The 100 Season 4 Episode 4 Recap: “A Lie Guarded”

You guys. Up until legit, those last two minutes, I was about to pop off in this recap. I thought they killed my favorite character! It was, admittedly, a pretty cool death, except at the hands of someone not worthy of the honor of killing my fave. Anyway, I cried three times this episode. Let’s get to it. So we begin with Jasper “floating” Jaha like the Lohan twins do to Meredith in The Parent Trap. It’s a funny enough prank, but then he takes the jokes too far when he pretends that the rain that everyone runs for cover from is slowly killing him. Look, maybe it’s not super great to joke about dying when you’ve witnessed a huge portion of your friends being slaughtered. To be fair, it’s basically impossible to do humor right on this show when the stakes are always so high. Cut to Jasper and Monty breaking into the chancellor’s office for another classic prank and finding the list of the 100 people Clarke has decided deserve to survive. Girl, you didn’t even like, double lock that up? Come on! Monty’s not on it. Yikes! Then we get maybe one of the weirdest moments on this show (weirder than the gorilla part) where Clarke enters the room and gets covered in foam (like she’s been hit by a pie) then without missing a beat the scene becomes a serious argument about Clarke playing God with her people. Like, I guess the juxtaposition of the two things should be funny…but it was just crazy, right? Side note: people keeping pointing out that Clarke is not God and to that I say, “How do you people still believe in God?” Like, how? I wish the show used different language or actually explored everyone’s religion more. Because like, what do they honestly think is controlling their universe now? Do they think God has a plan and it is to torture them until the end of time? Do they think God will save them in the end? Wait, double side note: I had this theory last week that we’re gonna think everyone died at the end of this season then zoom back and realize that some malicious God-like figures are taunting these poor people like lab subjects, recording how they respond. Just want to call that now in case I’m right. Anyway, back to the plot. Jasper tries to hijack the camp’s intercom and tell everyone that Clarke lied to them so she just straight-up shocks him and arrests him. He annoys me this season so I loved it, but it’s of course becoming clear that Clarke has lost control of the situation and that her justification for the lie is getting more and more tenuous. Monty confronts her later about the person she’s become (and isn’t even mad not to be on the list because Monty is forever pragmatic). The worst thing about all of this is that there’s probably just not one good choice here. I think the show can make some astute points about the corrupting nature of power or the repetitiveness of wars (I mean, this war stuff is endless), but I think what it most points to is how impossible it is to maintain any semblance of control. Plans on this show instantly get destroyed, secrets don’t stay secrets, and when everything seems like it’s going to fall in order someone will just get shot by accident. We’re all fighting a losing battle with chaos. And so, this is all to say, I don’t think it’s possible to say that it was good or bad that Monty told everyone the truth that only 100 people would survive and read the list aloud (it seems maybe a little too easy for people to announce things to the whole camp though). Also, a great comedy piece would’ve been if we returned from break for four more minutes of Monty reading that list. Anyway, everyone is upset. I love that Riley straight-up was like “hey, this girl deserves to die over me” and that a dude got mad that women who could have kids were valued more. LOL forever! I know it would be bad for TV to have heard all of Clarke’s reasoning, but I honestly loved hearing her justifications. Most of them were pretty fair, right? And also like, sure, people were mad she was on the list but…she’s also young and can have babies! Still, it’s good that everyone knows now because (in my opinion) the secret was bogging down the story. Anyway, Jaha says they’ll get rid of the list and set up a lottery that everyone can enter if they work hard and everyone just instantly goes along with it. These people are such frickin’ followers. I feel like more of them would’ve been against that plan too. Jaha says people want to feel like they have a say in their fate but a random lottery is the exact opposite of being in control. Anyway they’re obviously going to have to change their plan again, because Roan’s army is coming. Which brings us to Polis. Oh boy is my heart not ready for this. So Kane sends Octavia off because he thinks she’s gotten too dark and thirsty for vengeance. I mean, point taken, he’s definitely right, but also I love Octavia this season so… I’m conflicted. Like, don’t use her to clean up your messes and then get mad that she maybe likes it too much. Anyway, it’s good that Octavia was sent away because things go south pretty fast. Echo has caught Bellamy and “Don’t worry about his name he’s about to die” in the woods and discovered that Skaikru is looking out for number one, ostensibly still calling it a “plan B” and also wants to make everyone a Nightblood. Roan doesn’t love this plan or think Skaikru has good intentions so he just declares war. Ugh! As chaos and destruction reign and Octavia is left to pick up the pieces, it seemed like we might get another “Octavia kicks everyone’s butt” episode. We do get a great fight of Octavia vs. Echo and two guards on a cliff. Echo wants Octavia alive, but we hear the sound of a sword in skin, and it’s Octavia’s skin! Tears! Then she falls off the cliff! There’s just a page of “Noooooo” with a million o’s in my notes. Because screw. this. Octavia is the best. I was so furious! Even worse is seeing Bellamy in jail with Kane at the end of the episode. He says it doesn’t matter what they do, they always end up on the brink of war (see… repetitiveness) and as viewers we just have to think of how miserable their lives are so much of the time. And Roan comes to tell them he’s taking the ship for himself (good luck with that… remind us how many of your people are engineers again?!). Bellamy says Octavia will warn Skaikru in time, but then they show him that Octavia died and it’s all too much! His tears are too much. So there were two of my cries.

But before we get to the glorious end: last week was all about Nightbloods and hope, so let’s get to that. Raven, Abby, Murphy, Luna, Emori, Miller, Jackson, and Nyko go to the island with Becca’s lab. WHY WASN’T THIS INVESTIGATED BEFORE? They’re thinking they can find some kind of way to replicate the Nightblood and save everyone, but Luna’s a little skeptical. As an astute commenter pointed out last week: season 2 showed us the horrors of people being used as blood bags, so of course the grounders still can’t completely trust people who need their blood to survive. Nyko dies kinda unceremoniously here as the crew faces off against drones programmed throughout the island to protect the lab (oh also there’s some other big bad lurking on this island and my guess is 10 gorillas or a panther). While the group splits up, Raven and Luna have a heart-to-heart. This was another cry for me (am I doing okay, you ask? Don’t worry about it!) Luna asks “What if the fight is all we are?” a fair question in this bleak universe. She wonders if they really deserve to be saved. Raven says the little girl with Luna was good – lol the little girl she straight-up was willing to let die without medicine – right? And she says there are so many people like that, who are good, who deserve to survive. Which I think is the most pragmatic and beautiful thing in this whole episode and I’m so glad it came from Raven. Because it shows that surviving isn’t about them, really, they are all maybe too far gone, but they have to protect the future. And that’s something we should all be able to get behind. Anyway they do eventually get to the lab and it’s awesome. So then we get that ending where we see Octavia’s body on the shore…alive! That. Is. Right. Somehow Octavia survived! She seems pretty broken, but not as broken as she should be from that fall and she gets on her horse and tells it to take her home. I honestly don’t care the reasoning for her survival (but I hope it’s cool) just thank goodness she didn’t die: my recapping can go on! And so may we meet again!

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