Regan

Right now, I'm imagining that there was another culling and that, based on what Indra said about Octavia being left to shoulder the burden alone, she was the one to decide who would die if they didn't get volunteers.

A death toll of almost 400 seems high, especially as the threat of the Pit should be a very strong deterrent against crime, though when we catch up to Octavia at the end of Wonkru's time in the bunker, there are enough criminals that they're being sent into the Pit in batches.

BlueDog9

I think at the point, they'd gotten to the point of anything is a crime that would send you into the pit (like you steal a blanket now, you go to fight)

Regan

But would you steal a blanket if you knew that being caught would land you in a fight to the death?

TaraJoyful

It's weird, because Octavia's reaction to Indra bringing up the Dark Year in 5x09 made it seem like it was particularly traumatic for her more than anyone else.

And Indra saying she shouldn't have let her shoulder it alone? I'm so curious to see what happened!

Regan

It's heartbreaking to see the leader Octavia set out to be at the beginning of Wonkru's time in the bunker, compared to who she became. She would have been a very different leader if they never found out about the building on top of the bunker collapsing, but if she hadn't known, would more have died when the crops began to fail than died in the Pit?

Tripp

I worry on how they have built up this DARK YEAR. (Even the name!) What we've seen Octavia do so far has began raising the expectation mark higher and higher. I am intrigued by her reaction to Indra and saying she did nothing. And I know this sounds weird seen what Octavia is capable of, but her talking to Indra like that hurt my heart pretty hard. Is she right?

Fuzzy Dunlop

I was thinking the same thing as Regan that there must be a good reason why Niylah and Miller are so loyal to her. And Jackson seems pretty loyal too. Those characters aren't dumb people. Niylah and Jackson in particular always seemed to be really level-headed and not at all bloodthirsty. I don't see them being easily brainwashed. Like we've been assuming they "drank the kool-aid," but what if they didn't? What if they really just believe in Octavia because of whatever she did during the Dark Year?

And yeah, I agree with everyone who is hoping that it wasn't cannibalism in some way. I didn't want it to be cannibalism just because I think it's boring when the entire fandom guesses a twist before it happens. But now I genuinely want it to be something else. The way Indra was talking to Octavia about it in this episode, about how she shouldered the burden alone, I don't understand how that would make sense with cannibalism anyway. It's got to be more complicated than what everyone was thinking. I'm ready to be surprised.

destroyer of worlds

True, and I wish it wasn't the case ... these are all great characters who can more than hold their own (outside of a romance storyline) and it's just a disservice to center their story around someone else. I feel like Emori got more of an individual arc at the beginning of the season but it's slowly reverted to being centered around Murphy again.

That's intriguing and would be a WAY more interesting scenario than how it's being presented at the moment.

Ugh, yes. It's completely frustrating, can these people just talk to one another? So many things would have not gone south (or at least failed that badly) if they just checked in with each other before taking actions.

I honestly miss being able to binge this show because it's a lot more cohesive that way, and eliminates the overreactions and paranoid thoughts which happen on a week-to-week basis. Also, the negative thoughts and comments on Twitter especially just take on a life of its own and bums out even those people who had originally enjoyed the episode.

That would certainly be very helpful, and also I wonder how many of the original delinquents are actually alive at this point. Someone on Twitter jokingly replaced the show's logo from 100 to 8 and that seems just about right to me. (but is absolutely depressing)

That's right, well the Eligius criminals don't seem like the most far sighted people, but surely Diyoza must have thought about that and maybe that's one of the reasons why she's more open to the idea of accepting the defectors ... compared to McCreary.

It is truly creepy, I wonder if the writers thought that through enough because that is weird/inappropriate in some ways.

April7739

Madi would have the sexual memories of every Commander in her head. Man or woman. It’s really disturbing to me, and is one of the reasons why I think the flame needs to be retired. Besides, I’m sure not every Commander was so great/so wise. (People may forget, but Lexa made plenty of questionable calls and wasn’t perfect, either.) Madi doesn't need their wisdom if she’s going to be a Commander. Let her develop her own wisdom. She can lead without a chip in her head. She could be a different type of Commander that way. (Although I still think the whole Commander thing is archaic anyway.)

Definitely. I think I’ve narrowed Twitter down to a pretty good group to follow, and I’ve muted some, so that helps. I mean, I realize my positivity must annoy people sometimes, too, but positivity and optimism is meant to lift up people and make people feel better. I realize that everyone reacts differently, and sometimes people need to vent, but seeing endless rants is such a downer to me. I feel like the fandom (including us here, to an extent) have barely even discussed what we did like about the episode. Honestly, painful as it was for me as a Bellarke shipper, I thought it was an amazingly riveting episode!

So on that note, things I loved:

I loved the small moment of Emori taking the lead with the collars, and Raven having to follow her. The student becomes the master.

I loved Murphy’s simplistic but perfect method of creating chaos.

I loved the parallels centered around Bellamy and Clarke and their relationships with others (and each other). I love how incredibly thought provoking their roles in the episode have been. I love how complex these two characters are.

I love McCreary’s unconventional Maury Povich moment.

I love the tear that slips out of Octavia’s eye when she and Indra are talking about the Dark Year. You know, I said earlier this season, that if Octavia does something to endanger her brother, I’m gonna have to . . . let her go. And now she did that, but here I am still giving it time for that reveal, because the writers did a good job of offering further hints about it in this episode.

About the Dark Year . . . I feel like cannibalism is inevitably part of it, but there has to be more. Maybe another culling, like suggested. Maybe Octavia killed people who weren’t criminals and who had done nothing wrong. I’m still a little concerned that, even though we’ve seen children, we haven’t seen any toddlers or infants. Maybe it involved killing pregnant women. I don’t know. But Tara is right, this episode definitely did make it seem like it was more traumatic for her than anyone else. We’ll see.

CanIcallYouKate

I'm not sure that is how it works. While they never explicitly explained to us the details of the flame, I wouldn't think it means automatic access to all memories of every commander in detail. Lexa explained to Clarke that "the spirits of the commanders visit her in her sleep" and we saw her meditating (= presumably communicating in some way with the previous commanders?). So it might be more of a interactive information retrieval maybe? Not a complete "download" of the archive of memories? I might be completely wrong of course but that's how I interpreted it



I totally missed/ underappreciated that. That is cool, indeed

destroyer of worlds

Agreed, I do get how it's intoxicating for someone like Madi to suddenly have all this information/knowledge/certain level of wisdom that comes with the Flame but she can carve herself out as a different type of Commander, and does not have to emulate those that came before her. Having said that, the Flame being brought up yet again means that they're just not done with this yet. Sigh. I maintain that the Flame should have been destroyed a long time ago, it just leaves room for manipulation and people using it to serve their purpose.

I loved that too, and I really need more scenes between Raven and Emori.

I do agree that from what we learned from the Octavia/Indra conversation this season, it seems like more than cannibalism since that implies a shared ... activity within Wonkru, whereas Indra seemed to allude to a heavy burden that Octavia took on her own.

Hmm, it could be.

BlueDog9

Hopefully if they do end up taking the Flame from Madi, they destroy it once and for all. Madi being a Commander without it is a nice idea I guess but I'm not sure how exactly that would work. The Flame makes the person the Commander.

I'm with the other Kate, I think it's just an important need to know information dump, not every single memory and piece of knowledge from the previous Commanders.

Maybe it's Cannibalism and something else that Octavia had to take on alone?

TaraJoyful

I actually could see them needing the Flame somehow if the "space exodus" theory everyone has been speculating about comes true. Especially since Eligius has ties to Becca.

Now what that means for Madi now? Probably nothing good.

BlueDog9

If that was true and McCready knew, she'd have two armies after her.

Fuzzy Dunlop

I don't see why we should assume that Madi automatically gets previous commanders' "sexual memories." Obviously the commanders don't know everything the others know because if they did, then Lexa would have known everything that Becca knew, so she would have remembered the world before the bombs and she clearly didn't.