The 100 Review: The Warriors Will (Season 5 Episode 10)

The 100 Season 5 just gets better and better and “The Warriors Will” is no exception. Another spectacular heart-racing hour of television in The 100‘s best season yet, this episode pushes our heroes right to edge of the abyss and then allows them to tumble over past the point of no return.

Written by Shawna and Julie Benson, and directed by Henry Ian Cusick The 100 Season 5 Episode 10 “The Warriors Will” is an absolute masterpiece narratively, visually, and emotionally.

FIND A BETTER OPTION. AND THEN BURN IT TO THE GROUND.

Wonkru’s crisis of faith leads Octavia to walk the knife’s edge as each of her plans to take Eden fails, and half of her army refuses to fall in line. In the confines of the bunker, Octavia ruled with her sword. In the bunker you are Wonkru or you are an enemy of Wonkru, but now that there are options, old loyalties are coming to the surface and the desire for freedom is stronger than the people’s faith in Blodreina.

Brell: You want your army to march? Show them what happens when they don’t.

Octavia’s depth of emotion and her spiral into complete darkness continually surprise me, because every time I think she’s reached her limit she manages to go that much further.

On ” The Warriors Will” Octavia is both unrecognizable from the first sky girl to set foot on Earth in 100 years and yet more reminiscent of her old self than she has been all season. She tries for much of the episode to find a better solution, her desire not to lose Bellamy or Indra at war with her desire to maintain her power and take Eden for her people.

That is the dichotomy of Octavia, she’s always had the strength to be an incredible warrior, and though she’s been loved, by her brother, by Lincoln, by Kane, by Indra, none of them were able to stop her from becoming the darkest and most warped version of herself.

She goes to Indra first, seeking advice and a better solution and she finds neither. Indra’s deep capacity for love combined with her staunch lack of sentimentality make her an incredible leader and the kind of mentor that everyone could probably use more often.

We’re getting more and more hints about what happened during “The Dark Year” and on the next episode, we will finally know. But it’s clear that whatever Octavia and her people were forced to do is a driving force for the way that she’s behaving now.

Octavia: You fight to live or you die. That is how we survived, even when this farm stopped feeding us. If you were here you’d understand. The farmers won’t save the world Monty, the warriors will.

Perhaps after “The Dark Year” Indra’s role in who Octavia has become will garner her less moral high ground, but for now, she is both brutally honest and unyielding in her view of her former second turned queen. The conversation between them shows how far they’ve both come and how completely Octavia has lost her way, going too far into the darkness.

After everything, Indra still sees the real Octavia inside the monster she’s become. But her faith that she can be saved is dwindling. And Octavia’s actions on “The Warriors Will” make me wonder if she’ll ever be able to come back from this.

Octavia then appeals to Bellamy, attempting to give him an advantage in the battle she believes she has to force him to fight. But she doesn’t get anything she’s looking for with him either.

Much like Kane on The 100 Season 5 Episode 4 “Pandora’s Box,” Bellamy refuses to fight. Because Bellamy wasn’t there for Octavia’s time in the bunker, he doesn’t understand anything about the person she’s become. To Octavia, the way she ruled was a necessity, to Bellamy its a funhouse mirror of stories from their childhood that he cannot take seriously or understand the need for.

Octavia: I know you’re trying to save me Bell, but you can’t save someone who’s already dead.

The amount of emotion shown by Bob Morley, Adina Porter, and Marie Avgeropolous in these scenes is just incredibly heart-wrenching.

A mother, prepared to die to save one daughter from the other, a brother with profound empathy and a desire to take away his sister’s pain and save her from what she’s become, and a warrior queen juxtaposed inside a girl who’s seen and done too many things that keep her from finding her way out of the dark.

The artfully filmed shots of Octavia as she commits further to Blodreina and decides that she has no other option but the fighting pits are incredible. Cusick’s use of the broken mirror to show Octavia’s inner turmoil is a stunning visual representation of how fractured Octavia’s soul has become.

When Octavia uses the glass shard to cut her arm and then paint her face in her own blood she’s making an incredible statement narratively that I’m not sure the character herself is even aware of. When Octavia first became Blodreina, it was the blood of her enemies that she used as her “armor.” By using her own blood to do the same now, Octavia is still Blodreina but she’s also visually declaring that she is an enemy to herself.

Octavia has become a full anti-hero in ways that women are rarely allowed to do on television. As hard as her journey has been to watch, it’s just as fascinating and honestly impressive. Character development doesn’t always mean that that character has to become someone objectively good. Octavia is ever evolving into something more dark and twisted than what she was before.

Each turning point in her life has lead to who she has become.  Mourning for the little girl she once was, and watching in horror as she grows into a true villain is just as much of a narrative feat as watching characters like Murphy and Kane become morally good people from the unsympathetic men they were on  The 100 Season 1.

Gaia is the only warrior that doesn’t get a visit from the queen, I believe partially to mask the reveal that her true goal is to attack Octavia in addition to her relationship with her being less significant than the other two. It’s a direct parallel to Lexa killing Queen Nia on The 100 Season 3, but unlike Lexa, Gaia misses.

Octavia’s reaction to Gaia’s assassination attempt surprises me because she doesn’t even give it a second thought. Unflinchingly, she simply tosses the spear back into the crowd repeating the “be the last” edict as if she’s unimpressed an uninterested in the fight so far, rather than taking the expected route and sending the spear through Gaia herself.

Meanwhile, Monty proves that while he’s not as innocent as he looks in the grand scheme of things, he is an idealist with the ability to save them all.

Octavia confronts Monty about the algae that Bellamy used to poison her, revealing that he couldn’t have done it alone. Monty’s complicity in the things that Bellamy and Clarke have done through not only this season but the entire show, makes him comparable to Indra’s role within the bunker.

Monty does, however, choose to defy Blodreina openly to turn her people against her, after even Bellamy submits within the gladiator ring.

Octavia cannot kill Monty for the same reason she couldn’t kill Madi, it would turn too many of her people against her. But she can destroy all other solutions but her own.

For much of this episode Octavia searches for an option that would allow her to keep the people she loves alive, but also get her people to follow her without question. The thing that solidifies Octavia’s descent into villainy is that even when presented with the options to save the people she loves and the people of Wonkru, she refuses to choose those options or even allow them to exist.

The minute Octavia disappears from the ring it’s obvious what she’s gone to do, and as she watches the farm burn, she essentially burns away the last of who she was.

Now as she marches toward Eden, she has her army not because they are loyal or committed to her but because she took away any other option. She marches with an army that could turn on her at any second, an army that has differing agendas for what happens when they arrive in Eden.

I don’t know what the future holds for Octavia, but at this point, I know that it can’t be good and I can’t look away.

I GOT IT FROM MY MAMA. 

Clarke dealing with post flame Madi is incredibly reminiscent of Abby dealing with Season 2 Clarke, and this is a parallel that I’m genuinely in love with. Madi and past Clarke both have/had valid points and good ideas, but they approach situations with the brazenness of youth without thinking of the consequences or the danger they pose to themselves.

Both Clarke and Abby have a parenting style in which they will do anything it takes to keep their daughters safe, even if it means saying no or being the bad guy. In my own experience, this is a characteristic that most mothers can relate to and one that makes the best mothers.

And much like the reality that Abby had to face watching Clarke assume power in Season 2, Clarke is forced to face that Madi has turned a page, she’s growing up and she has a place and a wisdom in this war that Clarke cannot control.

The way that the flame works isn’t completely clear, but Madi is committed to keeping it and using the knowledge it’s given her in spite of the horrors that the memories of the commanders have shown her. I think that the commanders choose to show Madi specific things to guide her.

Clarke: let’s get one thing straight, you are my child and I will protect you with my life. For now, I’m letting you keep that thing in your head, but if you so much as think about challenging Octavia I will take it out faster than you can say ascende.

Clarke’s primary knowledge of the flame is from her relationship with Lexa. Her fears of losing another person that she loves to that position and that technology are very real. But if there’s one thing I know about Clarke Griffin, it’s that she learns from the past and adapts to it. When Clarke says she won’t let the same thing happen to Madi, I believe her.

Madi has learned well from Clarke, just as Clarke learned well from Abby. As Madi slices the Eligius prisoner’s neck, Clarke becomes fully aware of the extent of her impression on her kid, it’s the exact move she would have made years prior. Having all three of these ladies in the same place finally is something I’ve been hoping for all season, and I can’t wait to see what happens next between them.

A BATTLE OF WILLS. 

With McCreary taking over Eden and holding Abby hostage he takes the opposite route that Diyoza has been to get her to bend to his will. Where Diyoza fed Abby’s addiction, McCreary starves it.

The way this storyline plays out on “The Warriors Will” is devastating but it’s also extremely satisfying because, through both the narrative and the camera work, we finally get to see Abby’s addiction from her perspective. We also finally have a character call Abby’s addiction what it really is; McCreary states that what’s happening to Abby is as much a disease as what’s happening inside his own body.

Much like Octavia, this Abby is such a stark contrast to the woman she once was, while also maintaining the core of her personality and who she is. She uses sass and a bold attitude to mask her own fear and pain.

McCreary: I know she’s pregnant. It’s mine, did she tell you that?

Abby: No, but I can see why she wouldn’t brag about it.

I love seeing Abby with this bite and this fire in her, but seeing her suffering and so willing to embrace death at the same time is nothing short of heartbreaking. Living through the hell of the bunker and falling into addiction as a coping mechanism created an environment that never allowed Abby to heal from the desire she held to end her life at the end of Season 4.

Abby: Do it. Kill me like you killed the other doctor. Put us both out of our misery.

Kane has been striving to create a better life for the two of them in Eden because it’s something he can envision, a hope that likely helped him survive what they went through as Wonkru. But the disease of addiction and Abby’s pragmatism prevent her from being able to see that. Abby is stuck in the darkness and Clarke may be the only one with the ability to actually show her the way out.

As much as Abby does not fear death, she still has a strong survival instinct that overrules her choices and causes her to seek out Vinson’s help in getting her pills back.

The desire to get her drugs back the most when she’s in the throes of withdrawal is a natural desire of anyone in that position. But the way that Abby rationalizes her need for the pills makes it all the more tempting to side with her and allow her to continue using.

Abby knows that it would be better for her if she were able to quit, both as a doctor and as someone a woman who is aware that she’s putting herself in danger and hurting the people that she loves. But her knowledge as a doctor means that she understands just how dangerous quitting is for her and the physical toll it will take on her body.

She points out that her body simply is not strong enough to go through withdrawal on her own, which is honestly a fair statement to make. It would be difficult enough to get through with Kane there to help her through it, but here she is a hostage under duress with only a cannibal for an ally in a camp full of violent criminals.

The Bensons show us Abby’s story from her perspective, we get to hear her explanations and her reasoning for doing what she does, we see her struggle with the ugliness of this disease, the pain that leads her there, and the burden of dealing with it on her own and at its worst.

Cusick utilizes a fisheye lens as well as a variety of creative shots, and slow-motion effects to visually show the way the addiction is tearing Abby apart from the inside out. These shots are meant to show Abby’s view of the world around her and how her disease has warped her body and mind.

This combined with Paige Turco’s absolutely riveting performance show Abby’s increasing isolation, desperation, despair in a visually stunning and bone-chilling way. Showing Abby’s perspective on what’s happening to her is a crucial component to telling an addiction story and the work that Turco, Cusick, and the Bensons deliver on “The Warriors Will” is an excellent move in that direction.

As devastating as it is to see Abby choose to continue using, it also feels like an honest choice for someone in her position. I also really appreciate the way Abby’s story and Clarke’s story come together on “The Warriors Will” and the way that Abby fully hitting rock bottom sets her up to approach a turning point with Clarke in the following episodes.

My main hope with this plot right now is that Abby continues to have the level of agency that she’s held for the past two episodes. I want Abby to ask Clarke to help her out of the addiction, rather than it being something Clarke just insists upon. Having people like Clarke, Kane, and Madi around to help her survive it is crucial, but ultimately the choice to quit still needs to come from Abby.

OTHER THOUGHTS:

• Madi’s flashback to Cadogan burning Becca alive like a post-apocalyptic witch broke my brain, please come back to me when I’ve picked up the pieces.
• Harper and Monty as Adam and Eve is a pure image. These two have the best intentions, I just really want someone to actually listen to them.
• I am so incredibly relieved that Gaia doesn’t die in the arena! But now I’m simply all the more nervous for the season’s final battle and who we might lose in the process.
• If you need me I’ll be watching the trailer for “The Dark Year” for the next 24 hours. From what it looks like, Abby is the one that gets to tell that story and I couldn’t be more grateful.
• Do you think Murphy is tired of holding Kane back from storming back into the gas station to get Abby yet?

What did you think of this episode of The 100? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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The 100 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

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