The 100 Season 4: 9 Important Things To Know

We sat down with the cast and creator of The 100at San Diego Comic Con to find out what’s in store for season 4 of The CW’s very dark tale of post-apocalyptic survival (and, sometimes, not survival). Here are the teases we’re most excited about from chatting with The 100crew…

Season 4 picks up right where season 3 left off.

According to Christopher Larkin (Monty), season 4 picks up directly where season 3 left off, which means the gang is still split. Half of them are at Polis and half of them are at Arkadia. This makes the discussion of whether or not Clarke should tell people about the upcoming apocalypse even more complicated.

We will meet a new character in the premiere’s cold open.

The 100executive producer Jason Rothenberg teased that there will be “a couple new characters that I think people will love” this season, one of whom we will meet in the season premiere’s first minutes.

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Rothenberg added:

The premiere starts with the most insane sequence ever, which I won’t talk about, but we meet one of our new characters in the premiere teaser. And I think fans can expect another very different story. 

Season 4 is an environmental disaster story.

Never a show to give up on addressing Millennial anxieties, The 100is set to do what seems like a climate change parallel in season 4. According to Rothenberg:

Every season’s story is very different in terms of plot. Season 1 was an origin story. Season 2 was Mount Weather. Season 3 was A.I. Season 4 is this environmental disaster story, which it quickly becomes clear they’re not going to survive. They can’t stop it. They can only hope to figure out ways to survive.

And if you think Skaikru might find a way to stop the nuclear fallout apocalypse, obviously, you haven’t been paying attention to this show. It sounds like The 100may actually end the world this season. According to Rothenberg:

Ultimately, the thing we do, I think, which may be different than other shows, is there are no eleventh hour saves. We say something horrible is going to happen, and then it usually happens. And so that’s not going to be different this year. It’s just a different nightmare. Different enemy.

Larkin also weighed in on the Sky People’s most recent threat with some insightful teases, saying:

We had a faceless enemy before in ALIE. Defeated her. But now there’s an even greater faceless enemy. Nuclear war: Part 2. Radiation leaking and destroying the planet again. So it’s a bit terrifying because last time we went to space and that failed because you run out of your essentials: your oxegyn and all your supplies. So, how do we survive now that we’re forced to stay on the ground, and I don’t know the answer to that.

Fingers crossed that season 5 is Snowpiercer.

Clarke is faced with the same decision as her father.

Rothenberg spoke a lot about the parallels between Clarke’s decision regarding who and when she should tell the truth about nuclear fallout in season 4 with her father’s decision to try to tell the rest of Ark the truth about the space station’s failure. Of course, this decision cost him his life and, eventually, when Clarke tried to finish what her father started, it cost Clarke her freedom.

Now, in season 4, Clarke is a leader who is faced with a similar choice, and it sounds as if she might not make the same decision as her father. (Like mother, like daughter, perhaps?) Rothenberg teased:

There are various points of view in terms of should we tell everybody? … Now [Clarke] knows that the world is gonna end, and she’s the only one that knows. She tells Bellamy right away, but she’s the only one that knows, and what is she going to do? Is she gonna do exactly what she was going to do in the pilot or is she gonna try to keep it a secret because she’s worried about how people will respond? We play a lot with that, and there are others who want everyone to know. 

It sounds like the management of this secret could be the big, dividing force in the first half of season 4. We got to ask Eliza Taylor what she thinks about her character’s complicated choice. She told us:

I think this is a really cool callback to people in power — Bellamy and Clarke, a few others, Kane, Abby — all trying to decide whether or not to tell the people. And I think it will be really interesting for Clarke because this is what got her father killed: trying to expose something. So maybe now she’s gonna be on the other side. Who knows? I think it will make for a really interesting character arc.

And I love that we’re taking her in a different direction this season. I love that it will call back to season 1, or even before season 1, the politics and how people deal with that.

Raven wants to tell everyone about the end of the world.

Of course not everyone is struggling with this decision. It sounds like Raven will find out sooner rather than later (so Clarke must tell some people past Bellamy — or Bellamy tells them), and that she will know exactly what she wants to do. Rothenberg teased:

Raven wants everyone to know because she believes in sort of crowdsourcing the answer. If we tell more people, maybe they know another bunker that’s out there somewhere in the world that we can survive in.

The Grounders still hate the Sky People.

Things were pretty rocky between the Grounders and the Sky People last time we checked. Sure, they may have had a common enemy in A.L.I.E., but Pike did massacre a bunch of their people and A.L.I.E.’s return to civilization is kind of Jaha’s fault. When The 100returns, it sounds like the Grounders will still be pissed at the Sky People. Rothenberg said:

It becomes an all-hands-on-deck situation … And so [the Grounders] play a big role for sure. And the political situation on the ground continues. Everybody hates Skaikru. They blame them for everything, rightly or wrongly.

This will complicate humanity’s quest to avoid, you know, extinction. If the Grounders and Sky People are fightingm then there is less time to attempt to avoid the impending apocalypse. Rothenberg teased:

It becomes a problem because they need time. Skaikru needs time to figure it out, like the science that they posess, is the way they’re gonna solve this problem and figure out ways to survive. And if you’re attacking the group that’s gonna try to figure it out, you won’t get a solution.

Raven may be done trying to save the world.

The knowledge that the world is ending (again) is obviously a pretty big existential crisis for our characters. The way Rothenberg put it is: “You’ve got this terminal diagnosis. You have six months to live. What are you going to do with that six months?”

Though Rothenberg didn’t go into detail about how all of the characters’ would respond to this information, he did tease some of the possible character-driven consequences, saying: “Some people are going to fight until their last breath to save everybody. That’s not a fun storyline — it’s intense and exciting and dramatic. Some people are gonna say, ‘F–k it. We fought too long and we’re gonna die anyway, and the ground’s not survivable after all, so I’m just gonna have a party for the next six months and live life to its fullest.'”

Rothenberg went on to tease that Raven might fall closer to the “f–k it” option, saying: “She’s given everything. She’s sacrificed everything, her body. She’s been through hell, and she does deserve some fun.”

Octavia becomes an assassin.

Meanwhile, Octavia seems to be heading on an Arya Stark-esque quest of her own. Marie Avgeropoulos teased:

Octavia’s going to do what she does best this season and that is fighting [and] killing people. She doesn’t take joy or pleasure out of it. She just knows she’s good at it. Her peers are mechanics or doctors, and Octavia spent two seasons trying to figure out what she is. She knows. She’s a warrior.

Of course, Octavia’s assassin ways are at least partially motivated by her continued grief surrounding Lincoln’s death at Pike’s hand near the end of last season. As Avgeropoulos put it:

She has a giant hole in her heart that she tried to bandaid with the killing of Pike and it didn’t. It didn’t fill that hole, so next season you’re gonna see Octavia become an assassin with a group you’re very familiar with…

OK, The 100fans, start speculating. Which group will Octavia start assassin-ing for? 

Eliza Taylor doesn’t think Bellarke will happen.

Sorry, Bellarke fans. When asked about the possibility of Clarke and Bellarke spending more time together this season, though Taylor seemed to embrace the possibility of the two teaming up again, she dashed hopes that the two might get together romantically, saying:

I love working with Bob, and there was a good period there in season 1 when it was the two of us, we were a team, and I’d love for us to be on a team again. Not romantically. Everyone keeps going on about this Bellarke ship. I don’t think that that’s going to be a thing, obviously, but I loved them as a team.

Of course, this is Taylor’s opinion, not necessarily what will happen on the show, but it certainly doesn’t sound good for Bellarke fans in the short term. 

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