The 100 Review: Adjustment Protocol (Season 6 Episode 12)

The 100 Season 6 Episode 12, “Adjustment Protocol,” really leans into the darkest parts of what the show has always been, while also proving that some of the show’s most poignant moments are seemingly only attainable when death is in sight. Kim Shumway writes a horrific episode that recycles atrocities from the show’s past and commits The 100 to some pretty gruesome messaging. 

On the penultimate episode of Season 6, Sanctum dissolves into a bloodbath, John Murphy wins my heart, and my favorite television character of all time is redeemed seconds before she’s murdered. 

HAVE SOME FAITH

Outside the Sanctum perimeter, Gabriel and the Blakes lie in wait with a surprisingly small amount of the Children of Gabriel, impatiently biding their time until Clarke gets the shield down. It’s heartwarming to see Octavia and Bellamy working together again as brief as these moments are. 

Everyone is set to stick to the plan until Gabriel overhears the guards discussing a massive, special naming day during the shift change and decides to take initiative and move the plan forward ahead of schedule. 

Gabriel: Unlike you, I can’t sacrifice the few to save the many. 

Gabriel’s line here is the first of a plethora of The 100‘s “greatest hits” if you can call them that, that are sprinkled throughout this episode. This season started out so promising with the refreshing outlook and hope for an entirely new story, but here we are at the final two episodes and the new narrative has gone off the rails and The 100 forces us to wonder if they’re actually capable of writing anything other than darker and darker iterations of the same story. 

Gabriel throws himself into the lion’s den comes face to face with Russell. He realizes that he’s too late to stop the latest round of murders, just like he has always been for the past 200 years. 

Here we watch Gabriel paraphrase one of Lincoln’s best lines from Season 2, only now it feels truly ironic on The 100. 

Gabriel: Without death, life is meaningless. 

When Lincoln said “if death has no cost, life has no worth,” on The 100 Season 2 Episode 8, “Spacewalker,” the gravity and impact of that line felt real and important. Then that line told me that this show had a weight and a gravitas like little else on television. It said, your life means something and it matters even after it’s gone. 

On Season 6 The 100 has made it upsettingly clear that life is arbitrary, hope is meaningless, and the only purpose death serves is to cause suffering for those left behind. This is a depressing caricature of the once epic apocalyptic drama. 

The final moments of this episode devolve into yet another season finale bloodbath as the people of Sanctum are poisoned by their own gods, turned into murderous zombies before our very eyes. I feel so utterly foolish to have expected Book II to be any different from the last three chapters of Book I. 

WE’RE GOING TO SAVE OUR PEOPLE

As devastated and exhausted as I am by much of this episode, Spacekru, specifically Murphy and Emori, have some pretty heroic moments worth our attention. They take the deal with the primes, yes but the also genuinely believe that this is their way of guaranteeing their own survival along with the rest of their people. 

Emori: What about our friends?

Murphy: This is how we save them. 

Before she’s murdered, Abby stops Murphy for a moment of understanding and encouragement. Earlier in the season, these two spoke about life after death and the motivation behind why we make difficult choices in the name of saving the people that we love. 

Throughout the series, Abby and Murphy have had an interesting and complex sort of mother/son relationship. It’s the kind of pair that you would never really expect to share a connection until they do, and then it works so perfectly you wonder how you never put it together before. Consistently, Abby and Murphy have gone down the path that looks the most horrific from the outside, specifically to save someone that they love. 

For Murphy, it’s been Emori, Raven, and even Abby herself, and for Abby, it always comes back to her family: Clarke, Marcus, Raven, Jackson, and Madi. They’ve turned to cannibalism, stolen food and medicine, and walked into war zones all because it meant saving their families.

So when Simone walks out in the body she stole from Abby Griffin, Murphy is appropriately terrified and infuriated. For me, this is one of the most well-acted moments in this entire series. Paige Turco is stoic and resolute, coolly slipping into the persona of the villain who’s taken the life of the woman she’s portrayed for the past six years.

While I’ll continue to rave about her performance on “Adjustment Protocol” in the section below, what really brings these final moments home is Richard Harmon’s simmering rage and devastation. Murphy barely restrains himself from attacking Josephine as he reveals just how hurt he is over losing Abby. 

Then as Clarke reveals that she is, in fact, herself, Murphy immediately recognizes her and the relief on his face is palpable. 

Clarke: I’m proud of you, Murphy. 

He’s no stranger to losing people, but it sure is nice to get someone back every now and then. I never doubted Murphy; he’s consistently done whatever it takes to save the people he loves. One of the only things I am looking forward to as we close out The 100 Season 6 is watching him finally be recognized as the hero he’s become. 

ALL SHE DID WAS HELP AND YOU KILLED HER

The 100 failed Abby Griffin, the same way it has failed so many before her. Personally, this latest casualty of The 100‘s commitment to edgy, grimdark storytelling hits the closest to home for me because Abby has been my favorite character since I began watching the series. But this is by far not the first time that the show has done something like this and expected the audience to deal with it because, well, that’s life!  

This is no longer the show I signed up for, but unfortunately, it is the one I’ve been complicit in watching since Season 3. 

All of the signs make it clear that, while this isn’t the only story The 100 writers are capable of telling, it is the one they love to tell over and over again. Those signs have been there since the day they decided to kill Lexa and Lincoln in the space of three episodes. 

Killing a main character like this worked for The 100 once, during Season 2, when Clarke took Finn’s life to spare him from execution. Since then The 100 has used death as a tool not for impactful storytelling that fit the narrative in a way that felt emotionally satisfying even in sadness, but as a torture device for its heroines and the audience. 

Lexa died to hurt Clarke and queer women everywhere, Lincoln died to destroy Octavia, Jasper died to break Monty, Kane died to devastate Abby, and now Abby has died to cause more trauma for Clarke and Raven. 

It is nothing short of devastating to watch Abby see Josephine parading around in her daughter’s body. Paige Turco breaks down through this first scene gradually and with a grace that I can’t even begin to fathom. Not only has she lost the love of her life, now she’s lost her daughter too and has to watch someone else use and abuse her. A living breathing mockery of a ghost. 

Only, for Abby, this moment is temporary. The next time she sees Clarke the two are genuinely reunited, and Abby knows the truth. This kind of miscommunication induced pain is truly one of the most infuriating forms of storytelling, and yet The 100 uses it more than once throughout Abby’s final moments. Russell later justifies killing Abby by saying she would never get over the loss of her daughter, even though we’ve just seen her have hope for the first time in over a year because she got her daughter back.

We must watch Abby suffer the loss of her daughter, watch her feel the absolute devastation of that loss and the weight of the guilt and shame over not having been able to protect her or stop it. This confrontation serves no narrative purpose outside of Abby’s pain–we already know that Clarke has to keep faking Josephine no matter what.  Was watching Clarke’s own pain over Madi not enough? Did we have to twist this particular knife in?

It does prove that Turco can act the absolute hell out of an active heartbreak as she’s done multiple times over this season. But we already knew that too.  

Thankfully, we are given a real reunion between Abby and Clarke. But in the context of this episode, and the season overall, even this triumphant moment cannot be celebrated in by fans of this dynamic.

After watching The 100 keep Abby and Clarke isolated from each other throughout Season 5 and 6, and having to witness Clarke’s body being used to manipulate Abby into another terrible decision, this beautiful mother/daughter moment feels as if it is merely an obligatory bandaid. It’s a box to check off on the list of important goodbyes for Abby before she dies.

The relationship between Clarke and Abby is the foundation that The 100 Season 1 was built on, and now that bond has been neglected, abused, and finally turned into a plot device, adding one more loss to the ever-growing list of deaths that haunt and traumatize Clarke Griffin.

Eliza Taylor does a wonderful job here as well, as we see Clarke take true comfort in the arms of her mother. She’s been through so much, and she’s so strong, it’s easy to forget that sometimes the hero just needs to be held by someone who loves her. 

Before Clarke arrives Abby injects herself with her own nightblood serum so that they don’t have to drill Madi to death. Ironically, the move that feels the most like the rebelliously brave and reckless classic Abby Griffin is the one that leads to her own downfall.

Even this, however, is yet another recycled story. On Season 4 of The 100, Clarke injects herself with nightblood so that they don’t have to test it on Emori. 

The next resolution to check off of that list of Abby’s loose ends is her frayed relationship with Raven. Getting Clarke back pushes Abby into a place of gratitude for what she still has which pushes her to apologize to Raven again. Having been a witness to Abby losing the two people she loved most in the world Raven finally meets that apology halfway and admits that she judged her too harshly. 

Raven: You’re human and sometimes being a human sucks. 

Abby: I may not be your mother, but you are my family, Raven. 

Again this is one of the most beautiful scenes Abby has been a part of this season and yet it’s tinged with heartbreak because of what comes next. 

Russell decides to take Abby’s body the minute that he discovers she’s injected herself. Even though her final moments, Abby fights tooth and nail not for herself but for the people she loves. She uses her dying breaths to protect Raven and Jackson from the fate that is about to befall her. 

Taking advantage of that huge heart of hers, Russell fills her veins with the mindwipe serum. Abby collapses to the ground as her life flashes before her eyes, memories of Jake and Marcus, and above all, Clarke. And then she’s just gone. That’s it, Abby Griffin is dead.

To make matters worse, both the audience and Clarke must then endure the actuality of the facade Abby went through at the start of this episode. Simone saunters into the great hall wearing Abby’s body, withering everyone to dust. To the audience, Clarke is devastated, but she must keep her cover in front of Josephine’s parents. She lashes out at Gabriel, the only safe way that she can show any emotion at this moment. 

Simone: Oh sweetheart, at least you have closure. 

This line, in particular, feels so so cruel, because even though she’s textually referring to the relationship between Josephine and Gabriel, the double entendre for the relationship between Abby and Clarke is obvious. Nothing about the end of Abby’s story allows for closure of any kind. 

That is part of what makes the loss of both Abby and Kane in such rapid succession of one another but still separate, so desperately sad. If Cusick and Turco both needed to leave the show in Season 6, there are innumerable ways that The 100 could have written their characters out of the series. From setting off on their own to emotionally satisfying and narratively logical deaths together, almost any other ending for this pair of flawed, compassionate, loving characters would have been better.  

Abby Griffin stood for hope even in the darkest of times, for doing what she knew was right even when no one else believed her, and for fighting for the people she loves. To have that hope, that light, that love extinguished so abruptly is something that’s going to hurt for a long time. 

Wells: Your life can be more than impossible decisions and a tragic end. 

I fell in love with The 100 because of Abby and Clarke Griffin. I fell in love with it because when this show started it was about a group of flawed humans doing the best that they could to keep living and keep loving at the end of the world. That isn’t what this is anymore. The final few years of Abby Griffin’s life were nothing but impossible decisions and a tragic end.

If the story that The 100 has decided it’s telling now is that no matter how hard you try to be the good guy, no matter how much you love and are loved, you will always lose. Your loved ones will die and you won’t be able to save them. You will die trying to protect what you love. If that is the story that these writers are telling now, I want no part of it. 

THOUGHT DEBRIS

• The music in this episode is really incredible. Tree Adams has been consistently nailing it this season. 
• No wonder Russell is the leader of Sanctum, he consistently sticks to his plans and makes the horrific choices no one else is willing to make. He’s truly a horrific villain, but he earns my respect by actually sticking to his principles. 
• I love the reunion between Clarke and Echo. That hug added back ten years to my life. 
• Clarke has her own (blank) MindDrive. As do Murphy and Emori. What will they do with those, if anything?
• Why didn’t Gaia, Echo, or Miller bring Raven that damn book? This feels like a huge plothole (among many) that was completely brushed over simply to push Raven saving Madi into the finale. 
• I didn’t find a space for it in the body of this review but “you’re fine until you’re not” is a great line. 
• Ashleigh Lathrop has done a magnificent job of portraying Delilah, then Priya all season. Her final speech is impressive.
• As satisfying as it is to see Delilah’s parents learn the truth and then get revenge, it’s still another instance of watching characters murder the body of someone they love and I’m really exhausted by that at this point. 
• I feel an almost sick certainty in my stomach that we will have to watch Clarke kill Simone in her mother’s body in the finale. Because why not stretch her death out over two episodes? Kane got to die twice, now Abby does too. Neat. (Narrator: it was not neat.)
  • If this happens it will be an echo of what Monty had to do with his mother during Season 3. You guys, I’m just so tired. 
• Will Memori break spacekru out of their hiding place for the final battle? How do our heroes stop the toxin and avoid those affected?
• Miller standing up to Octavia is an excellent little slice of character development. 
• Forcing Abby to make nightblood made Marcus’ death pointless and it led to her death too. What a slap in the face.
• Give Paige Turco an Emmy and a role on a show that truly knows her value. 
• When I said I wanted Abby in a beautiful gown and Marcus saying he loves her more than anything I meant at their wedding, not their deaths, but okay. 
• Did I cry over those shots of baby Clarke even though they were literally just stock footage of babes that look like Eliza? Yes, I absolutely did.
• All of this started because Clarke let her hair down to have a little romantic fun for the first time in over a hundred years. How many times can I say this is a bad message?
• Wells Jaha didn’t die for this. 

What did you think of this episode of The 100? What are your hopes for the Season 6 finale? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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

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