I am consistently impressed by The 100, a CW show originally about criminal teens sent to a raditation-ravaged Earth as proverbial canaries in the coal mine, but is now about some kind of massive war that spans time and space and is just loaded with religious zealots and apocalypse cults. Few shows are so accomplished at royally pissing off their viewers.
I mean, how many shows can claim to have started a national conversation about how often we use queer women as cannon fodder in our fiction? Or how many shows can launch a profitable and successful fan convention over a single, and very dead, ship? Or how many shows would spend seven seasons low key teasing a major romantic relationship between two primary characters only to have one murder the other a few episodes before the season finale?
[referenced id=”1225993″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2020/06/the-100-went-in-a-butthole/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/26/dvjd1jrd6lyv0wky2rxq-300×168.jpg” title=”The 100 Went in a Butthole” excerpt=”In 2016, The 100 went into a metaphorical butthole. In the span of a few episodes the show murdered one of its most prominent Black characters in a brutal manner and then murdered its most high profile lesbian. The audience fled in droves, the show was critically panned, a national…”]
The 100 you are too much my man!
In the very first season, The 100 established itself as a kind of Tiger Beat Game of Thrones where no one was safe (but especially people of colour) when it had a small child murder Wells, the Black male lead of the show. Then in season three, there was the devastating one-two punch of Lexa being killed by an errant gun shot meant for Clarke — the woman she’d just consummated a relationship with — and Lincoln being beaten to death while his girlfriend Octavia watched because, well, mainly because the actor wanted off the show and I guess the writers thought a brutal murder was the way to do it.
Since then main characters have died in all kinds of ways. Some died off screen from old age. Some barely survived one season only to have their consciousness inserted into the body of a younger model the next season, who then punted themselves into space rather than exist as an ethical abomination. Clarke’s mum had her consciousness murdered in one episode and then like three episodes later Clarke herself killed her mum’s body.
Earlier this season Bellamy, the current male lead of the show, ostensibly got blown up attempting to rescue his sister from an apocalypse cult. Only he survived, made his way back to his friends, became an apocalypse cult convert, and then had to be murdered by Clarke because he refused to side with her in the oncoming war.
Besides being the male lead of the show Bellamy was also one half of The 100‘s most significant ships. While there are plenty of people who feel Clarke and the long-dead (no seriously, it’s been over 100 years in the show) Lexa are “meant to be,” there are just as many people who have held a flame for Clarke and Bellamy. The two characters started as enemies, became murder buddies, and then became close friends, and while Bellamy has basically been married for the last three seasons of the shows, the ship’s ardent fans have held out hope that all would be right by series finale end and Clarke and Bellamy would get together just like they did in Kass Morgan’s original book series.
According to The 100‘s showrunner, Jason Rothenberg, that’s uh, that’s probably not gonna happen. After Clarke’s latest killing spree last night Rothenberg released a statement confirming Bellamy’s death and Bob Morley’s departure from the show.
#The100 pic.twitter.com/DIh5uWZAeS
— Jason Rothenberg (@JRothenbergTV) September 10, 2020
It certainly sounds like Bellamy is dead and not coming back. But this is a show where people can live on as ghosts in computer chips, and there’s some serious time travel fuckery afoot on the show currently, so Rothenberg could, theoretically, be playing some kind of weird emotional game with fans. But in my experience, when a showrunner releases a statement confirming the death of a character, that character is well and truly dead.
There are only three episodes left of The 100, and only maybe a dozen cast members left. So the bloodshed can, and likely will, continue like a flood of red spilling out of The Shining hotel’s elevator.
And with that, I leave you with this truly astounding Bellamy death-related meme.
— ً (@jiitzu) September 10, 2020
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Editor’s Note: Release dates within this article are based in the U.S., but will be updated with local Australian dates as soon as we know more.