The 100

The 100 (pronounced "The Hundred") is a post-apocalyptic science fiction drama television series that premiered on March 19, 2014, on The CW. The series, developed by Jason Rothenberg, is loosely based on the novel series of the same name by Kass Morgan. Six seasons have aired as of Summer 2019, with the seventh confirmed to be the final season.

The show starts in 2149, 97 years after nuclear war has left Earth seemingly uninhabitable. On The Ark, a space station where some of humanity still survives, 100 juvenile delinquents are sent down to Earth to determine if it’s become survivable again and to conserve precious resources on the Ark.

What starts as a post-apocalyptic Lord of the Flies quickly becomes something else as the kids realize that they’re not alone and things up on the Ark just keep getting worse.


 * Abusive Parents: Considering that a lot of the cast members are juvenile delinquents, this pops up in a few backstories.
 * Raven’s mother was a drunk who traded Raven’s food rations for alcohol.
 * John Murphy had a pretty loving family, until he got sick and his father stole medicine to help treat him. It didn’t help, and he was executed for the crime. Murphy’s mother then became an alcoholic who repeatedly told him that his father’s death was his fault.
 * Action Girl: There are a lot of them. Octavia and Echo are the best examples from the main cast.
 * Adaptation Displacement: The book series is mostly a footnote to the TV series at this point.
 * Aerith and Bob: You have some pretty normal names (John, Abigail, Marcus), some less common names (Thelonius, Octavia, Lexa), last names used as given names (Lincoln, Bellamy) and some outright bizarre ones (Jacopo, Ontari).
 * A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Played with a couple ways:
 * Played straight with ALIE, who was responsible for causing the nuclear war that left the world in ruins, after determining that the problem with the world was “Too many people”. The problem there is that ALIE was doing exactly what she was programmed to do, just not in the way that was expected.
 * Subverted with ALIE 2.0, known as the Flame to the Grounders. It was designed to interface with human minds, to avoid making the same mistake again. It’s been used by the Grounder Commander for nearly a century, providing them with greater wisdom by storing the memories of all previous commanders along with some of the greater cognitive abilities that ALIE has.
 * Artifact Title: Happens really quickly. It’s named after the 100 juvenile delinquents send to the ground, but two of them die on the way to the ground, about ten minutes into the episode.
 * Bittersweet Ending: A few of the seasons end with this:
 * Season 2
 * Season 3
 * Season 5
 * Break the Cutie: Anyone who starts as a more hopeful, naive character will go through this eventually.
 * Jasper was an upbeat, goofy stoner who really seemed to enjoy being on Earth. He doesn’t even get through one episode before being speared in the chest and strung up on a tree. He really goes through the ringer in season 2, at first trusting Mount Weather and finding a girlfriend/ally in Maya. From that point, he becomes a Death Seeker and Straw Nihilist.
 * Octavia starts off already having been somewhat broken, since she spent her entire life up to that point in her family’s small room on The Ark, then a prison cell. She spends most of seasons 1 and 2 trying to find somewhere to fit in, mostly with the Grounders more than the ark people. Then she gets abandoned and disowned by the Grounders when she refuses to retreat from Mount Weather. She’s almost okay, but then season 3 happens.
 * Cliff Hanger: After resolving the main story, each season finale ends with one to set up the main conflict of the next season:
 * Season 1
 * Season 2
 * Season 3
 * Season 4
 * Season 5
 * Season 6 ends with two big ones:
 * Crapsack World: It’s decades after a nuclear apocalypse, so it’d be surprising if this wasn’t the case.
 * From Bad to Worse: Many, many people don’t think through their actions. In the first season, it’s mostly a case of characters (justifiably) holding the Idiot Ball. In later seasons, the characters are smarter, but the circumstances are much worse.
 * Grey and Gray Morality: With a couple notable exceptions, everyone falls somewhere in the grey middle of morality. Frequently stated by the characters as “Maybe there are no good guys”.
 * I’m a Humanitarian: Wonkru during the “Dark Year”.
 * In Name Only: Just about. This is an incredibly loose adaptation of the novels, with really only the general premise and some character names kept from the novels. Considering the show was in production before the first novel was published, it’s not that surprising.
 * Killed Off For Real: They don’t play around with death on this show. When someone dies, you’re going to see it and it’s going to stick.
 * Played with in Season 6 with the Primes.
 * Last-Name Basis: (John) Murphy, (Nathan) Miller, (Eric) Jackson, (Jacapo) Sinclair are almost never referred to by their first names.
 * Love Triangle: Averted more than you’d expect from the teen drama show that it starts off as. When Clarke discovers that Finn already was in a relationship with Raven, she immediately cuts off the relationship that had just started to develop.
 * Moral Myopia: A frequent issue the characters run into on this show. Almost everything is permissible if it’s done for your people or family, and the struggle to rise above that is a constant theme of the show.
 * Parental Substitute: Quite a few.
 * Abby acts as this to Raven.
 * Kane acts like this towards Bellamy, though Bellamy never lets Kane forget his part in Aurora Blake’s death, so it ends up being a little one-sided.
 * Clarke is this to Madi, though their relationship is closer than most others like this in the show. Clarke refers to Madi as her daughter, not like a daughter, and Madi goes by Madi Griffin, taking Clarke’s last name.
 * Serial Escalation: Each season, the conflict gets bigger and weirder:
 * Season 1 is a conflict between a bunch of kids down on Earth fighting the Grounders, while the adults fight dwindling resources up in space.
 * Season 2 continues the fight against the Grounders while adding in Mount Weather, which has crazy levels of technology compared even to the Ark.
 * Season 3 introduces Grounder clans beyond just the Woods Clan, adding in a tyrannical regime taking over Arkadia from the inside, and a battle against the AI that ended the world the first time.
 * Season 4 has Praimfaya, a wave of fire and radiation that will kill everyone and the increasingly desperate measures taken to try and survive it.
 * Season 5 has the fight over the single area on Earth that survived Praimfaya, fought between the existing characters and a group of former prisoners on an off-world mining colony, who have advanced weaponry and remember the Earth from before it was destroyed.
 * Season 6 brings us to Sanctum, a moon in another solar system, which they find already inhabited by another mining mission, which has since become a nearly two-century old theocracy built around reincarnation.
 * Theme Naming: Both done specifically in and out of universe:
 * The main characters take their names from science fiction writers (Arthur C. Clarke, Edward Bellamy, Octavia Butler, H.G. Wells). This could be just a theme decided by the writers, or a reference to their ancestors all being astronauts and therefore likely to have a stronger than average interest in science fiction.
 * The Grounders tend to have their names come from historical/mythological figures (Lincoln, Indra) or named after nearby locations or landmarks (also Lincoln, Alexandria, Ontario, Memorial Botanical Gardens, Roanoke). For most of them, this is the reason they do so in-universe, not just an inside joke with the writers.
 * Octavia’s name makes for a great Fridge Brilliance moment: she’s constantly torn between the Grounders and the Sky People, and her name fits both the science fiction and historical figure naming trend.
 * Thicker than Water: Bellamy and Octavia. Bellamy is willing to kill Chancellor Jaha to get a place on the ship going down to Earth with her, and when they get down to the ground, he remains fiercely protective of her. While it gets much more complicated later on, their bond remains strong throughout the run of the show.
 * Octavia’s name makes for a great Fridge Brilliance moment: she’s constantly torn between the Grounders and the Sky People, and her name fits both the science fiction and historical figure naming trend.
 * Thicker than Water: Bellamy and Octavia. Bellamy is willing to kill Chancellor Jaha to get a place on the ship going down to Earth with her, and when they get down to the ground, he remains fiercely protective of her. While it gets much more complicated later on, their bond remains strong throughout the run of the show.