The CW’s The 100 cast and executive producer Jason Rothenberg made the trip to the 2017 San Diego Comic Con in support of the upcoming fifth season of the sci-fi drama. Season four ended with our heroes separated and attempting to survive a devastating event on Earth. Season five leaps forward in time six years, and during the 2017 Comic Con series creator/executive producer Jason Rothenberg discussed – without giving away spoilers – what fans of the series can expect when The 100 kicks of its fifth season in 2018.
Is this upcoming season five reinventing the series?
Jason Rothenberg: “A little bit. One of the things that’s cool about a time jump of this length is that they’ve experience a whole life while we were away, and so they’ve changed. One of the fun things about this season is to see how they’ve changed. I think another challenge for us as writers is to make sure that the changes make sense, make sure that it feels like they’re still the people that we love even though they have grown or devolved in some cases. Growth isn’t always in a positive direction, unfortunately.”
Is there a new character dynamic between two characters that you want to tease for the next season?
Jason Rothenberg: “Yeah. Bellamy (Bob Morley) and his crew are up on the ring and Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos) and her crew are under the ground, and Clarke (Eliza Taylor) and her surrogate child are on the ground. They are all so different. One of the things that I think is going to be fun and interesting about this season is they sort of had a way where they worked together well, and now they’re all going to kind of bump into each other with their leadership styles.
Octavia – I can’t talk too much about what’s happened to her down there because it’s really one of the coolest stories that we’re going to tell and I want it to be fresh for people, but she is like full-on… That’s all I’ll say; she is full-on.
Bellamy has become a leader in his own right. I think probably it’s safe to say not too much of a spoiler that he has fulfilled Clarke’s desire for him in the finale when she said she wanted him to use this (his brain) and this (his heart). We’ll see a fully realized, heroic, holistic Bellamy which will be cool.
Clarke is Clarke. She’s always going to be a bad-ass. She’s always going to be in charge, but she has a child, really. I mean, that relationship is essentially mother/daughter. If you have kids you know the second you have children your priorities change. Suddenly her crew is that child, that person, and there will be some interesting conflict if what’s good for Maddie is not good for Sky Crew. What’s Clarke going to do? No one else cares about Maddie the way Clarke does.”
What’s happening with Raven?
“Raven (Lindsey Morgan) continues to be…she’s on a pedestal in my mind and she’ll continue. There’s some really interesting Murphy/Raven things happening which I don’t want to tease too much, but she’s the reason they’re alive. She saved them so many times and her journey continues. She’s still wrestling with her disability. She’s obviously overcoming it in many ways in terms of still being the ass-kicking problem-solver that she is.”
Will the prisoners change the dynamic of the show now that they’re an outside group?
Jason Rothenberg: “That’s the A story for the season. That becomes the plot of movie #5. There’s a couple new characters that we’ll meet, good and bad, heroes and villains. There’s another really powerful woman who’s the leader of that group. They’re prisoners; for the most part, they’re criminals. Some of them are probably guards or the crew of that ship. The thing that we set up at the end of the last season is the world is still a wasteland except for this one valley where Clarke is and that’s where they’re landing. And so it will become a battle for Eden, a battle for the lone survivable place. And then when Octavia comes out of the bunker with that group we’ll see what that feels like. But it will be there’s not enough room for everybody unless they can figure out how to make it work.”
More on The 100 Season 5:
- Eliza Taylor Interview
- Lindsey Morgan Interview
- Richard Harmon Interview
- The 100 Cast Photos at Comic Con 2017
