The 100 Review: The Gospel of Josephine (Season 6 Episode 5)

Book II has been packing a punch with every episode, and The 100 Season 6 Episode 5, “The Gospel of Josephine,” is an absolute knockout. 

Written by newcomer Georgia Lee and directed by first AD Ian Samoil, “The Gospel of Josephine” is a master class of storytelling filled with emotion, world-building, and the moral quandaries that are a cornerstone of The 100.

Every single moment of this episode carries something valuable to the audience, either in establishing the importance of the relationships between each of the characters, or revealing key information about the new world and the people who built it. 

Each performance in this episode is out of this world. The incredible power of the cast, combined with nothing less than brilliant writing, push “The Gospel of Josephine” into instantly being one of the best episodes of The 100–point blank.  

SO YOU ATE PEOPLE, WHO CARES? 

Outside the sanctuary of the radiation dome, we catch up with Diyoza and Octavia in hot pursuit of Xavier. He uses his superior knowledge of this planet and how it works to trap them in “the crucible,” leading to an impressive stand-off. This crucial pause in the action allows for some introspection, much-needed advice, and even more revelations about the mysteries of this world. 

On “The Face Behind the Glass” Cillian told Clarke that The Crucible is Gabriel’s favorite play, and that it happens to banned by the Primes within Sanctum. It’s interesting to see that coming back as a name for this alien quicksand. The Crucible is a classic piece of American literature about the Salem Witch Trials, written as an allegory for McCarthyism. The 100 appears to be using this as an allegory for their two warring parties as well. 

Gabriel and the CoGs see themselves as the persecuted witches accused of being monsters, while the Primes within Sanctum have built their power upon a legacy of lies and murder. 

Xavier is clearly one of the few people on this planet with a fairly objectively good moral compass. Everyone we know falls somewhere along the sliding scale of morality, and as Clarke said on “Eden,” the other side has their reasons too. When life becomes us vs them, most people become pretty good at justifying their own crimes. 

Who knows that better than Diyoza and Octavia? 

If this episode is any indication, Diyoza is going to be an absolutely phenomenal mother. She carries patience, exasperation, and understanding for Octavia as they’re stuck together (literally) throughout this episode. She’s been exactly where Octavia has been, so she gets it, but she also has a low tolerance for excuses and a considerable amount of experience that Octavia doesn’t have. 

Diyoza: As long as you draw breath, you can turn it around. 

Before her very deliberate rebirth scene on this episode, Octavia was headed down a dark path that could only lead to her own destruction, and perhaps even the fall of those around her. As much as she rolls her eyes at Diyoza–and refuses to accept help from those that do care about her–something gets through on “The Gospel of Josephine.”

When Diyoza pulls Octavia from the frozen goo pit after the temporal anomaly hits, Diyoza is impressed that Octavia’s self-preservation came through in the end. Octavia affirms her question of whether she truly does want to live with a small, vulnerable nod that makes me want to believe we’ve reached a turning point in Octavia’s journey. 

For all her pain and guilt, self-loathing, and multiple attempts to put herself out of her misery, somewhere deep down Octavia truly does want to live. She just doesn’t know how anymore. Admitting that to Diyoza is the first step in accepting the help she so desperately needs to figure out who she is and who she truly wants to be. 

In the midst of this rebirth, Octavia has a brush with one of The 100 Season 6’s big sci-fi mysteries: The Temporal Anomaly. Most of her body is saved by submersion in “the crucible,” but her hand falls victim to the effect, along with all of the trees and life around them. Nature dies, “the crucible” turns to ice, and Octavia’s hand ages about 50 years. 

The Temporal Anomaly clearly causes wild shifts in time; it appears to be unpredictable and deadly. Will Octavia’s hand remain the only part of her affected, or will it spread to the rest of her body? Is there a way to reverse the effects? 

On “The Children of Gabriel,” we learned that “the old man” (who I’m convinced is Gabriel) has disappeared inside it, and his followers–whom he stopped speaking to–are terrified to go looking for him there. 

Though they built this world together, the current conflict on Sanctum is rooted in the fallout between Russell and Gabriel. If Gabriel is still alive two hundred years later, without using the barbaric body-snatching system he created, then he must have figured out a way to control these temporal flares and use them for his own benefit.

If he can control time, he can live forever without killing anyone. Now that sounds like my kind of immortality. 

JOSEPHINE LIGHTBOURNE, NICE TO MEET YOU.

Say hello to Josephine Lightbourne, eighth in her line, hallowed be her name. We first met Josie in a flashback on “Red Sun Rising,” and to be honest, I didn’t immediately peg her as a sociopath…but here we are. She kills without remorse, is overconfident in almost every respect, has a knack for languages, and very little patience for doing things any way other than her way. 

Who’s to say if this is what the original Josephine would have become if she had lived one normal lifespan, but it’s who she has evolved into as an immortal deity over the past two hundred years. 

We learn a lot about Sanctum and Josie’s role in it through her interactions with both her parents and our heroes, as she boldly fumbles her attempt at keeping up the illusion that Clarke hasn’t been body-snatched.

Eliza Taylor is phenomenal as she adopts new mannerisms and microexpressions to deliver a performance as someone else pretending to be the character she’s been playing for the last six years. While Taylor’s acting is nothing short of superb, Josie’s is a little less than stellar, despite her absolute confidence that playing Clarke is an easy role. 

She manages for a while, only garnering an odd look here and there, and a few questions she strategically dodges. The fact that our people haven’t caught on to the truth that they’ve stumbled into a cult full of body-snatchers is the only thing that keeps her cover up as long as it lasts. 

The confusion among Clarke’s friends slowly builds into agitation as JC foregoes learning how Clarke would actually behave in this situation. She leans too hard into giving herself and the other Primes the benefit of the doubt when the heroes from Earth discover what kind of monsters they really are. 

Jordan is the very embodiment of his father as he sasses Bellamy about morality and snoops around Sanctum in the name of the greater good–without any sense of self-preservation. His actions on “The Gospel of Josephine” are a hauntingly accurate callback to Monty sneaking around Mount Weather, which led to him ending up in a cage. 

Although Jordan completely lacks the forethought to play the long-game here, his intentions are good, and his dedication to learning the truth is admirable. He can certainly learn from his aunts and uncles when it comes to navigating his way out of dangerous situations, but his instinct and intellect are not to be underestimated. 

Gaia, spurred on by Clarke’s weird behavior and her innate desire to protect Madi, joins Jordan in his investigation and finds an even more gruesome version of her own faith. Her journey on this episode is a particularly interesting one; Gaia goes from believing that a faith different from her own should be respected and left alone, to being horrified at what that faith turns out to actually be. She also has to deal with the concept of Glass Houses as Murphy points out the perversions in her own religion. 

Gaia: That’s how they made it better, easier. By manipulating people into believing they were sacrificing themselves to false gods, becoming one of the Primes like Delilah’s mother said. 

Murphy: So much for respecting their faith. No offense, but you let a bunch of kids fight to the death to become your god. 

As with most moral quandaries, Bellamy and the others are divided on how they view these people and the science and sacrifice they’ve built their society on. The 100 has always excelled at giving weight to both sides of every conflict. Even the worst villain’s actions make sense when you put yourself in their shoes. 

To the majority of the main group, what the Primes are doing is absolutely horrific, and it goes beyond the moral lines which they are willing to cross. Meanwhile, ever the cockroach, Murphy opts to just stay out of the ethical battle and take the easier route to guaranteed survival. 

Murphy and JC make a reasonable point in that they really shouldn’t be the ones to start throwing stones given the number of horrors in their own pasts. While Bellamy’s solution seems like the more difficult route, striking out on their own and building their own compound also sounds like the wisest solution, and frankly, it’s an avenue that I would love to watch The 100 explore. 

Settling on their own on another part of this dangerous and beautiful planet would keep them out of another war, and give us the opportunity to watch these characters we’ve loved for years actually build a society of their own. I’m taking these tidbits from Bellamy as seeds planted for Season 7. 

Through a clever combination of Josie’s perspective, her loose lips, and some handy video footage, we get an inside look at her origin story, as well as her vision for the Primes and their society as a whole. 

Our second look at the original Sanctum settlers takes us to Russell and Gabriel’s first successful upload of Josie’s mind to a new host body, twenty-five years after the first Red Sun led to her death. They have been working on a way to bring their family members back since that first eclipse. The test subject that becomes Josephine II is a young woman named Brooke, born of the embryos that were mentioned on “Red Sun Rising.”

I am assuming that Russell and Gabriel, along with whoever else survived the first massacre started incubating those embryos pretty quickly in order to bolster the population and create hosts for their reverse engineered mind drives. If Brooke was the 47th embryo, how many did they have in total, and how many were killed in the quest to get Josie and the others back?

The introduction of the embryos is also likely the reason that nightblood became rarer as the DNA of the original 13 mixed in with these embryos that did not have blood alterations, instead of being able to naturally reproduce with each other. This poses an interesting question: do the primes reproduce with each other, or do they depend entirely on the descendants of the embryos?

As horrifying as it is to watch these men erase the mind of an individual, it’s also strangely moving to see them reunited with someone that they clearly love. If you had the opportunity to not only correct your mistakes, but bring back the people you love most in the world, would you take it? Even if it meant sacrificing innocent lives and your own humanity?

JC: Familial love is a powerful motivator. People will do anything to ensure the survival of the ones they love. 

This line from JC feels like a huge mission statement for The 100, especially the past two seasons as the definition of “my people” has come to be those that each character loves and considers family. It’s a compelling, emotional narrative that is absolutely timeless; watching characters that we care about fight for the people that they care about is one of the biggest draws of fictional universes.

This is what keeps us coming back to The 100 and rooting for these characters, as well as the relationships they have with each other: love. In one way or another, each character on this show loves someone close to them, whether it be familially, romantically, platonically. As long as love is at the heart of this story, I will continue to crave more of it.

Love is what drives Bellamy to figure out that JC isn’t who she says she is. Once he has all the puzzle pieces, he puts it together pretty quickly using a combination of instinct, memory, and clever tactics to confirm that his friend has indeed been body-snatched. 

Bellamy: You know I judge myself every day. You want to know the difference between us and them? I see the faces of the people I’ve killed when I dream, not in the mirror. 

Josie knocks Bellamy out with the same sort of sedative that we’ve seen the people on this planet use a few times now; he’s fully conscious and completely paralyzed. She’ll likely have to hold him prisoner to keep her secret, but how long will she be able to do that before the others notice he’s missing? I mean, Bellamy is kind of a big deal in this group. 

The use of the embryos isn’t the only perversion of reproductive science on “The Gospel of Josephine.” Self-proclaimed visionary Josie wants to run a “breeding program” called Oblation: a eugenics program that would purify the bloodline and guarantee every person born on Sanctum is a nightblood. Her parents do not approve, and I’m having war flashbacks to ALIE and Jaha.

JC: Peace and love for the glory and grace of Sanctum. Consent is key, blah-de-blah. Tell me something, did this Ferarri I’m wearing consent to giving up her body?

Josephine clearly sees herself as the diety that the hokey religion of the Primes paints her as. She is obsessed with her own genius and convinced that her methods and motives are the work of a visionary, rather than the monster that an outsider would find her to be. 

Russell’s commitment to the religion he created to make himself feel better is pretty rich now that we know he spent twenty-five years experimenting on people without their consent. Josie may be a sociopath, but at least she’s honest about it. 

JC: I hope you know this doesn’t end well. Either they find out who I am and kill me before burning Sanctum to the ground, or we body-snatch more of them and kill the rest so they don’t burn Sanctum to the ground. This is what happens when you try making an omelet without breaking any eggs. 

I’m certain that Bellamy, Abby, and the others aren’t going to allow either of Josie’s outcomes to come to fruition, but her blunt view of their options works as another The 100 Season 2 parallel. It harkens back to Cage Wallace refusing to listen to Kane’s offer of a third option that would keep everyone alive. 

Josie differs from Cage in a few key ways, and if she’s better at playing the long game than he was like I believe she is, then she might be able to talk Abby into a solution that would save them all. 

Abby Griffin has always been the person to look for a solution to save the most people. From the Ark to the bunker, she has always worked to keep as many people alive as possible. It’s part of what does make her a fundamentally good person; even when the cost is her own humanity, Abby strives to save every life she can. 

It’s that goodness buried beneath all of her guilt that drives her to focus so intently on saving Kane. Jackson may not be far off in pegging her obsession as a new form of her addiction, but her motivation, however self-destructive, is a commitment to doing the right thing and saving people who are good. 

A considerable amount of Abby’s desire to save Kane is clearly based on the fact he is the love of her life. Of course, she wants to save the man that she loves, but it’s also rooted in so much beyond that. Her quest to save this life, in particular, is wrapped up in her own guilt over past actions, the trauma that she put herself through in the bunker, and everything she did with, to, and for Octavia/Blodreina. 

Abby: You want to know why I want to save Marcus? It’s not because of pills. It’s because he’s good, and true, and he deserves to live. And we don’t. 

One of the cornerstones of Abby’s personality is her moral compass, and her personal metric of being deserving of this life. As early as the pilot, Abby was dedicated to making sure that humanity deserved to survive, and as far back as Season 2, Abby has been questioning her own rights to survival. 

After what she did to keep their people alive during the dark years, Abby doesn’t believe that she is worthy of this life. But maybe, just maybe if she saves Kane, she can begin to atone for her sins. 

What I really love about the fallout of the bunker’s dark year storyline is that both Abby and Octavia have the space to be right. It can be fundamentally wrong to have forced their people to become cannibals, and it can have been completely necessary to do so to keep humanity from dying out entirely. 

Abby’s relationship with Kane has made them both better people. It would be a falsehood to claim that his arc into becoming that fundamentally good person that she is so determined to save is rooted in anything other than loving her. 

During the early seasons of The 100, Kane and Abby’s positions were reversed from where they are now. She wasn’t dying with him as her only real chance of survival, but she was the person who kept humanity, ethics, hope, and light at the forefront of everyone’s minds. In Season 3, he worked to guarantee her survival because he believed she was the light that would lead their people out of the darkness. Now she’s trying to do the same for him. 

They are tethered together not only by their love for each other, but their dedication to humanity, and to wanting what’s best for everyone that they love. 

Marcus Kane would be the first person to tell Abby that she is good, and she does still deserve to survive. And when they meet again, hopefully, he gets the chance to do exactly that. 

Josie may not be a very good Clarke impersonator yet, but she’s pretty good at gathering intel. She knows that Abby can turn anyone into a nightblood, and she also knows that Abby has a pretty significant weakness: Kane. 

If Josie can help Abby find a way to save Kane, she can also probably talk Abby into using those same methods to save the Primes. She just has to do all of that as Clarke, because the second Abby knows the truth she’ll do exactly as Russell predicted–she will burn the world down to get her daughter back.

Jade: I thought you said the mother is the key?

JC: She’s the whole ballgame, the Superbowl if you will. But if we’re going to win, I need a better coach.

Enter: John Murphy. Murphy has always been committed to his own survival above almost anything (Emori’s survival being the exception), and he’s even more determined to avoid death after his little trip to “hell.” He’s the perfect target for Josie’s scheme–he has just the right amount of connection to everyone that JC needs to fool in order to succeed. 

At this point, I desperately need to know what Murphy saw when he was dead that makes him so utterly terrified to ever face it again. As it stands, he’s willing to turn against the only family he’s ever known to become an immortal nightblood.

Murphy’s also always been pretty good at playing both sides to his advantage. He can get close to Josie for his own sake–helping her agenda to a point–while also learning vital information that he could use to save his friends down the line. 

THOUGHT DEBRIS

• I should know better by now to stop getting attached to the morally grey women who stand at the right hand of an evil deity, but here we are. RIP Kaylee; since death isn’t the end on Sanctum, may we meet again. 
• Time for my now-yearly summoning circle to ask that The 100 please let Diyoza survive this season. 
• This episode was chock full of excellent dialogue, but, “So you ate people! Who cares?!” stands above all as the absolute best line. Diyoza is giving Murphy a run for his money on for king of one-liners. 
• I wonder if Josephine’s middle name being Ada is a nod to Ada Lovelace, the woman who helped to build the first general-purpose computer and published the first algorithm.
• Russell and Simone not taking some time in their 200+ years to learn Mandarin is really a fool move on their part. 
• Kaylee killed Josie 6 years ago because Josie killed Isaac in the Offering Grove. Josie killed Kaylee to get even. I don’t think Isaac was a prime–maybe he was Kaylee’s lover? Why do you think Josie killed him? How exactly does the “Offering Grove” work? What purpose does it serve in benefitting Sanctum?
• Other video file names in the same folder as “Eureka!!”: Socket 5, Creek One, Bear Ridge, Castle, Carmel, Willowbrook, Command Rod, Rapid, Black, Summer, Dixon, Diamond, Sully, Legacy, Munko, Seige, Rogue, Highway Red, Command One, Rainbow, Greyhound, Monpey, and Hector. Do you think we’ll see any more of these videos? What secrets do you think are stored in these files? Could they hold the key to the breakdown between Russell and Gabriel as well?
• Josie’s knack for languages being built up from the first time we meet her was brilliantly done. 
• I appreciate the consistency of acknowledging where our off-screen team is this season. It makes sense that not every character can be in every episode, but at least this year we know exactly where those absent characters are when we don’t see them. 
• I love that even amidst her frenzy to save Kane, Abby immediately clocked something being off about Clarke. It makes sense that she wouldn’t suspect anything more without knowing about the whole host/body-snatching situation, but if she finds out, oh boy…Josie better be really careful if she plans on fooling Abby for long. 
• It’s pretty clear that Abby is working herself to an unhealthy degree. I’m gonna need her to drink some water and take a nap. Especially if her headaches are back. It’s so realistic for an addict to struggle even after they’ve committed to being sober, it just breaks my heart to see her in so much pain. 
• Madi’s desire to just go to school and be a normal kid for literally the first time in her life is really pure. So it’s probably going to go south immediately. I’m very here for her and Clarke saying I love you in Trig though. 

 

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The 100 airs Tuesdays at 8/9c on The CW.

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