‘The 100’: Where’d You Go, ‘Auntie O’? (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The 100 Season 7, Episode 2, “The Garden.”]
One of the biggest questions on fans’ minds heading into Season 7 of The 100 was, undoubtedly, “what happened to Octavia?” In “The Garden,” they receive their answer — well, part of their answer, anyway.
The episode is split into two storylines; flashbacks with Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos), Diyoza (Ivana Millecevic) and Hope, which explain what happened to lead Hope to stab Octavia — and the present, with Echo (Tasya Teles), Gabriel (Chuku Modu) and 20-year-old Hope (Shelby Flanery) figuring out where they ended up after going through the anomaly. Let’s break them down.
A Whole New World
Octavia swims to safety after the anomaly deposits her into a lake, then, after she hears screaming in the woods, she helps Diyoza deliver her baby. The fact that Hope’s arriving is proof enough that time works differently on that planet than it does in Sanctum; O was only seconds behind Diyoza in passing through the green portal, but for Diyoza, that was three months.
In the years to come, Octavia and Diyoza bond over having finally found a space where they can live peacefully, and they raise Hope together. As far as they know, there’s no one else there — and there’s plenty of food and water and shelter. But Octavia can’t let go of Bellamy (Bob Morley), and she keeps trying to swim back to the glowing green light under the lake, but she can’t hold her breath long enough to get there.
Shane Harvey/The CW
I Understand
Her problem appears to be solved when they find a dead body in their garden — a dead body wearing a high-tech suit. With that, O says, she’ll be able to make it to Sanctum… and come back with an army, just in case the dead dude has some still-living friends. Diyoza is horrified. “Do you really want to expose Hope to that?” she asks. Armies or not, O’s not sticking around. One morning she puts on the suit, says goodbye to Hope and walks out the door, only to find Diyoza has shattered the suit’s helmet.
Enraged, Octavia tackles her. Diyoza asks a valid question: why does she want to go back to Bellamy so badly? “I need to tell him I understand now,” she responds, her rage dissolving into tears. In the end, she has to settle for telling him that through a letter, which she drops in the lake, hoping it’ll resurface in Sanctum through the Anomaly.
It doesn’t, but it does get the attention of some baddies wearing identical suits to the dead guy in the garden. Diyoza goes to check it out, while Octavia hides Hope. Eventually they both end up captured, and they’re taken back through the anomaly… where, presumably, they still are.
Planet Beta
In the present day, Team Echo winds up on the same planet, in the same cabin where Hope grew up. As it turns out, O and Diyoza have been taken by a kind of warrior/cult leader named Bardo, who’s sending followers who aren’t devout enough to “Three Rings” to recondition them.
Shane Harvey/The CW
Hope stabbed Octavia to “tag” her, so that she’d be pulled through to the other side of the anomaly. The plan, according to Hope, was for her to “jump back in, rescue [Diyoza] and Auntie O, and kill anyone who got in [her] way.” It didn’t quite work out that way, though. The anomaly stones form a transit system, each linking one world to another; the one on Sanctum leads there, the one under the lake leads to Bardo.
Gabriel makes a very important discovery in that they’re not on some unknown planet; they’re on Planet Beta, one of the worlds Eligius III explored. (They have a dead body, and the dead body’s mind drive, to thank for that. Bodies came in very useful this episode). They use the scientist’s mind drive to sift through his memories for a code that’ll open the anomaly again, but right as Gabriel is ready to write it down, one of the “reconditioning” followers returns home to the cabin and shatters the data pad.
Weakness
This turn of events upsets Hope more than anyone else, and she storms out, crying. It falls to Echo to comfort her, although they’re not even close to being pals; Hope now remembers everything, including that Octavia told her Echo stabbed her and pushed her off a cliff. Ah, the good ol’ Season 4 days! Nonetheless, Echo goes to talk to her. “You must think I’m so weak,” Hope says, wiping away tears. Echo responds by saying that if she had Diyoza and Octavia training her, she’s not weak at all.
Except Hope wasn’t trained by them: they’d devoted themselves to a peaceful life, so she learned her combat skills from one of the other people on the planet. Regardless, she’s a capable fighter, and she and Echo bury the hatchet and hug. So all’s well that ends… with everyone stranded.
Shane Harvey/The CW
Other Observations
- Yet another fun guest star! How awesome was it to see Erica Cerra again? I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise — if any character’s prone to showing up again through technology, it’s Becca.
- Was anyone else kind of confused by the whole discussion about the anomaly and tagging and codes? (If it’s just me, that’s fine, I guess.) On first watch, it all flew by too quickly for me to fully comprehend, and I had to watch those scenes a second time to really understand it. I’m still not sure I totally understand the whole “code” and “tagging” things. Did Hope “tag” O knowing she’d be pulled through back to Bardo?
- I really hope this show doesn’t fall into the same trap as Westworld Season 3 — having episodes dedicated to certain characters while leaving the others — who have more interesting stuff going on — for future weeks. While I understand the necessity of devoting a whole 45-minute installment to Octavia’s history and Planet Beta, I wish we’d been able to see what was going on in Sanctum with Clarke and her friends, even just at the very end. I care about the Planet Beta storyline, but I care about Sanctum more. Might just be because I’m more invested in those characters.
- As an Octavia fan, I felt the strongest scenes of the episode were when she fought against Diyoza and when she wrote her letter to Bellamy. Her character arc is right up there with Murphy (Richard Harmon)’s for me, and to hear her say she understands his treatment of her demonstrated HUGE levels of growth from the girl who once relished her time as Blodreina. I think we might finally see Octavia balance her warrior and human sides this season, and that’s exciting. Also, on the subject of the Blake siblings, I completely understand that Bob Morley asked for time off, but I do miss Bellamy. Hopefully he resurfaces soon? He’s too compelling of a character to be missing for huge chunks of the last season.
- Rating: 3.5/5 stars — the stuff with Diyoza and Octavia was excellent and emotional, but the exposition-heavy trek on Planet Beta got confusing — only to end where it began, anyway. Needed more Clarke and Sanctum, given the cliffhanger on which the previous episode ended.
The 100, Wednesdays, 8/7c, The CW
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