The season finale of The 100 airs tonight — surely you’ve read our advance review and other content related to it — and in preparation for the finale, we interviewed the show’s creator, developer, writer, and Executive Producer Jason Rothenberg about what we can expect from the June 11 episode.
The finale is called “We Are Grounders, Part II.”
As this interview was done one on one by phone, we are presenting the interview in a Q&A style, with questions posting in bold, and answers not. Enjoy:
KSITETV’s CRAIG BYRNE: Could Clarke and Bellamy’s disagreements over what to do bring more danger to the group in this finale?
JASON ROTHENBERG: Yeah. Obviously, much of this season was built around that conflict between the two of them, and as they lined up in terms of what they saw as the best way to do survive, that conflict lessened. In this episode, as indicated at the end of number 12, they obviously see things differently again. Basically, they don’t agree on how to move forward, and of course the answer to your question is “yes,” that leads to some serious conflict and danger.
Is Clarke as romantically into Finn as Finn seems to be into her?
Yes. Clarke is in love with Finn; I feel like at the end of 12, when he says “I love you,” she says “you broke my heart. I can’t go there.” Of course, as is the case most of the time in this show, it’s interrupted by an explosion. For me, the romance in the show is just a color in the rainbow. I always say it’s the icing on the cake; it’s not the cake. I don’t even think it’s the icing on the cake. I think it’s just one layer of that cake. It has its proper place. Indiana Jones had a girlfriend, but it wasn’t really why you loved Raiders. There’s a love triangle in Star Wars, but again, that’s not why you love Star Wars. So, for me, it has its proper place. That’s the long answer to your question. The short answer is “yes. Clarke definitely has feelings for Finn.”
Well then, don’t hate me for asking another question about “icing” – is there still any chance for Clarke and Bellamy at some point in the future?
Sure. I never say never. It’s just not in the cards at the moment. I won’t shut the door on anything, however, as I said, it’s one layer in the cake, regardless of when it is.
Raven got really badly hurt last week. How will this affect her ability to survive in the finale?
It’s safe to say that that becomes a very big obstacle to their survival as a group. Her injury makes them less mobile, it makes going to the sea much more difficult, and will complicate the story in 13.
Meanwhile, things aren’t much better on the Ark…
I love that [phrase]. It’s like every review that I ever read uses that expression, and it’s because things are so dire in every part of the show, which I love.
The Ark is done. The story in Episode 12 was that they were essentially making peace with the fact that their lives were over. That’s what Jaha was telling them all to do, and all of them were dealing with it in their own way. Abby was again refusing to accept it, and was trying to save this girl’s life, symbolic of Clarke, and Kane was doing whatever he could to try and save everybody, because he’s trying to make amends for what he did – his big sin, in his eyes, in the Culling of Episode 5. And Jaha is kicking back and having scotch, just sort of having accepted it, when he has the answer… and that answer – which is to bring the Ark to the ground – is certainly what they attempt to do in the finale, I think in ways that will be surprising.
Are there people who are series regulars in Season 1 who might not be seen in the Season 2 premiere?
There’s always that possibility. [laughs]
Are there characters from The 100 novel that you would like to bring into the show eventually?
Nobody that I haven’t already [brought in]. For me, it was always sort of a parallel creative journey. The book didn’t really even exist when I started [work on the show]. There was just an outline for it; maybe a couple chapters were written, and truthfully, I didn’t even have a chance to read the book until way deep into the season, because as I said, when I started, it didn’t exist, and as soon as I started, it was non-stop; there was no time to read anything.
As a result, I honestly couldn’t even tell you how close we have skewed or not to certain parts of the book. I know that Kass Morgan has her own plan in mind for the second book. I haven’t read it yet; I look forward to it. We will draw from it if there are things in there that are helpful, for sure. And again, I won’t shut the door on bringing any characters out of it, if I think that we could use them, because that would be crazy of me not to.
Will there be some characters added to the show as series regulars for Season 2?
Yes. We are expanding the cast of series regulars.
How would you tease the finale’s big battle?
I would say that we are doing our version of Braveheart, basically, or The 300 instead of The 100. When we started, we were trying to find a way to do this epic battle on a TV budget, and ultimately, we found money in the couch cushions, the network helped out… we ended up swelling the budget and number of extras, and the amount of effects, and explosions and everything else. My initial plan was to take a movie like Platoon as a model. In the third act of that movie, a bunch of American soldiers are dug in, and they’re being surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of North Vietnamese soldiers, but you see maybe five of those soldiers at any given time. And it worked brilliantly, and they kept the battle alive on radio calls, people screaming on radios, and gunfire and explosions… that was our plan, original. But we, I think, managed to blow that plan up, and I’m very proud of it. I really does feel like an epic war film. That’s what I’m so excited about.
What can you tease about the finale cliffhanger?
One of the things that we do is [that] we like to end on a big boom, and literally, I always say “boom out” at the end of a script, and that’s what we do when we live-tweet, too. We really do try to end things with a bang, and I think that this episode in particular launches us into Season 2 in a way, I think, that is almost a quiet bang on some levels, but it certainly changes the game. I definitely feel like the ending of this episode will blow people’s minds, will have them realizing that we knew where we were going all along, and that we know where we’re going next year.
