April7739

Nice post, Jess. I know I already responded to you in the Bellarke thread, but I’m glad you posted all your thoughts here, too.

April7739

DP, ignore

kenni727

I also don't think Bellamy is hatching a master plan. At best he's playing nice for now while he thinks of something. But doesn't seem to be able to think right now. Which I agree is OOC. While Bellamy cares a great deal for Clarke I really don't feel that she's the "straw to break the camel's back" so to speak. Josephine releasing him for him to then attack her father was so...bizarre. Her goading him that violence is all they know seemed ridiculous to me. I mean I can understand Bellamy choosing not to kill Russell. He has so much blood on his hands already, and he wants to do better. He realizes revenge solves nothing. Cause to me Josephine's words ring false. I don't know. That whole scene just left me confused.

And I don't see Becho as an "obstacle" to Bellarke either. Not only does it not fit with the writing style of the show, but I also don't think Bellamy is in love with Clarke. There's never been anything to suggest that Echo has any reason to be jealous of Clarke. And since they've now been together for a full season plus I don't see the writer's having planned on killing Clarke down the road just to undermine Becho.

BrooklynFan

That's pretty cool! I love the idea of Diyoza and Octavia (two characters who have gone to EXTREMES) working together to find a golden mean.

April7739

I don’t think Bellamy has a plan yet, either, which is fine, because I know I sure as hell wouldn’t have a plan if I were in his shoes. But to me, there was nothing more in character than Bellamy attacking Russell as soon as he was released. That’s the most emotional, impulsive Bellamy right there, one that he backed off on because because it wouldn’t have done any good, and he is still a smart guy, and he knows this. I also find it interesting that he didn’t go after Josephine herself. She’s awful, but she’s still wearing Clarke’s face. He couldn’t attack her.

All I’ll say in regards to shipping is that, not that I needed any more proof, but this episode once again proved to me that Bellamy loves Clarke so deeply. I will save the rest of that discussion for the Bellarke thread, where I feel more comfortable discussing it.

BlueDog9

He must, or at least someone does, come up with a plan eventually because there's a clip of Bellamy from the season trailer taking a gun from a locker.

April7739

I remember that. Ooh, BUNS.

destroyer of worlds

I like it too. Maybe, it signals their path to redemption (though moreso Octavia than Diyoza).

Random thought when I saw a GIFset of Bellamy choking Russell: Josephine really is one stone cold MOFO. She was ready to kill Bellamy in a heartbeat because he wasn't going with the plan ... so I don't get why she would cut him loose, and be willing to sacrifice her father to placate someone she was ready to murder, like 5 seconds ago. Especially given that Russell was SO desperately trying to bring her back. Did she do it just for kicks then?

April7739

I think she just wanted her dad out of the way since he’s challenging what she’s doing. Her father is a bigger threat to her than Bellamy is because he has more resources to fight back against her. And also, she’s smart enough to know that Bellamy can’t hurt her since she’s got Clarke’s face. AND if Bellamy had killed Sanctum’s leader, he probably would have been a dead man walking after that, so she would have likely hit two birds with one stone there.

Damocles

There is no decision yet, though. That's exactly why he looks so distraught and agonized. He's totally out to lunch right now.

I agree that he imploded, but I totally disagree that it's OOC. Besides, how long can you expect the same reactions to similar events from a person, as years pass? Maybe this was the situation that takes the cake. A terrible salad of badness that Bellamy simply cannot stomach

So is the anamoly calling Diyoza, too?? How did she know to draw those?

Fun fact, when I was in school for interior design stuff, we learned about this - the Fibonacci spiral. It's used in design to make sure images, rooms, etc. are balanced. It's the sum of two numbers before it.

This is a really good breakdown of it, I suggest you check it out:
https://www.canva.com/learn/what-is-the-golden-ratio/

An example of why they appear in nature? If plants want to maximize the exposure of their leaves to the Sun, for example, they ideally need to grow them at non-repeating angles. Having an irrational value guarantees this, so the spirals we see in nature are a consequence of this behavior. All these distributions follow logarithmic spirals, the general mathematical form of a golden spiral.x

BrooklynFan

I think she never intended to kill Bellamy, because she needs him to carry out her master plan of manipulating Abby into making nightbloods. She knows the Earth people won’t help her if she kills off Bellamy. So she offers him her father instead as a way to placate his need for vengeance. And if he does go through with killing her father, well that’s not really death, as she sees it. He’s just on ice and out of her way for a while until Abby makes her first crop of new hosts. Stone cold MF, indeed.

April7739

Yes, Lisa. All I have to say is yes. And I love that you used the phrase “out to lunch” in your post.

Hmm, Brooklyn, I suppose it’s possible that she never intended to kill Bellamy, maybe just to threaten him. But I actually do think she was going to, until she saw a better option. Your post made me wonder . . . if she had killed Bellamy, do you think Murphy still would have kept his alliance with her? He’s the only one out of Spacekru I could see possibly still doing that, but I would like to believe that, even though he wasn’t emotional about losing Clarke, losing Bellamy would be crossing the line for him.

Fuzzy Dunlop

Yeah, that moment when Josephine went to cut his restraints, I was just like "whaaaaat." They're trying to play it like she's being clever, but it's just dumb. First of all, she should have killed him last week. She didn't need him to execute any of her plans and keeping him around was a risk. He attacked her when he found out Clarke was gone, so what makes her think he's not going to go after her again?

I really feel like the writers started with the end point they wanted and then tried to work backwards from there. Like they wanted to get into a situation where Bellamy and them agree to go along with the Primes. But there isn't actually a good way to justify that. So we get this convoluted nonsense with Murphy and Josephine manipulating him and then his inexplicable capitulation. This is like the definition of plot-driven rather than character-driven, imo.

Speaking of convoluted, you're right about Becho. I'm pretty sure the writers did not consciously plan to put Bellamy and Echo together in a fairly healthy, supportive relationship for two seasons, and then kill Clarke so that Bellamy will realize he's not in love with the person he's been happy with and committed to for several years now. I think the writers probably just chose to make Becho a couple and that's it.

The issue is that nothing in this scenario is new or significantly worse than what he's been through before. Clarke has died before. Octavia has died before. He's made many morally dubious decisions before. And in this situation, they're not even in a life-or-death, end-of-the-world nightmare scenario. So I would say this situation is considerably less bad than almost everything that's happened to him in previous 5 season. It's a mediocre salad of things he's already eaten at least once before. And last week when he found out Clarke wasn't Clarke, he went straight for her throat and was only stopped by a tranquilizer. That all made sense. But all of a sudden he's lost all of his fight and fire and is just like being a big baby and going along with a deal that he never would have taken even like... ten minutes ago. Because Murphy said Monty would have wanted him to? That isn't even true. They didn't lay the proper groundwork for Bellamy's sudden implosion to feel earned.

Basically I feel disappointed because people were building this episode up as the triumphant return of the old "heart" Bellamy and it just wasn't. It was a brand new weaker version of Bellamy. Big let down. I think it was a totally mess of an episode.

kenni727

Only reason I can think for Josephine to keep Bellamy alive was to use him in manipulating the others. But her actions don't even make sense if that were her plan.


Exactly. I won't be convinced that Clarke's death means any more to Bellamy than so much of the other trauma he's endured. And even IF it's because Clarke meant more to him - which I don't think she did - it makes no sense that suddenly losing her will undermine his nature and he just gives up. Does not compute.

Fuzzy Dunlop

You mean like when she first captured him, she was thinking she would use him to manipulate everyone else? But then she immediately goes out and recruits Murphy to do that for her and is able to convince Abby to make more nightbloods in a single conversation? Yeah, it doesn't make sense. I'm sure she probably realized the second Bellamy attacked her that he wasn't a good candidate to help her trick everyone. So the way it panned out was just weird.

Yeah, he's lost her before. And I would think that, if anything, this time around he would still hold some kind of hope that she could be saved. Her body is still there. The first time she "died," she had been destroyed in a fiery apocalypse. I wouldn't have expected him (or anyone, really) to so readily accept that Clarke is irrevocably dead forever. Not when they're all looking right at her.

This situation just doesn't seem very dire compared to what they've all experienced before. I feel like Abby illustrated this pretty well when Josephine told her she could save everyone and she just looked really confused and was like, "do we need to be saved???" All things considered, they're safer and more comfortable than they've been in years.