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‘The 100’ 5×10 Review: Bloodreina vs Octavia

Throughout the five seasons of The 100 one of my favorite characters has always been Octavia Blake. I truly believe her evolution over the series has been one of the best showings of character development I have seen on the show. She started out as a naïve girl who followed butterflies into a glowing forest after just stepping foot onto the earth for the first time. But where she is now is somewhere to me that feels almost inexplicable. The way that Octavia has been this season has seemed very out of character for her, and I have been waiting for the show to give her the moment to show us the old Octavia again not Bloodreina, and it came in this episode, but not only did she not take it, she literally burnt it to the ground.

Now I know this is meant to be a recap, but this week I really want to focus on Octavia, because I am truly concerned that she will not make it out of this season alive, and I am even more concerned that maybe she really doesn’t deserve to. Briefly recapping the events elsewhere on this weeks episode we saw Abby struggling through withdrawal from her drugs to the point where she allowed Vincent to literally start eating people so she could get her fix. We also saw Clarke and Madi on their way to the valley to tell Diyoza that the eye is down and Octavia is on her way (Clarke’s attempt at stopping the brewing war). We also learn that Madi is now connected to the previous commanders and is seeing their memories, and Clarke expresses her fear of what will happen to Madi now that she has the flame (nice little nod to Lexa which made the old shipper in me smile). And we also saw Monty desperately trying to save the Hydrofarm in the bunker so that they wouldn’t have to go to war over the land.

Now the main plot of this episode revolved around Octavia and the impending fight to the death of her brother, surrogate mother, and Gaia who was a trusted advisor to her and is also Indra’s daughter. Throughout the course of the episode we got to see just how far gone Octavia has truly become. She is not only willing to let some of the most important people in her life fight each other to the death, she actively ignores all other options and insists upon it. She plans to use fear and intimidation to keep her people in line, even though at least half of them are refusing to march and fight for her now that there is a true commander in Madi. This shows us how thin her grasp of power is now, and she shows us just how desperate she is to hold onto it. Things have clearly happened to turn her this way, the infamous dark year that has been constantly mentioned definitely seems to be the main cause so I will reserve my final judgement on how the show has done her wrong until after we see what happened in it next week.

But this weeks episode gave us two epic scenes that I have been craving since we began to see the cracks forming in Octavia. We got to see her talk openly with Indra and with Bellamy, and though these conversations only served to further show us how lost and broken Octavia has become they were interesting to watch. We got to see Octavia tell Indra to her face that the day that Indra asked her to become her second was the happiest day of her life. Indra accepted her for who she was, when no one else had, she taught her things, and truly cared for her. Indra of course told her that she still cares for her. One of the most poignant lines of this episode was delivered by Indra when she said that she asked Octavia kom Skaikru to be her second, and Octavia kom Skaikru is who she taught, loves, and advises, not Bloodreina. I think that line really got to Octavia and showed her just how much she has changed, she is a completely different person right now, that even Indra doesn’t recognize. As Octavia leaves Indra the older women tells her that she should expect to see Gaia win the fight as Indra won’t let her daughter die, essentially telling her this is the last time we will speak. It was truly heartbreaking to see how broken the special bond between these two has become.

Even more heartbreaking still is when Octavia went to go speak with her brother, and of course before she went to speak with him and she began having flashbacks to their time on the ark when they would play together. She even brought this up to Bellamy in what seemed like an attempt to make peace. She even told him of Indra’s weaknesses in hopes that he would use those to kill her. Bellamy told her that he would refuse to fight. He told her how messed up everything had become with her and it was heartbreaking. To see Bellamy, who was only on the ground initially because he wanted to look after his sister and protect her, tell Octavia that he also didn’t even recognize her anymore was seemingly a sobering moment for her. I thought for just a second that maybe she wouldn’t go through with the fight, after speaking with both her brother and her mentor but of course Bloodreina went through with it.

In the end Octavia was given her moment, the moment to show her people, and her family that she was still the same person that she used to be, someone who wasn’t a dictator and was a true leader. Monty told the people of the Hydrofarm and how he had fixed it so that they could continue to live in the bunker, he told them how he could figure out how to plant up on the ground, and he told them that Octavia knew this, that the didn’t have to go to war. Now at this point, with herself exposed and her people chanting against her she would have relented, realized that no maybe we don’t have to fight this time. But no, she went down to the farm and BURNT IT TO THE GROUND. That was the moment, I and all of the characters on the show realized that Octavia had truly gone past the point of no return. And I hope that we get a good explanation for this in next weeks episode, or I am going to be pretty angry that such a great character was turned into nothing more than a dictator with no soul.

The 100 airs Tuesdays at 9 on the CW.