Clarke has found the big storage room full of people in
cages, including Anya – she uses a bar to pry open the lock (because Anya is so
trustworthy). After a tense moment of near discovery, she helps Anya out
(leaving the rest behind. Sorry guys, only people who have repeatedly
threatened Clarke’s life get rescued) through a door that has a big warning
sign about protective clothing on the front. There’s then a trap door, a chute –
and Anya and Clarke end up in a mine cart full of bodies.
There’s a convenient stash of clothes by the skip. Anya
doesn’t want to come and also reminds Clarke they are actually enemies – but then
Reapers can be heard moving in – and cannibals trump all other concerns. Clarke
and Anya pretend to be bodies in the mine cart to hide from them… wait,
pretending to be dead people to hide from the cannibals? Is that a great idea?
Rather not shockingly, the Reapers take the mine cart
full of snack food.
She and Anya manage to escape while the Reapers have a
nice cook out – though Anya needs to be dragged away from fondling the bodies.
They run and as they do Clarke explains that the Mountain Men are using
Grounder blood for super-duper wolverine healing. Then Anya runs off going her
own way because, as she keeps having to remind Clarke, they’re not actually
friends.
Clarke gets cornered by Reapers – but is rescued by
Mountain Men with a strange noise device that attacks the Reapers but not her. They
take her with them. But she manages to escape when Anya arrives and takes off
their masks – exposing their vulnerability to the irradiated planet. Others
chase them but decide they need to take them alive for… reasons? They escape by
jumping off a giant waterfall.
Once their free, Anya again reminds Clarke they’re not
actually friends and takes her prisoner – since she lose 300 warriors trying to
attack Clarke & co she now needs to have SOMETHING when she returns to
camp.
Elsewhere in the Mountain Base, Jasper and Maya continue
to establish their romance (in case anyone in the audience cares). Monty tries
to bring up his worries about Clarke disappearing but Jasper is more focused on
Maya but the longer Clarke is missing the more worried he gets. He also insists
they can trust Maya so they definitely can’t (that’s how this works)
They ask Maya about Clarke and she says Clarke had a breakdown and pulled out her own stitches (true on the latter point, it was her escape plan). And now she has been locked in the psych ward without being able to see anyone.
Outside, Marcus has discovered
the little team has disappeared from last episode, including the prisoners,
but still won’t authorise a search team because there are scary people out there.
He’s far more concerned with finding the people who defied his authority –
enter Abbie. She doesn’t even try to lie and is less than impressed with him
waving his Chancellor title when no-one voted for him (though the line “you got
the job because Thelonious beat you to redemption” is kind of awesome since it
remembers all the evil shit he pulled in season 1. About time someone
remembered).
He orders Major Bryne to watch Abbie and confine her to
quarters but the major isn’t happy because the crimes Abbie committed (giving
guns to prisoners) should face a much harsher, draconian punishment. He points
out he’d rather move away from the draconian, extreme government necessary on
the Arc while she’s more concerned with losing control of the camp. They’re interrupted
by the guards bringing in a Grounder prisoner which causes a mob, in which one
man is shot. Abbie takes over getting the shot man to medical and Byrne gives
Marcus angry eyes about the doctor taking over in a medical situation.
Worried about his control and with Byrne pushing, Marcus has Abbie electro-tased (which is kind of like a high tech flogging). The crowd doesn’t look best pleased by this.
They question the prisoner and Byrne is all gun happy,
even for Marcus. Marcus has a big angsty moment about the kind of society they’re
creating. His attempt to make up for this is to go to Abbie and tell her he
intends to lead a mission to bring the kids back – a diplomatic mission to the
Grounders, using the prisoner as a guide. And he wants Abbie to stay behind as
leader while he does. After he’s just undermined her in front of everyone?
Leadership skills!
Over to those escaped prisoners, with Finn untying Murphy which is such a bad idea even Bellamy disagrees. With Murphy guiding them they make their way to the Grounder’s camp/village. Of course, they don’t find Clarke (and whoever else they’re looking for) but they do find Grounders who have looted some of their stuff – including one guy with Clarke’s watch.
They capture him and take him to a hidden location to
question. When he claims ignorance, Finn decides to beat the answer out of him
while Bellamy has suddenly become squeamish about torture. Under threat of
death the Grounder gives them a location where he says their friends are.
Of course when they set out they have an inconvenient
Grounder prisoner – Bellamy wants to leave him, Murphy wants to kill him. While
they argue, Finn kills the Grounder.
And over to Octavia – after giving Lincoln’s village
every reason to hate her, she decides to go see Indra and her army to ask to
join in their Reaper attacking so she can free Lincoln. Indra is, unshockingly,
not exactly thrilled to see Octavia and tells her people to kill her. They
chase her, I cheer them on.
Alas, she manages to escape and goes back to following
Indra’s group. They accept her into the group when Indra has a battle plan that
involves using someone as bait – hey there Octavia!
Ambush happens, Octavia doesn’t die and she manages to save Indra’s life (of course she does, with all that extensive melee combat training she hasn’t had). They free the captives, but Lincoln isn’t among them. They do all decide to spare Octavia, alas.
Back quickly to the Mountain People, a woman goes through
a line of captured Reapers, saying they’re to be “harvested” except one who is
marked for the “Cereberus Program”. It’s Lincoln.
The cast is now split into a ridiculous number of separate
groups – this is utterly unsupportable and really needs condensing very very
quickly.
Also, is it just me or are the escaped prisoners almost comically beat up and filthy? C’mon guys find a stream, sluice off or something.
There’s some interesting conflict among the Arc camp –
their government system was extreme, dictatorial, brutal, secretive and generally
revolting. The argument has been made that that’s necessary to maintain control
in a situation when resources, space and just about everything else are in such
extreme short supply… arguments that don’t apply now. So the question remains
what society do they want to build? There’s also the interesting fact that,
unlike on the Arc, there’s nothing actually keeping people in the camp – if it
is too draconian, people can leave. On top of all that, Abbie raised a very
real point that Marcus has very little legitimacy to rule AND is guilty of a
lot of crimes under the old regime as well, giving him very shaky ground on which
to play dictator. Which is added complexity when Byrne is saying “you’re going
to lose control” and the question is just how much right does Marcus have to
it? There’s a lot of potential conflict there.
I think we’re all kind of supposed to forget the
characters from the last season? Because so many of them seem to have had
rather a huge character shift and/or we’re expected to forget what they did.
I also think I'm kind of supposed to be super-duper shocked about Finn's moral degradation - but it's only Bellamy's rapid change that prevents his level of ruthlessness being rather standard
.
