The 100 Season 4 Episode 7 Review: Gimme Shelter

This 100 review contains spoilers.

The 100 Season 4 Episode 7

This is a quiet episode of The 100, one that was meant to be connective tissue. But it gets the mood just right, particularly in the final act, which really elevates the episode far beyond what could have easily just been filler. The lift from the soundtrack doesn’t hurt, either.

Bellamy pushes Kane away.

The end is nigh, and it’s starting to get to people. Having Harper push that guy off, and losing our first official casualty to the nuclear apocalypse was a much-needed push toward tension. Fighting a non-corporeal foe is always tough, so having the black rain as the early warning is a good way to bring in the tension. And, as Kane reminded us, it ruins the water supply. Harper was a good pick since we’ve never really seen her make a tough decision on her own, outside of the group. I’m looking forward to getting more color on character.

The heart of the Ark storyline, though, is Bellamy and Kane. Bellamy is still hurting from his past actions, particularly since Octavia did not mince words last week when she told him he would be dead if he weren’t her brother. In the early days of the show, everything Bellamy did was driven by protecting Octavia, and I’m glad to see the writers are forcing him to grapple long-term with hurting her this deeply.

I was surprised to see Bellamy pushing Kane away, especially since their father-son dynamic has really been cultivated this season, but when Kane said, “your mother would’ve been proud of the man you’ve become,” Bellamy had a great point, and Bob Morley had a great line read: “you floated my mother.” It can be easy for us as the audience to forget that only a few season ago, Kane was the antagonist up in space on the Ark, floating people left, right, and center. But Bellamy wouldn’t forget, especially while he’s feeling distant from his only remaining family member. Keep in mind, Bellamy and Octavia are the only people in Arkadia to even know what it’s like to have a sibling, since that was illegal due to scarcity.

There’s no way that Bellamy has actually given up on O, but I am wondering what it will mean that he repeated back Kane’s adage that you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. I hope for his own sake, Bellamy will finally someday learn that Octavia doesn’t need him to save her. Speaking of…

Octavia turns the corner.

I’m going to be honest, when Octavia slept with Elias I thought she was going to trade one vice (murder) for another (sex), but after she left her assassin blades behind in that cave and opted to go with Elias back to the family farm, I think she is truly starting to heal from losing Lincoln. Of course, it won’t be smooth and she will always be a warrior, but I doubt we’ll see her carrying heads around anymore.

The Elias-Octavia pairing makes sense in that they both have no one else, and it doesn’t hurt that he calls O on her shit. As much as Kane had a huge role in keeping her from killing Elias the previous episode, being away from her brother and all things Arkadia is probably best for Octavia for a little while. I’m looking forward to seeing these two explore the far reaches of Grounder territory, especially as we speed toward the end of times.

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Emori plays us all.

Raven is still down for the count, and Abby is likely not far behind. I love that it all comes down to bone marrow – very Mount Weather. I hope there’s enough without harming Luna.Did anyone see this coming, readers? I did not, and I usually pride myself on not being played. The admiration in Murphy’s eyes kinda freaked me out a bit, although not nearly as much as seeing him cook and cuddle.

I was really enjoying getting a look into Emori’s past, so now that it turns out not to have been real, I want to know something real about her even more. I totally buy that her story to Clarke about being essentially thrown out for garbage was real, though. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a brother, and we know she used to run with a crew, from when Murphy and Jaha first met her.

How did everyone feel about this moral conundrum? Before the twist, I wasn’t all the broken up about it. I have to say, I liked where Clarke’s head was at on this one. With the information she had at the time, she made a bad situation better. The most interesting thing about this quandary is that it’s the most dirty Abby’s hands have gotten in a while, probably the since essentially killing her husband to keep the fate of the Ark a secret.

The other question, of course, is whether Emori really had to do it. Do you think they would have turned on her, or someone else? I’m almost disappointed that now we’ll never know. On the plus side, I have a feeling this side of Emori will have a narrative pay off before the season is through.

Other great moments…

I missed Luna, Jasper and Monty this week, even though there were very good plot and tone reasons for benching them.

“You can cook? You can read?”

I don’t know how Octavia always finds her horse but I’m into it.

“Go home, Elian. You feel the way you’re supposed to feel after you take a life. I feel nothing.” 

Murphy was so ready to torture that guy.

“Just make me feel something else.”

Maybe it’s just his typical inscrutable expression, but it looks like even Roan thought sticking a guy in the radiation chamber was brutal.