by the Collected Mutineer

The long-awaited season 5 premiere of The 100 finally hit our TV screens last Tuesday, providing fans with a small handful of answers. The 6 year time jump and the incredible cliffhanger at the end of season 4 had many of us worried. How did Clarke survive? How did the bunker survive? How did SpaceKru survive? And who the hell is on the mysterious ship? We don’t get all our concerns addressed in the first episode, but we’ve been given a glimpse of what happened on Earth after Praimfaya.

Spoilers ahead!

Earth

The episode begins a few months after Earth was ravaged by the deadly Praimfaya. Clarke’s Nightblood worked, and she’s alive and well—save for a few healing scabs on her face from her initial exposure to radiation. Her first move after leaving Becca’s lab is to try to get into the bunker, where her mother is safe with Wonkru (aka the alliance of clans living together after Octavia’s victory). But to her dismay and ours, the bunker is buried under layers of dangerous, crumbling rubble. Try as she might, Clarke can’t move the enormous slabs and rocks by herself, and she eventually gives up. Low on food and water, she makes do with the supplies she can salvage from the ruins of Arkadia. With nothing to her name but the rover and a few mementos of Jasper’s, she roams the desolate landscape searching for salvation.

When Clarke thirsts, we thirst. When Clarke cries out to God for help, we cry too. And when Clarke finds an untouched valley full of greenery and life, we rejoice. In the Shallow Valley, Clarke discovers a grounder village. While the death wave didn’t destroy the valley, the radiation was too much for the people who lived there. The commander of death finds their bodies littered around the village and has no recourse but to bury them. She eventually makes herself at home, only to realize that she is not alone. The sole survivor of the village is a fierce Nightblood child. Needless to say, their first few meetings are off to a rocky start (i.e. Clarke gets her leg almost chopped off by a bear trap).

Six years later, the girl Madi is basically Clarke’s daughter (cue my feels) and is looking forward to the return of SpaceKru. But if you’ll recall the end of the last episode, things don’t go according to plan. Instead of SpaceKru, our survivors encounter a ship full of prisoners from the time before the first Praimfaya. It is the arrival of the Eligius ship that abruptly sets the tone for the entire season—these people aren’t just some peeps who got locked up for weed charges. The majority are ruthless, violent offenders who spent a lifetime in cryo and are pretty pissed off to find their planet in ruins. As Clarke reminds Madi (and the audience) before she shoots one of them in the head: “There are no good guys.”

Space

And what about SpaceKru? Well, they’ve been trying to come back down to Earth, having spotted the bit of green that they call Eden. But despite Raven and Monty’s combined brains, they haven’t been able to gear up a dropship capable of re-entry. We don’t learn much else about what happened on the ring, other than…well, it’s been six years, okay, and things are different.

Bellamy and Echo are a thing, while Emori and Murphy are not. Raven’s leg appears to be much better with the help of a new and improved brace. Monty and Harper are still working through their emotional issues surrounding the death of Jasper, but appear to be a strong couple. None of them received Clarke’s countless transmissions, thanks to atmospheric issues, and believe that she died to save them. At the end of the day, all seven are more than ready to get back to Earth and start fresh when they realize that there’s another ship out there—one with dropships more stable than their own.

A Look Forward

You may be wondering why not much has been said about the bunker or its inhabitants. That’s because we were only granted one glimpse of what has happened underground over the last six years, and it isn’t too dissimilar from the feeling I got regarding the Eligius prisoners—sheer and utter ruthlessness. We don’t know yet what struggles the bunker faced, but we can certainly guess. This week’s episode will hopefully provide the answers we crave about Octavia, Kane, Abby, Jaha, Indra, and the rest.

May we meet again.

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P.S. Let me know your thoughts on Twitter @ImpalaMutineers.