Pictured Above: Season seven of The 100 concluded on September 30.
Courtesy of CW Promotional Photos
By Catherine Hicks
The seventh and final season of The 100 closed a long and at times confusing science fiction adventure that followed the future human race’s fight to survive extinction.
The show is based off Kass Morgan’s young adult series The 100, though the show and books are significantly different.
In a futuristic world where radiation and artificial intelligence has destroyed much of the human race, one surviving group has retreated to a space station, known as The Ark, that orbits an uninhabitable Earth.
The main group of characters, known as “The 100”, is a group of 100 juvenile delinquents that have been jailed for breaking the many, strict rules of The Ark. When their resources begin to dwindle, and the leaders on The Ark realize that they need a solution, they respond by sending the 100 delinquents to Earth – without knowing if it is inhabitable.
This is only the first of many morally questionable decisions made by main characters in the show, including murder, betrayal, mass genocide (more than once) and human experimentation.
These decisions were all results of the show-writer’s commitment to put the characters in unimaginable positions, that required them to put survival above any act.
In my opinion, by the seventh season, the show had elevated itself beyond the individual stories of its characters to one that raised deep existential questions about the nature of humanity.
This theme came full circle in the final season, as viewers watched the last two remaining factions of humanity battle for enlightenment – to be elevated beyond a human existence of pain and to one of light and contentment.
As the questionable decisions of the main characters and all of humanity are weighed, to decide if humanity deserves enlightenment, the thematic question of the show is raised: Is humanity capable of an existence without conflict and bloodshed?
