt.
Finn tried to talk to Clarke about his mistake and to let her know that he wanted to continue their relationship. However, she refused to indulge him out of a sense of fairness to Raven and a fear of being hurt again by someone she thought she could trust, as had happened with her mother. Finn also felt guilty for unintentionally cheating on Raven, but there she was forgiving him and marking her territory by seducing him. Finn felt the need to be loyal to her, but excessive loyalty can be a foible, too. Fearful of hurting Raven, he lacked the courage to tell her the truth about his feelings for Clarke, and then fight to win Clarke back. Therefore, with Clarke’s rejection and Raven holding tight, Finn just went along with the status quo. This didn’t win him any trophies with some viewers either, but this was an 18 year old boy caught in a situation he didn’t know how to handle. Even though Finn’s feelings for Clarke continued to grow, he remained with Raven until she set him free.
In spite of the not so perfect way the writers handled Finn in this love triangle, holding this mistake against him as an unforgivable sin is to be a bit self righteous. Like all tragic heroes, Finn made an error in judgement and allowed his emotions to dictate his behavior. Who hasn’t? It was a complex situation, and Finn, with his misguided loyalty and confusion, didn’t know how to fix it.
The Moral Compass and the Voice of Reason
Some viewers found Finn’s voice of reason whiny and disagreeable. However, to do so is to totally miss the point. Finn’s moral voice was needed to remind Bellamy, especially, that there’s only so far down a dark path you can go without becoming a monster, yourself. Bellamy, himself, would admit this later. Finn not only provided a moral compass for the group, he prompted the audience to reflect on their own moral values. Finn’s fight to keep the group morally anchored should have made him admirable rather than a nuisance.
With violence being the rule of conduct, Finn should also have been applauded for stepping in to remind everyone that there was a better way. Based on Clarke’s conversation with Anya, it was clear that the conflict was rooted in fear and misunderstanding. Why not try to dispel that distrust and find some common ground in which to live together in peace? If everyone had Finn’s optimism and idealism, the world would be a better place. Indeed, that’s exactly what he believed… that they could learn from their mistakes and do better.
However, Finn could be idealistic to a fault. Survival also means that you need to be grounded in reality, as well. Finn was justified in his concern about bringing rifles to camp, given what nearly happened to Murphy. And indeed, things nearly got out of control over the virus. But given the choice between the danger of arming those kids and leaving them vulnerable to the grounders, the latter was the greater risk. Clarke’s pragmatic decision to bring backup wasn’t wrong either. They didn’t know enough about the grounders not to take precautions. But as fate often intervenes to thwart the tragic hero’s good intentions, taking those precautions resulted in disaster. The audience should have been saddened to see Finn’s noble efforts go to waste.
Later, Finn was also completely right to advocate leaving rather than standing and fighting back as Bellamy wanted to do. As Finn said, “Dying in a fight you can’t win isn’t brave Bellamy; it’s stupid.” Were it not for Clarke’s cleverness, they all would certainly have perished.
Unfortunately for Finn, in the real world there too often are no perfect answers. Bellamy could justify his actions by reasoning that “Who we are and who we need to be to survive are very different things.” Finn was unwilling to make that distinction. This uncompromising moral integrity made him noble, but his idealism would also factor into what lead to his breakdown and eventual destruction.
The Massacre
A tragic hero by definition inevitably experiences a downfall. Sadly, that downfall usually leads to his death. The audience should have a sense of sympathetic dread to see the hero about to make a fatal mistake. Unfortunately for Finn, I think that the action leading up to the massacre is where the writing was most incoherent and inconsistent, which kept some viewers from rooting for him.
War changes people, and it was not surprising that it changed Finn. However, the audience didn’t get to see a coherent and believable progression of that change as Finn reacted to the pressures put upon him. Everything was crowded into only a couple of episodes. It appeared again that the action owed more consideration to plot movement than well laid out character exposition and development. In the first few episodes of season 2, Finn’s behavior was inconsistent and contradictory. When he first learned that Clarke and the others were missing, he remained calm and rational, even when Bellamy suggested that the loss of time going to Alpha Station could mean more deaths. Not only did Finn not panic, he took time to be at Raven’s side through her surgery. He showed no sign of anxiety over the danger Clarke could be in and even had to be told by Raven that he needed to go get their friends.
Then in the next episode, Finn suddenly became violent, emotionally unstable, and morally compromised. He tortured and executed the one-eyed grounder, then went into full panic mode to get to Clarke in time. He was so irrational that he wanted to leave a girl stranded on a cliff. Then in the following episode, Finn terrorized and massacred 18 innocent civilians. He went from A to Z in barely 50 accumulative minutes of screen time. This unraveling of the character was so fast that it was jarring and confusing to many viewers. Without seeing a sensible progression of Finn’s fragile psyche being worn down by the trauma of war to help them comprehend what was happening to the character, some would now see Finn as a villain. That, of course, is a misinterpretation. Again, the audience was forced to read between the lines. If we do that, in spite of this mishandling of the character by the writers, Finn’s behavior can be explained in terms of both classical tragedy and modern psychology.
The Tragic Hero
In classical tragedy, there is a turning point at which things start to move toward the hero’s downfall and destruction. That turning point can be looked at in terms of fate and free will. Fate is the element that is outside the hero’s control. In terms of that element, that inevitable turning point was reached when Finn learned that Clarke and the others were missing, and wrongly assumed that they were taken by the grounders. Unaware of the mountain men, who were the actual kidnappers, Finn, in the tradition of classical tragedy, acted out of ignorance and made a fatal decision based on that ignorance. Other forces outside Finn’s control could also be cited, like the grounder attack that forced Bellamy to abandon the search, for example. If Bellamy had been present at the village, too, his influence might have prevented the massacre.
Alternatively, in classical tragedy, the hero’s downfall is partially his own fault due to his flaws. From the free will point of view, the turning point occurred when Finn chose to torture and execute the grounder. This action introduced the theme of loss of innocence in war.
The fear of losing Clarke was the biggest challenge to Finn’s moral integrity that he had faced. Blinded by love, he made the classical error in judgement. His misplaced trust in the word of the grounder, and his lack of self control set the stage for the massacre.
Outside of the realm of classical tragedy, however, an error in judgement is an over simplification of what would lead someone like Finn to commit mass murder. To gain better insight into what would cause such a drastic transformation, it helps to look at Finn’s behavior in terms of modern psychology.
The Psychology Behind the Massacre
Historically, there have been many massacres perpetrated by soldiers in the context of war. These soldiers were generally normal people with no history of violence. Studies have shown that under the right conditions, we are all capable of killing.
The mind is a complex organ that neither doctors nor scientists fully understand. No one can explain with absolute certainty the specific psychological mechanism that led Finn to commit mass murder. All we can do is make a reasonable assessment based on psychological studies of this kind of violence.
Humans make mental models of the world, which they base on their life experiences. If new information comes in that is not compatible with our model, we make necessary adjustments. If, for example, according to our model all people can be trusted and then to our surprise someone steals from us, we make an adjustment to our model to make it more coherent. A traumatic experience requires huge changes to our existing model. Thoughts about the event help us learn and readjust our expectations. This is called processing. However, when thoughts of the event repeatedly intrude our minds, they cause emotional stress. The body has ways to compensate for this until processing is completed. If a person is unable to process traumatic experiences, he is at risk for developing PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.). Symptoms of this disorder include recklessness, angry outbursts, distorted perception, hyper alertness, and extreme emotional distress. When a person, especially one suffering from PTSD, encounters a situation similar to the earlier traumatic event, flashback memories sharpen his sensitivity to the current one. This can result in a loss of control such as taking part in a massacre.
As a romantic, Finn’s model of the world was probably tempered by his idealism and optimism. In his new environment, he was bombarded with new traumatic information. It seemed that rather than readjusting his mental model of the world, Finn, as an optimist, tried to readjust the world to fit his existing model. This was why he set up the peace talks and rejected the idea of bringing guns. But to his dismay, his faith in humanity went unrewarded because, as fate would have it, his efforts failed.
Then the painful experience of watching his friends being slaughtered in the battle, fearing for his life again when he was taken prisoner for the second time, and forced to watch Tristan slit his fellow prisoner’s throat finally reshaped Finn’s view of the world, but not in a positive way. Resilience is a process by which people exhibit positive behavioral adaptation when they encounter trauma and adversity. Through no fault of his own, Finn didn’t possess this ability. The war shattered his sense of safety and trust, as well as his faith in the ideals he valued. Unable to process this new devastating information, Finn was most certainly suffering from PTSD. He certainly exhibited many of the symptoms.
Finn didn’t go to that village to kill people. He clearly stated his intent to Niko:
Finn: Nobody has to get hurt. We just want our people back.
But Finn’s dealings with the grounders was affected by his new vision of the world, which colored his judgement and drove his actions. The affects of PTSD was to make him more sensitive in situations that reminded him of past painful events. This sensitivity kept him on alert. Hypervigilant people are easily startled and over react, which is likely why Finn shot the old man who needlessly tried to get away too soon. When Artigas foolishly made his move, Finn responded again to what he perceived as a threat. We had already seen how eager some of the other villagers were to take Finn out. Niko wisely made them sit back down. But with the killing of Artigas, Niko could not hold them all back. As each one broke loose and tried to rush him, Finn panicked. The situation continued to escalate until Finn reached a breaking point. In an altered state of consciousness brought on by extreme emotional distress, Finn didn’t see these people as unarmed civilians. They were simply grounders, who in his experience were killers. All his feelings of despair, helplessness, and hopelessness over losing Clarke, and all his fear and rage erupted into uncontrolled violence.
It took a while for Finn to come to terms with what he had done. At first, he tried to convince himself that he did what he had to do to survive, the justification he learned from Bellamy and Clarke. This was a defense mechanism; but deep inside, Finn knew he had done something awful. Clarke’s words in the bunker forced him to face what he feared most, I.e., that he was no longer the person he thought he was. Spiritually wounded, Finn struggled with his sense of identity. He was doubtful that he could ever regain his dignity and honor. Thus the writers began to explore the theme of redemption and the suffering it would cost Finn as he struggled towards it.
True to the tragic hero, Finn was faced with a serious decision when Lexa demanded his death. At first, Finn hoped that Clarke would figure a way out of the situation as she had done in the past. Eventually, it became clear that the only way to save Clarke and the other people he cared about, as well as all the Arkers, was to give up his life. True to classic tragedy, the suffering that awaited Finn was more than he deserved. It took tremendous courage and tremendous love for Finn to turn himself in when he knew that he would be brutally tortured to death. Thanks to Clarke, however, he was mercifully spared that horror, and he accepted his death with honor.
Final Thoughts
One of the purposes of tragedy is to move an audience so that it learns compassion for others. If viewers fail to have sympathy for the tragic hero, then the entire point is missed. Therefore, the audience was not intended to define Finn by his faults or his crime. Rather, we were intended see him as a good guy who did a bad thing because he was human. Because there were circumstances that he had no control over, we were also meant to see him as a victim of a malign universe. Finn’s struggle to maintain his moral integrity amid the conflicts of the human condition represents the struggle of all mankind.
This was a noble boy, who for better or for worse, acted for love all his life; a boy who sacrificed himself for the two young women he loved most. That’s how he lived his life, and that should be his legacy.
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