Reviews

The 100 season 2 episode 4 review: Many Happy Returns

The scattered group is en route to a reunion thanks to this week's episode of The 100. Here's Caroline's review...

By Caroline Preece | November 16, 2014 | | 0

This review contains spoilers.

2.4 Many Happy Returns

Sometimes, having the characters on an ensemble show like The 100 split up and spread across multiple locations can be a great thing, like the early episodes of The 100‘s second season, but really only if it’s temporary. Sooner or later it’s good to get everyone back together and on the same page, and Many Happy Returns started that process off.

Clarke is back at Camp Jaha, for one, though Anya wasn’t so lucky. The decision to have Anya be the next casualty of this pleasingly kill-happy show is surprising given how much past episodes have asked the audience to invest in the relationship between her and Clarke, and I wonder what lasting effects their truce will have on both Clarke’s character and the relationship between our people and the grounders.

This was a great final hour for Anya, though – biting the tracker out of her arm, having the forethought to camouflage their smell with mud – and the fight between them was fantastically brutal. We’re told so often that Clarke is a badass, but this was one sequence in which we actually got to see that demonstrated on screen.

And Finn continues his descend into ruthlessness when the group encounter a survivor from the Arc crash, voting to leave them in favour of finding Clarke faster. As Bellamy pointed out, they don’t even know if Clarke and the others are alive anymore, and it makes a lot more sense to protect those that they’re currently with. Finn is coming across a little unhinged this season, and I really do wonder how he’s going to react when he’s eventually reunited with Clarke.

But the episode made use of those red shirts that have been hanging around with Bellamy, Finn and Murphy this season, with one falling to his death while trying to save the survivor and the other now wounded from a grounder arrow. The show really needs to be delicate when dealing with these new faces, as the last thing we need is a repeat of Lost‘s infamous Nikki and Paolo debacle.

The grounder attack was deferred by a returning Octavia, who helped the boys out by sounding the horn signifying acid mist (so that’s still a thing). I like that she’s back with Bellamy, but their heartfelt reunion was a little silly after they’d not mentioned each other all season.

Back at camp Jaha, Raven had a relatively good day. She’s back with her friend, Wick, whom we met in season one, and they work together to create a beacon. Yeah, the beacon has as much chance of attracting grounders to the camp as it does alerting their own people, but she can still count it as a win. The friendship between the two of them was a nice respite from the misery and distrust elsewhere, and she even got a nifty leg brace out of it.

Having a worse day was Jaha, whose storyline was the highlight of the episode. It’s just nice to spend time in a new location which, according to the family who take him in from the crash site, is “the Dead Zone on the way to the City of Light.” The experiences of the family choosing their son over their people point out to Jaha that he might have had his priorities skewed when Wells was still alive, and it’s good to see that thread go beyond last week’s hallucinations.

But bonding with the child and seeing parallels with his mother weren’t enough to give him a safe place to stay, as the family ended up trading him for a way back home. This part of the show could really go anywhere from here, especially since we have no idea where Jaha is, but it’s one of the things I’m most excited about.