Octavia in peril, Clarke’s lies being exploited and a potential breakthrough on the Nightblood front — just another action-packed episode of The 100, folks!

“A Lie Guarded” Recap

The episode begins with Jasper pulling yet another prank, “floating” Jaha out on the lake and taking everything around him as a joke as others shockingly enjoy for a brief time. Moments later, clouds roll in and panic ensues, with the people of Arkadia fearing that all too familiar pesky acid rain that has a history of wiping people out. Everyone makes it to shelter with moments to spare, but Jasper stays outside and fakes dying before turning to them for a few chuckles that they were actually scared. Taking more jokes into consideration, Monty and Jasper both rig up one in Kane’s office (currently used by Clarke), but what they find was much more important — the list of those who will survive. Jasper doesn’t take too kindly to this and begins to confront Clarke (after she takes fire extinguisher foam to the face), and he decides he’s going to inform everyone. The plan doesn’t go his way when Clarke stuns him with a riot-stick amped up by a high voltage, and Jasper is sent to lock-up by Clarke.

Monty has found himself siding with Jasper on this god complex issue that Clarke keeps letting loose, trying to convince her that she should take a chance to see how they’ll receive it before making any assumptions. Side note: Monty wasn’t included on this new version of ‘the 100’, but his major issue with it was that Harper didn’t manage to make the cut. Clarke’s reasoning behind picking and choosing was taking things into account for sustaining life-like reproduction, engineering, medics, etc. — so, when we find out Harper could have a medical condition passed down genetically, we know why Clarke decided against including Harper.

Monty finishes what Jasper wanted to accomplish and reads the list to the people of Arkadia. Clarke witnesses people beginning to turn against her until Jaha (of all people) comes to her aid. With people not receiving the list well, he explains that a lottery can occur if people are willing to help repair the ship for survival. With the population having a fair (I guess?) solution in the works, everyone goes about their day as if nothing had ever happened. Maybe there are more Jaspers in Arkadia than we originally thought? Jaha informs Clarke he won’t be trying to overthrow anyone’s leadership but purely thinks that giving people a hope for their lives is the best bet. When Jaha is handling these issues better than Clarke, you know a change of leadership is necessary. Clarke chooses to let Jasper out after the truth surfaced, and they have another moment of not seeing eye-to-eye about her tactics, but, lastly, he says she’ll appreciate the fire extinguisher prank one day.

Elsewhere, Bellamy (who was assumed to be hunting) was taken captive by Ice Nation and was given to Roan, along with Kane. Roan had been under the impression that things would be fixed, but one of the people from Arkadia who was with Bellamy squealed about the ship not being able to contain everyone. Roan doesn’t take the news too well and allows Echo to behead the informant as the first loss from their now-fractured alliance. Octavia later finds the fallen faction of Trikru, and one sole survivor says that Indra made it out to warn others — so now Octavia is horse-bound and on the run.

Octavia is eventually found by Echo and two warriors who were sent to find her, setting the stage for a battle. An intense action sequence commences, and she renders two of the fighters useless but is impaled (nooo) by Echo. Octavia channels Faith (that’s a Buffy reference) and falls from a crazy-high cliff into either a stream or a rocky demise. Have no fear, Octavia can withstand anything … right? Echo returns to the prison in Polis and tells Bellamy that his sister has died, and Bellamy couldn’t be more broken — that will potentially trigger the bad-boy Bellamy he used to be. Luckily, we see Octavia’s horse saunter over toward her body, and she struggles to pull herself up. Yes everyone, Octavia lives! Now with her animal comrade back, she tells the horse to take her home, and our favorite rebel warrior queens rides!

The others not present in Polis or Arkadia (Raven, Miller, Murphy, Abby and Luna) go on a mission that Jaha ignited when he told them of a secretive lab that ALIE had with possible answers to help the Nightblood research. Just as they cross territory that was ALIE’s, tons of armed drones begin to hunt them down like a deadlier version of Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl halftime show. Luna vanishes quicker than anyone can realize, and finding her becomes priority number one. Though split into groups, Raven finds her while Luna is prepping to leave them all. Raven convinces her to help save her because of her leg, and she avoids the gunfire, catching a fallen drone for Raven to turn them all off manually. Somehow Raven was able to get through to Luna (their last hope for Nightblood) and she sticks with them long enough to find this space-station looking lab with bountiful assets just waiting for Raven to tinker with.

Overall Grade: 8.5/10

Octavia was given the warrior spotlight of this episode (as she deserves), and Clarke’s list became public knowledge, which were both crucial pieces to the story moving forward. I hope that there will be greater fallbacks to Clarke’s leadership to prove that someone else needs that chance to lead, but, for now, seeing those close to her have doubts is a good direction to head. Raven continues to increase on my list of favorites, now persuading Luna to stay when it was most important while providing her blunt opinions regarding the people around her.

Aedan’s Final Thoughts:

– Octavia’s horse was the MVP for helping its impaled owner with possible internal bleeding.

– Harper’s personal health being broadcast was pretty savage of Clarke — random sidenote.

– Roan is no longer down with Skaikru; a war is on the horizon!

– I really didn’t expect armed drones to gun down people, but, as Emori said, there are worse things to watch out for…