The 100 Review: Hesperides (Season 7 Episode 4)

The 100 Season 7 has been off to a slow start. The trend continues on The 100 Season 7 Episode 4, “Hesperides,” which essentially ends with the majority of our main characters on four different planets. 

From the very beginning this episode feels abrupt throwing us back onto Skyring (also known as Penance) to meet Hope and Dev and see them train to ulimately infiltrate Bardo. It’s a good continuation from the events of The 100 Season 7 Episode 2, “The Garden,” but its cluttered by the sudden pull back to Sanctum.

The show has to get its main characters back together. This season is not working as it is with them dispersed across three planets working on different problems. 

Even though those problems are loosely connected, it’s resulting in a hard to follow plot. It’s hard to know whether I should be more concerned about Bellamy on Bardo, or Sheidheda on Sanctum? 

Clearly though, concern should really lie with the introduction of the last war mankind will ever have to fight. We’re about a third of the way through the season now, and introducing the idea of another war that Clarke is going to end, feels ambitious and contrived. 

The return to Sanctum on this episode is necessary to blend the plot points, but really it’s only function is to get Clarke off the planet and on the path to Bardo. 

This makes me wonder why I should be concerned about the state of Sanctum? Clarke has long been the crux of most of the action and she’s abandoning the powder-keg that is Sanctum when we know a threat is there.

Division is still there, and it feels like, by redistributing the characters it’s become a moot point.

Afterall, the reactor didn’t blow up on The 100 Season 7 Episode 3, “False Gods.”  Russell didn’t die. There are no riots. So, what’s to be concerned about?

On right? Sheidheda is still there with Madi. Who is now unprotected, thanks to Gaia being carried, unconscious, through the anomaly. (Something tells me she’ll find Clarke’s friends before Clarke and Raven do.)

It’s usually not good practice for shows to attempt to service too many plot points at once, and as The 100 adds wormholes and interplanetary travel to the mix, it risks the story becoming cluttered as it puts extraneous distance between our characters.

Add in the time dilation factor and you’ll likely have one of them getting stranded and dying of old age before the series ends. 

Yes, that would be heartbreaking, but that is not the ending any of these characters deserve.

While the plots leave the episode feeling muddled, the strongest storyline is Gabriel, Echo, and Hope in Skyring. That arc is paced well for a story that condences five years, and enhanced by, Orlando.

While the characters have some strong moments together, the writing is littered with nuggets of information about Bardo that feel important–and will likely be important–but without any context.

While I normally applaud a show for folding its info in and revealing it slowly, this may the one time where it’s needed.

Which leads me to the realization that Hope is now an underused asset. She has spent fifteen years with two different prisoners, planning for this mission — one of whom she describes as “hardcore.”

Hope has to know more about Bardo than she’s mentioned, but what is being mentioned to the audience lacks empathy and emotion.

Orlando is the strongest character of the bunch, giving us a nuanced performance that grounds the time we spend on Penance. However, he ends up being a wasted asset who they don’t take with them despite him being an L-12 Disciple. 

Likewise, Echo’s decision to kill the rest of the Disciples is counterproductive.

Maybe it’s too late in the series to bring on another character who would have to travel through the story with our leads, but Orlando was more valuable to them as an ally. It would likely have made for a smoother and less supsicious transition across the bridge, and given viewers an extra element of danger. 

The reveal that Orlando died alone by his own hand is barely a beat, and feels inadequate for a character who has spent so much time with three main characters. 

When it comes down to it “Hesperides” is an info dump episode. It’s likely necessary to understand what is next, but it doesn’t hold the same emotional gravity as previous, character-driven episodes from this season. 

Stray Thoughts:

• Is the final battle radiation based? Please don’t make the final battle radiation based.
• Okay yea, the invisibility thing is cool, but if they have that why do they need memory capture? Wouldn’t they be able to find a way to penetrate a sheild and gain intelligence? Obviously the primes didn’t know about them.
• The episode does do well with Raven’s trauma. Watching her try to make sense of the consequences of her decisions on “False Gods” is one of the high points of the episode. Watching her then take eight more lives and immediately look mortified is great too. 
• Niylah, nice to see you again! 
• Aside from the fact that they have Bellamy, Bardo does not seem like a nice place to live. Thought control? Memory capture? Being sent to a penance planet for not working on a Sunday? This feels like fundamentalist Christians are at work. 
• If Orlando was sent to Penance for working on a Sunday, what was Dev sent there for? 
• Watching Echo get her ass kicked was another highlight of the Penance storyline. 

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

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

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