From tonight’s episode of The 100, “Wanheda: Part One.” (credit: Cate Cameron/The CW)
You can be forgiven for not being caught up with The CW’s dystopian-future series The 100. Based on a decent but neglected young adult book series, the series took some time to find its footing. But then, last season, the story of 100 teenagers dumped from an orbital space station onto a toxic, abandoned Earth morphed into something altogether more interesting and complex. Violent and fascinating, it’s full of cultural clashes and compelling alliances, and a relentless, uncompromising worldview. This show may not have been on your radar before, but with the third season starting tonight, it deserves to become a priority.
Breathless propulsion
In the series, a small fraction of humanity has survived after a nuclear apocalypse, and the titular Hundred are one hundred (very attractive) criminal teens sent from the Ark space station to investigate whether Earth is now hospitable to human life. Led by Clarke, the show’s protagonist, and a variety of other teenage misfits, the Hundred quickly discover that the Ark residents are not the only people who survived the bombs.
Eliza Taylor as Clarke Griffin in The 100. (credit: The CW)
Far from empty, Earth is populated by numerous tribes and factions with complicated inter-relationships and a unifying wariness of each other. Some of the show’s most surprising and compelling twists arise due to clashes between communities with distinct cultures and vastly different levels of technology. Sky People (former Ark residents) have education and tech know-how but are perpetually at a loss for resources; Grounders live in a bow-and-arrow paradigm; the residents of Mount Weather, who feature throughout season two, are both highly sophisticated and dangerously weak.
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