The 100 “The Garden” Photo-Recap; In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

YOU GUYYYYYYYYYYS, did The 100 just build a whole new world containing a loving family for us to invest our hearts in within the span of 40 minutes?? Why yes, yes it did. Add onto that the overarching mythology (which you KNOW I love), and I’m forced to add The Garden onto my list of favourites. 

But Toni, you say, there was no Raven being awesome! No Beautiful Creepster being beautifully creepy! No Madi being all pure and heroic! No Mackson being adorable! No Adventure Squad! No dogs! I KNOWWWWWW, it’s crazy, right? The episode only boasted one original Squad member among relative newcomers, and yet I loved every second. 

Gabriel, an emotionally damaged mourning immortal? Sign me up! Echo, a fierce warrior lacking someone to follow for the first time in her life? Heck yeah! Hope, the offspring of a former antagonist with a boss-ass-bitch origin story we are currently witnessing? Yes please! Diyoza, a former terrorist turned protective sage? EFF YES. And amidst all this new delight, we have Octavia; former Blodreina, queen of the Bunker, and current queen of OUR HEARTS. 

What an amazing juxtaposition to The Dark Year, the Octavia-centred episode in season 5 where we learned what made her who and what she was. The former showed us her descent into cold madness, the latter showed us her journey out of it. And unlike season five, which gave us that peek into Octavia’s story a little too late, season seven gave it to us almost immediately – so we know exactly who and what we’re rooting for. 

The episode picked up the moment after Octavia scooted on through the anomaly after Diyoza in Season 6, and boy oh boy, WHAT A TREAT! I honestly didn’t know if season seven would have the time to slow down and connect with the characters like this, and now that it has (the premier’s focus on Clarke’s grief was also very welcome) I’m bracing myself for when the plot inevitably plunges its cold fist down our throats and pulls out our hearts (I failed biology). 

Anyway, Octavia found Diyoza in labour and talked her through it like an inspirational life coach, and then had to deal with a (suspiciously un-goopy) baby while Diyoza had herself a lil’ snooze. 

Who else audibly gasped when Octavia put her finger in Baby Hope’s mouth? It’s been so long since we’ve been allowed to touch our faces, that I was like, “gurl, you JUST crawled out of an anomaly, at least sanitize!” 

Hope remembered everything! And as it turned out, she did NOT kill Octavia. Rather she stuck a “tag” inside of her so deep that it only LOOKED like she was stabbing her to death, when really she was stabbing her FOR TRAVEL. I mean, if you’re going to be stabbed, it might as well be for leisure, right??

Anyway, a LOT of information was imparted in this scene:

• Some butt-faces called The Disciples have Bellamy.
• Their clubhouse is called Bordo(?).
• The anomaly is apparently not an anomaly (how embarrassing for Gabe), it’s a magic subway system! But apparently you can’t just hop in one and go anywhere you want – you have to get off at the right stop. 
• The butt-face leader has Diyoza (DON’T YOU DARE), and promised not to kill her if Hope locator-tagged Octavia. 

The code on the back of Hope’s “Bellamy is the honest-to-God best” note was washed off in the anomalpond! Whoopsies, looks like they weren’t chasing after Bellamy and Diyoza after all (intense sad face). 

Diyoza wanted Octavia to stay and raise Hope with her, but Octavia was pretty determined to get back through the anomaly to Sanctum, Bellamy, and all that sweet sweet violence. Buuuuuuuuuuuut, it was at the bottom of the anomalpond, and Octavia was not a mermaid (YET). 

Did anyone else find it downright ADORABLE how much Gabriel was enjoying himself?? Boy had been living for this nerd shit for literal lifetimes, and now he was finally getting answers. His dreamy face just lit up at every piece of science Hope fed him. We learned that every person has a brain-address or something that people can brain-text invites to. Or, if they don’t have your brain-address, you can plunge a gizmo deep into your flesh and then get ready to be anomalzapped to the destination of your dreams. 

SPACE, haha, what a ride.

Hello weary stranger! This man (he seems like a Pete, no?) was a prisoner sent to anomalcamp to think about what he’d done, and he mayyyyyyyyy have gotten a little too friendly with inanimate objects. His sentence counted down on his arm (cool), and there was about 5 years left, which Hope regretfully informed the AnomalSquad was also THEIR sentence. Dun dun dunnnnnnnn. 

Octavia attempted to expand her lung capacity every day for three years in order to reach the anomaly and get back to her brother. Diyoza was all, “fun futile hobby, babe,” and Octavia was like, “it IS, thanks.” 

Hope knew errrrrrrrrything about Echo and Gabriel (from Octavia’s POV, of course), and it was very amusing to see her call Echo out so hard about her relationship issues (I’m guessing Octavia omitted the part where Echo tried NOT to kill her that time). 

Whooooboy, Pete was not at all pleased to have company interrupting his corpse dinner party, so he scampered off, leaving the AnomalSquad to come to a few conclusions: 

• Hope’s old prisoner bestie Dev is loooooooong dead (she had to have assumed that, right?)
• One of the original Eligius crew was in attendance! This meant they could take a look-see into his brain and find out how they could leave. Yay! 
• This ALSO meant that Eligius had been there, which made their new summer home Planet Beta! (I seriously love the foreshadowing/follow-through on this show – this reveal was set-up in the SECOND episode of last season!)

Becca!!!! I cannot express how happy I am that this alluring, compelling babe keeps popping up into The 100’s plot. She was the one who put the mind-drive into Gabe’s old pal, so his first stored memories were of her. (It will never not tickle me that the Primes actually KNEW Becca. Being immortal is weird, man)

After a very cute family moment involving gardening and jellyfish jokes (❤️), Octavia and Hope discovered a fun buried treasure in the garden. It was one of the Disciples! Though Octavia knew she couldn’t use it to ploop herself back to Sanctum, she DID think she could use it to get to the bottom of the anomalpond. 

Octavia was very pumped about getting back to Sanctum, until Diyoza reminded her that if she left, there would be no way back to their adorable little family. It was a guilt-trip any catholic mother would be proud of! 

Octavia said her goodbye to Hope, but before she could take the plunge (heh heh), Diyoza broke the butt-face suit. 

The kerfuffle was short lived and dissolved into a tearful confession that Octavia just wanted Bellamy to know that she understood how hard it must have been for him. MY GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MY CHEST THIS WAS SO PAINFULLY BEAUTIFUL. 

Octavia wrote a note to Bellamy expressing her gratitude, then threw it message-in-a-bottle style into the anomaly, which for sure led back to Sanctum, don’t even worry about it. 

Yes, that was a reference to our sweet sweet Ilian, may he rest in earnest adorable peace (and yes, he absolutely would have died in the conclave anyway, but yes I’m still sore about it). 

Immediately after learning of its existence, we saw Echo find the letter in the garden, and Hope got all touchy about it, because it seemed to be the thing that tipped off the butt-faces that they were there. 

This led to a pretty great friendship-starting conversation between Hope and Echo where Hope was like, “okay, maybe you’re cool,” and Echo was like, “back atcha, kid.” 

Gabe’s friend was nerding so hard in his mind-vlog, and Gabe was INVESTED, especially after he seemingly cracked the code. This sent Gabe running off in search of a pen, but when he returned…

Pete was very set on ‘serving his time’, and NOT keen on his new invader-pals getting the code to open a portal. So, he did what any rational, slightly-insane person would do; he smashed the mind-dvd player. Whooooooopsie, now they’ll NEVVVVVER see the rest of that memory! 

As Hope suspected, Octavia’s note brought the butt-faces to Anomalville to chase off the squatters. Octavia hid Hope and then went out to get hero-napped along with Diyoza, leaving Hope to grow up without them (frown). 

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YOU GUYS. You know me, I simply HATE to be hyperbolic, but this episode just crashed into my heart and set up residence from now until the end of my days. The writing! The acting! The direction! The cinematography! The music! 

To steal a quote from Tyrion Lannister and actually use it properly; who has a better story than Octavia? Girl has GONE THROUGH ALL THE SHIT. If there was shit to be gone through, Octavia went through it, then circled back and went through it again. To see her finally at peace with herself, to see her cooperating, and APPRECIATED, my God, my heart is SINGGGGINGGGGGG. 

I love a lot of things about this show (ahhhhh, horrific teen violence), but I think my very favourite part (besides the amazing female representation), is the show’s memory. It never forgets. The events of the show root themselves into the characters and either fester or heal (or both, in most cases), and it is GD mistifying to behold. (I mean c’mon, these ladies met fighting over “Eden” and now they live together in “The Garden”) Not only that, but the show makes good on its promises, giving us payoffs we didn’t even know we were waiting for. Everything is tying together, and I cannot WAIT to see how this magnificent ride ends. 

SOME STUFF

• Does the Not-Anomaly have healing powers for everything, or did it heal Octavia’s arm because it felt bad for causing it in the first place?

• “My mother my responsibility,” hahahahahha, oh guys, noooooo. 

• I assume this was the last Hope saw of her moms up to this point. Which meant Octavia was telling stories of getting stabbed and pushed off a cliff to a 10-year-old (because of course she would).  

• OCTAVIA AND DIYOZA ARE THE BEST ENEMIES TO LOVERS STORY EVER WRITTEN, WHETHER OR NOT THEY ARE ACTUAL LOVERS BECAUSE IT TRANSCENDS PHYSICAL ATTRACTION I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL.

• It may seem like this recap was picking on Echo, but it was NOT, because I love our fierce warrior princess. The running joke was more about the fact that all Hope knows of Echo came from a pretty biased source, and yet she STILL trusts her, because even Octavia recognizes that Echo is awesome. 

• Octavia having her turn to tell the daring tales of the Adventure Squad to a young person truly reached into my chest and made everything warm. Being a part of the Squad has impacted these characters so much that they feel the need to pass on that meaning, that love, to the next generation. Madi, Jordan, and now Hope… and they all picked Murphy as their favourite. #BeautifulCreepsterForPrez

• Is Octavia ten years older than everyone now?

• What’s the deal with Hope’s hair-necklace? Function or fashion? 

• Okay, so the shot where Gabe was holding the now-useless mind-drive, zooming out to show his own mind-drive scar… this FOR SURE means he’s popping that dude into his own body, doesn’t it? Are we going to lose Gabe??? Please don’t erase Gabe! 

• The prequel series is totally going to be about Becca, right? Yeahhhhhhh, it’s about Becca. Right???!?!?!

• Gabe still has Josephine’s empty mind-drive. Who is that mind-drive going into, you guys?? It’s going into SOMEONE. It’s Chekhov’s mind-drive. 

• For real, though, Octavia was KILLING that anomalfit (that’s anomaly outfit, in case my animal-mashups are getting out of control).

• So, in the time it took to tell this anomaltale, Clarke’s frown-crease probably deepened a bit, Indra’s glare probably made a child give back the cookie they stole, Picasso probably licked Madi’s face, and Jordan probably smiled at some unsuspecting Sanctumite, winning their heart forever.  

• What was the poem Gabe’s nerd friend said every day, and what does it meeeeeeeaaaannnnnn??

• Did anyone else want to call their parents/guardians after that scene where Octavia broke down because raising a child is hard, and she wanted to thank Bellemy? “HI MOM THANK YOU MY GOD I WAS THE WORST.”

• Congratulations to Sammy for winning the first round of JOKES FROM THE PAAAAAAAST: All the ways they could have tortured Russell = all the ways the Grounders would have tortured Finn. 

OKAY THANKS FOR COMING ILY GUYS STAY SAFE AND SANE OUT THERE!