The 100 Ending Will Change Our Perspective on the Series, Says Showrunner

Some of The 100 cast and showrunner Jason Rothenberg took place in a pre-recorded panel today for Comic Con at Home in which they chatted about the legacy of this show and what to expect from the latter half of the show’s final season.

“We definitely started this season wanting to make sure we didn’t leave anything on the field, meaning there were certain unanswered questions over the seasons that we wanted to answer,” said showrunner Rothenberg about the plan heading into the seventh season. “And since I know people are seeing this after I think maybe the first 10 episodes have aired, you already have seen the prequel so you know that that episode kind of fills in a lot of blanks. Why was the bunker empty when they opened it in Season 4 just being one sort of question that I always had and we needed to answer this year.”

Plans change sometimes, especially in television which has so many moving parts, which is apparently what happened prior to The 100 Season 7. When speaking about the strength of Tasya Teles’ performance as Echo this season, Rothenberg said: “There were some big changes that happened last minute this season as we started to make the season and a lot of responsibility fell on Tas[ya] to be able to really do more than we ever asked her to do before, and she crushed it. She was just so dialed in from Day One. I was really proud of you all season, Tas.”

Presumably, the “big changes” refer at least in part to actor Bob Morley’s (Bellamy) decision to take some time off this season, which Rothenberg spoke to TV Line about after the season premiere, saying: “Bob [Morley] asked to take some time off this season, and we honored that. We were able to write around it.” Since then, allegations of emotional and verbal abuse have been made against Morley by ex-girlfriend Arryn Zech. Morley, along with co-star and wife Eliza Taylor (Clarke), were two of the main cast members who did not take place in the panel. They, along with cast member Chuku Modu (Gabriel), sent in video messages.

Speaking more specifically about the ending of the season and the series, Rothenberg said: “The ending of a story is the moral of that story and we really wanted to say something with this season, which I think, when people do get to the end and they see how the story ends, they’ll perhaps come to look at the whole series differently. We were not just saying people are awful and would do anything to protect their loved ones and kill anybody who’s taking their stuff, which is unfortunately a big part of human nature. We’re kind of making more of a statement about that, without getting into too many details because I don’t want to ruin it.”

In addition to videos from the existing cast members who couldn’t make it, the panel also included recorded messages from previous cast members of the show, saying goodbye to the show and its fans. This included: Alycia Debnam-Carey (Lexa), Sara Thompson (Josephine), Alessandro Juliani (Sinclair), Christopher Larkin (Monty), Chelsey Reist (Harper), Eli Goree (Wells), Michael Beach (Pike), Zach McGowan (Roan), Nadia Hilker (Luna), Isaiah Washington (Jaha), and Paige Turco (Abby).

You can watch the panel in its entirety below…