WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Season 6, Episode 10, "Matryoshka," of The 100 which premiered this week on The CW.
With its post-apocalyptic setting, it's easy to forget The 100 can deliver happy endings for its main characters, if only briefly. The popular CW series often explores how far those characters will go to survive when faced with increasingly desperate situations. Season 6 teased the possibility of a fresh start on Sanctum, only to reveal the distant planet contains its own horrors. Fortunately, the latest episode has finally given its protagonists a silver lining, of sorts, in two major reunions.
Perhaps the greatest danger facing the last survivors of Earth is the deadly secret of the Primes, the ruling class revered on the alien world as living gods. Over the course of the season, viewers learned the Primes transfer their consciousness into new bodies, at the expense of the host's psyche. The primary protagonist, Clarke Griffin, was targeted first, by the Prime named Josephine, because she possesses Nightblood, a darkened blood resistant to radiation.
Fortunately, a memory chip implanted when she was on Earth allowed Clarke to maintain her consciousness as she battled Josephine's mental projection to regain control of her body. The strain of two consciousnesses sharing the same body had begun to take a serious toll as the lines between Clarke and Josephine increasingly blurred. With the clock ticking, the dueling personalities agreed to work together in the interim as Bellamy led them to a former Prime named Gabriel for a way to save his best friend. The encounter also brought Bellamy face to face with someone he abandoned near the beginning of the season: his younger sister Octavia.
Over the previous five seasons, Octavia descended into a bloodthirsty warrior, worn down by the brutal measures she was forced to take in order to survive and lead her people through hardship. Octavia nearly caused Bellamy's death, leading him to abandon her to the wilds of Sanctum after a recent violent outburst. Since then, she has linked up with Gabriel and reconciled her own troubled mind after literally confronting her sinister past self through visions caused by entering a temporal anomaly.
Now working with Gabriel, and relatively at peace with herself, Octavia has her own moment of reconciliation with Bellamy before launching a rescue attempt to save Clarke, with Gabriel's help. In an inversion of the earlier Clarke/Josephine dynamic, Gabriel is able to reverse most of the Primes' mind transfer, with Josephine continuing to exist through the neural mesh implanted in Clarke. However, with Bellamy urging his comatose friend to fight on, Clarke is able to overpower Josephine and dispel the Prime for good.
Clarke's body stops breathing due to the strain, but an emotional Bellamy is able to resuscitate her, leading to Clarke finally reviving, free of Josephine's lingering control.
Season 6 of The 100 has been filled with characters forced to literally confront their pasts and emerge all the stronger for it as they seize the opportunity for a fresh start on Sanctum. Previously, Octavia battled her inner demons, manifested through temporal hallucinations, while Clarke was trapped within her own mind, before regaining control of her body. Now liberated, the two women are back together (along with their mutual companion Bellamy) as Season 6 moves closer to the final battle against the Primes.
The 100 airs on The CW Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The series stars Eliza Taylor, Paige Turco, Marie Avgeropoulos, Bob Morley, Henry Ian Cusick, Lindsey Morgan, Richard Harmon and Tasya Teles.