The 100 Season Finale Review: The Blood of Sanctum (Season 6 Episode 13)

The 100 Season 6 Episode 13, “The Blood of Sanctum,” manages to deliver moments of incredible emotion while also undermining much of the season itself, falling into predictability, and ending on yet another devastatingly confusing cliffhanger. 

The final episode of The 100‘s penultimate season is filled with incredible acting, but the storytelling continues to fall short of satisfying. Between the emotional moments made impactful by powerful performances, “The Blood of Sanctum,” relies heavily on violence, blood, and gore. I’m not saying that a story like this shouldn’t include those things, this is an apocalypse show after all, but when our heroes spend more time fighting bad guys than growing as people it might be time to reevaluate. 

In and of itself, “The Blood of Sanctum” is not a bad finale, there’s drama, there’s heartbreak, there’s action, and yet it feels like we are merely back at square one, with the only real difference between the beginning of the season and where we are now being the lives lost along the way. 

I’ll try to break down what works well here, what doesn’t work, and why it feels like Jason Rothenberg is now writing a story deliberately to spite his audience. 

FOR THE GLORY AND GRACE OF THE PRIMES

One of the best things about this finale is every single moment John Murphy is on screen. Murphy and Emori successfully keep up the illusion that they are one with the Primes, allowing them to maneuver most of their friends to safety. From lavishly twirling around in a cape, kissing Sanctumites, and being the worlds most watchable reluctant hero, Murphy is pure delight. 

Murphy: If I die, you’re bringing me back.

Gabriel: No I’m not.

Murphy: At least lie to me.

Murphy pretending to be a Prime gives Richard Harmon to really lean into the theatrics he was born to play. Emori also shines as Kaylee Prime, effortlessly presenting a regal exterior while orchestrating the safety of her family alongside Murphy. 

Another thing that works about the storyline on the ground is seeing Bellamy and Octavia working “side by side.” While I still feel that Octavia’s new outlook on life is hugely unexplained, it’s genuinely heartwarming to see the Blakes not only on good terms but united as a team in a way that they haven’t been since the Season 1 finale of The 100.

Octavia: I can’t let these people die, Bell.

Unfortunately, the rest of this storyline is primarily a vehicle for another violent eleventh-hour brawl. In the past, the majority of The 100‘s finale battles have felt earned for the most part and they’ve been the result of actions that have escalated through the entire season. Here our heroes are forced to fight a bunch of religious zealots who’ve been drugged out of their minds, as a means to keep them from killing each other. 

Sure, it’s clearly the right thing to do, but none of it feels like it means anything. Instead, it reads as an excuse to have a series of cool slow-motion shots of Bellamy, Octavia, and Echo knocking people out, building to watching a woman light herself on fire so that Octavia can pull a hero move and stop her while also revealing a hook for her storyline for the final season. 

I get that The 100 likes to go to extremes in almost every arena, but we get it, you can show people in pain in innumerable ways. Please, tell us a story instead. 

YOU DIDN’T THINK THIS THROUGH

Meanwhile, back on the mothership, the worst day of Clarke’s life continues to, you guessed it, get worse! From fighting her own daughter to having to float the body of her mother, it’s safe to say that Clarke Griffin is having a truly terrible time in this solar system. 

The 100 Season 5 Episode 1, “Eden,” showed us just how powerful Eliza Taylor is when acting through incredible devastation and on “The Blood of Sanctum” she matches if not surpasses that level of emotional intensity. Clarke keeps up the Josephine-charade as long as she can before revealing the truth and turning against Russell and Simone just before they erase the last of the human race. 

Clarke desperately tries to determine if there’s any chance that her mother is still alive before she realizes what she has to do–she has to kill her mother’s body. Clarke’s longing to save her is moving, but sadly the complete predictability of the rest of this particular storyline destroys the impact it could have had.

When it was revealed that Simone had taken Abby’s body on “Adjustment Protocol,” fans instantly knew that Clarke would have to kill her mother. Being on the mothership provided the opportunity for Clarke to float Abby’s body, an idea that Jason Rothenberg admitted was “horrible in a lot of ways” but “undeniable” for him as a storyteller in a recent interview with Fandom.com. 

It takes a lot of confidence, that is not necessarily earned, to know that the story you’re telling is horrible and yet still think that it is the right story to tell. 

After Clarke has to shove her own mother out an airlock in order to save the human race, she then must race to save Madi before she’s killed by Russell and Sheidheda. 

Clarke is absolutely wrecked after the loss of her mother and the threat on Madi’s life is enough to push her to the limit, a point we’ve seen her at only once before at the beginning of Season 5. Taylor’s broken fragility and calm devastation here in contrast to her screams in the desert the last time Clarke put a gun to her head highlights her incredible range when it comes to telling the story of someone in unbearable pain. 

Madi: Lexa kom Trikru said you were strong, but you’re as weak as her. Your love has made you so. 

I want to believe that The 100 is subverting the idea that love is weakness by putting lines like this in the mouths of characters we know are wrong. However, that’s not the story they’re actually showing us. In contrast with these lines, The 100 should be showing us each of these characters being made stronger by the love they have for one another. 

Every time that Clarke opens her heart to someone, every time that she expresses the love that she has in that heart, it leads to her being hurt by that vulnerability. Finn, Lexa, Abby, and now Madi, have all been used against Clarke to show her how foolish she is for having the audacity to love someone. Hell, Clarke nearly died earlier this season as a result of letting someone into her bed. 

Love and vulnerability are without a doubt some of the greatest strengths of humankind, but The 100 has really decided to reinforce that they are our most destructive weaknesses. 

Madi’s love for Clarke nearly gets her killed by Sheidheda in a mind space battle that is disgustingly violent and disturbingly bordering on sexual assault. Sheidheda strangles the child over a table, screaming at her about how they could’ve “given birth to a new world in their image.” I don’t know what the thought process was that led to this showdown, but the final result is awful in ways that we simply do not need to see. 

I’m glad that Madi is alive and that all of Clarke’s friends came together to save her, but now that this storyline has ended, its entire purpose seems to have been to cause pain for Clarke and guarantee back up villains for the show’s final season. The 100 spent so much time in Season 5 convincing the audience that putting the Flame in Madi’s head was an absolute necessity, then spent the entirety of Season 6 showing everyone what a terrible idea that turned out to be. 

I’m intrigued by the data from the Flame being on the ship’s computer insofar as that I am interested in learning about Becca as commander, the second dawn bunker, and the history of the grounders. But if we’ve only prolonged the existence of Sheidheda, you can keep it. 

 TELL ME IT WAS WORTH IT

One thing that The 100 has always done well is its reunions and that is no different here. Clarke and Raven’s resolution after saving Madi is tender and long overdue, and the final montage of each of our heroes reuniting on Sanctum is as heartwarming as ever. 

Clarke rushes into Bellamy’s arms, looking for solace in the face of yet another terrible loss. The partnership between these two is compelling in every way whether you consider yourself a Bellarke shipper or not. It’s heartening to see them take comfort from each other when they’ve each lost so much. 

Clarke: I tried to do better, but then I lost my mom. Tell me it was worth it. 

Bellamy: We do better, I have to believe that that matters. 

But the thing is, they didn’t really do better, and the areas in which they did only got them the same result. Here they are at the end of another season, beaten down and bloodied from the atrocities of another war. No matter how hard Clarke and Bellamy and all of their friends tried to do better, people still died and there are fewer and fewer people left to pick up the pieces. 

I, like Monty, want to believe that Jasper was wrong and our heroes aren’t the problem, but if Jordan’s weary exhaustion, the loss of Kane and Abby, and the piles of bodies strewn all over this supposed sanctuary of a planet are any indication, Jasper was right. 

I want to see stories where the heroes do break that cycle, where flawed people are still good people who do the best they can and manage to save the ones they love in the face of impossible odds. It’s too bad The 100 stopped telling that story a long time ago. 

THOUGHT DEBRIS: 

• John Murphy is pansexual, thank you for coming to my TEDTalk. 
• Speaking of which, Murphamy is real. I saw that wink, you can’t fool me.
• Jordan’s defeated face as he’s lost faith in all of his heroes as he surveys the damage they’ve wrought on this planet is alarmingly relatable. 
• I love Gaia and Indra, please keep them alive forever. 
• Jackson taking the scalpel from Clarke when her hands were shaking too hard to work on Madi is the big sibling energy I’ve been asking for from these two since day one. I hope that they’re allowed to lean on each other in Season 7. 
• I will forever hate that we lost Abby Griffin the way that we did, but I would seriously watch five hundred more hours of Paige Turco playing a villain like Simone. 
• As much as I dislike the Sheidheda storyline, Lola Flannery does an incredible job of portraying Madi as she sinks deeper and deeper into this possession throughout the season and this episode in particular. 
• Octavia has been called back into the Anomaly by a tattoo with a key to the magic Anomaly stone that Gabriel has been studying for 200+ years. A stone that was just on this moon with no explanation. Octavia’s special tattoo causes the Anomaly to expand and spit out Diyoza’s daughter as a fully grown woman. 
  • Am I getting all of this right? 
  • Anyway, Hope straight-up stabs Octavia, and now Octavia seems to remember something from her time in the Anomaly. Unfortunately, she quite literally disappears before we can learn anything else. 
  • This is certainly a twist, even if Hope’s presence was also predictable.
  • Tell me all of your wildest Anomaly theories in the comments! I’m going to admit I’m not entirely opposed to this magical space dust sending our heroes all the way back to a time before all of their biggest losses, but I’m definitely open to other ideas.
  • Octavia’s alive for sure. 
• I hope the people on planets Beta, Gamma, and Delta are all having really nice peaceful lives. 

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

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The 100 will return for its 7th and final season in 2020 on The CW. 

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