The title of tonight’s episode of The 100, airing at 9PM ET/PT on The CW, is “Nevermore,” and it’s a safe bet considering recent events on the show — and the title — that the Raven character will play a prominent role.
Lindsey Morgan, who plays Raven and has been mentally battling the presence of Alie in her mind, spoke with us about tonight’s show, in which Raven herself is saying “Nevermore” to the influence of Alie.
“That’s a metaphor to Raven the character as far as her essentially telling Alie ‘you’ll never have me again. I will fight you, and I will never let anyone into my brain.’ It’s like this whole weird metaphor between Raven fighting against Alie, and they’re both basically saying ‘you’ll never have me,’ and Alie’s basically saying ‘I’ll never let you go’,” Morgan explained to us in a phone interview yesterday afternoon. “It’s a very intense struggle for them. It feels more like a boxing match to me.”
Tonight’s episode “Nevermore” also gives Morgan a chance to work with some co-stars she hasn’t shared scenes with in a while, as a majority of her recent scenes have been with Isaiah Washington, Devon Bostick, Paige Turco, and guest star Erica Cerra (Alie). “That was kind of my favorite part,” she enthuses, adding that it was an extensive and big episode which could be emotionally and mentally draining, but through all of the insanity, her friends were there.
“My favorite stuff in the show was in Season One, because we were all together, and now we have each other just hanging out,” Lindsey recalls. “I love this episode because it’s also the first time we see the entire Adventure Squad back together since the beginning of the season. We didn’t really get to be together until this moment. And, the extra special thing about it is that everyone comes in hot with completely different points of views of what they’ve been through and where they are. Obviously, you have the Blakes quarreling over the Pike and Arkadia situation and the Pike and Lincoln situation, and then you have Raven and the City of Light and Alie stuff, and then you have Jasper against it, and then he’s also against Blakes, and then of course you have Clarke coming from Polis, and she has her own things… and we haven’t seen Clarke since she abandoned us and left us!”
“It’s kind of crazy,” she adds. “They’d never want to be in a room together, but it’s amazing they put aside their differences aside for a greater cause, and that is, I feel like, the essence of The 100… to save their friend, Raven. It’s such an intense episode on so many levels, with all of the dynamics at play, and all of the history these characters have gone through kind of comes to the forefront, and that’s one of my favorite aspects of the episode,” Morgan explains.
In this phone interview we took a large swing by asking if perhaps Raven and Beca could have somehow been related, perhaps explaining how she can resist Alie’s influence at times. “That is a really good question. I don’t know about that,” she says. “When we talked about it, it was just that Raven herself is just smart and from the get-go, has always kind of been an aspect of the character that Jason [Rothenberg] wanted to have. One of her first lines was her touting her accolades. So, I just always assumed that this was just a good call-back to that. When you think about it, you only really get glimpses of Raven when she was Raven before all this [stuff] that rained down on her and pummeled her with. You only get a glimpse of that prodigy girl doing it, that built a space pod from an abandoned pod and flew herself down to Earth by herself, and pulled a knife on Bellamy, and built rockets… that was Raven untouched. I think it was just a callback to that strength of a person that she had on the Arc, pre-100. So it’s interesting how she’s been through so many metamorphoses, but they’re calling it back to her true essence, I assume.”
Would Raven sympathize with Beca if she found out that Beca came to Earth in pretty much the same way? “I think Raven would be… there are literally lines in 312 where she is talking about Beca, and she is just floored by her intellect and her genius. Talk about girl-crush! She is amazed by her ability. It wouldn’t even be sympathy,” Lindsey answers. “Jaha went through the same thing, too, essentially. They would just nerd out hard at her. Talk about a ‘ship. That’s a ‘ship! That needs to happen!”
Lindsey Morgan has a lot of gratitude for being able to play a character like Raven. “For me, and why I feel Raven is so special to me, is the gratitude to play that character, is because I find her insanely aspirational and self-sacrificial and righteous. Raven is always trying to do the best that she can, and to do the best thing for her and the people she loves, even if that comes with sacrificing herself, which she does quite often. That is extremely admirable. But also, Raven never gives up. She never gives up. And when she gave up is when she took that chip and tried to erase herself, and she learned quickly that was the wrong decision. So, even though she makes wrong decisions every now and then, she learns from them, and she tries to rebuild herself stronger from that failure. I hope that young people can see Raven as a role model of somebody that’s trying to do the best that she can with what she has, but she’s also insanely smart. She always learns from her mistakes to rebuild herself stronger and smarter the next round,” she explains.
Why should fans watch tonight? “They should watch Thursday night because it’s a hell of an episode! I wouldn’t want to miss it,” Morgan says. “It’s interesting because it’s a bottle episode, too… you’d think it would be boring, but no. It’s a great time to finally get these characters in a room to talk about everything they’ve been through. It’s interesting to see everyone being honest for once!”
You can see The 100 “Nevermore” tonight (April 14) at 9PM on The CW. Take a look at some official preview images here and as a bonus, here’s our WonderCon video interview with Lindsey Morgan:
