The 100 Season 7 Episode 5: Is [SPOILER] Really Dead?

Warning: This article contains MAJOR spoilers for The 100 Season 7, Episode 5. Read at your own risk.

Hooboy. The 100 got all wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey this week with a trip to Bardo, explaining in non-linear style what happened on Octavia’s first and second trips to the planet—friends, not a great place to vacation. On her first trip, O is treated to some good old-fashioned mind-probing by a pretty OK guy named Leavitt, per the orders of a pretty bad guy named Anders. Hope eventually shows up to help Octavia escape, and she returns to Sanctum circa Season 6, Episode 8. (I mentioned this was non-linear, right?)

Octavia’s second visit to Bardo turns out to be even worse, given that it involves O having to watch her big brother die—or so it seems. Basically, after Hope sends Octavia back through the Anomaly in the Season 6 finale, she ends up back on Bardo, in Anders’ clutches. Soon, Bellamy is there, too. In classic Blake style, he has managed to take one of his kidnappers hostage. But, as soon as Octavia sees her brother in trouble, she makes a deal with Anders: send Bellamy through the Anomaly and Octavia will tell him everything he wants to know—even about Clarke.

Anders activates the Anomaly, but before Bellamy (who is dragging his feet as he doesn’t want to be left behind) can go through, one of the downed guards activates a grenade and blows the room to hell. When the figurative dust settles, Octavia has blood on her face and Bellamy is nowhere to be seen. Octavia cries for her big brother, convinced that he is dead.

But is he dead? The fact that we spent the entire episode watching the Disciples mess with Octavia’s memory throws the legitimacy of Bellamy’s death into question. Is there a chance what Octavia remembers isn’t actually what happened? Alternatively, perhaps Bellamy either jumped into or was blown through the Anomaly, which was open, and was transported somewhere else? Either way: no TV body, no TV death. Those are the rules.

As reviewer Delia Harrington puts it:

Do I believe Bellamy’s dead? Not even for a second. I had to rewatch to be sure that’s even what the show wanted me to think. Our boy’s for sure on some kind of time adventure with a manly (but ultimately survivable) wound.

More than any mind magic or fleet-footed portal jumping, the biggest reason why it seems unlikely that Bellamy isn’t really dead? It doesn’t seem likely that The 100, a show of epic deaths, would kill off one of its OG characters in such a relatively lackluster way, only midway through the final season. Especially without giving him any kind of resolution with Octavia and/or Clarke. We already know that actor Bob Morley asked for some time off for the final season, but there’s a difference between taking some time off and straight-up leaving the show. If Morley didn’t plan on being around for some chunk of the season, then the series could have just killed him in The 100 Season 7 premiere . This feels different. This feels like a timey-wimey, memory-messing misdirect.

For official confirmation either way, we’re going to have to keep watching The 100 Season 7 to find out. Not a hardship.