WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for The 100 Season 7, Episode 8, "Anaconda," which aired Wednesday on The CW.
For seven seasons, The 100 has followed the last remnants of humanity after a nuclear Armageddon ravaged the Earth and eradicated the vast majority of the population. Generations later, the main characters attempted to rebuild civilization on the planet only to fall back into bloody conflicts among themselves. They were eventually forced to flee to a faraway world after the constant urge to resort to violence left Earth completely uninhabitable.
The most recent episode of the final season takes things back to the beginning as nuclear fire overtakes Earth, with a select few, led by the charismatic cult leader Bill Cadogan, taking shelter in a fallout bunker under Baltimore. Cardogan resurfaced in a major way in Season 7 after a brief appearance in Season 4, while the episode -- intended as a backdoor pilot for a planned prequel spinoff series -- introduces his children Callie and Reese. The prequel would follow this new cast of characters approximately 97 years before the start of the main series, and the episode provides a tantalizing glimpse at the immediate aftermath of the end of the world. In an exclusive interview with CBR, series creator Jason Rothenberg explained why it was important for the final season of The 100 to go back to the beginning as its surprise antagonist returned, provided an update on the status of the prequel's pick-up, and hinted at where the planned spinoff could go next.
We haven't really seen Bill Cadogan since Season 4. Was having him reappear in Season 7 and setting up the events of the prequel a story you always had in your back pocket?
Jason Rothenberg: Yes and no. I always thought about that Second Dawn bunker and the people that came out to greet Becca at the end of [the seventh episode of Season 3] when she landed -- which we obviously see from a different perspective in this episode -- that they came from the underground bunker that was [linked to] Cadogan. They ultimately became the forebears to the Grounders after Becca shared Nightblood with them. That was a story that was untold that I always wanted to tell. I also always wanted to..., at least when we started this season, ...answer some of biggest questions, which was, in my mind: why was that bunker empty when they opened it? It was sealed from above so where the hell did everyone go? There were no bodies inside! So this answers that question in a definitive way and as we started to tell this story, the Anomaly Stones began to figure into it and that's when it all sort of dovetailed to explain how Cadogan and company got to Bardo. And obviously, that necessitated going back to the bunker and revealing there was a Stone on Earth in that bunker and so it all came, four seasons in the making, to that.
And, fortunately, [actor] John Pyper-Ferguson -- who, by the way, I promised would be much more involved on the show when we cast him, I made good on that promise four years later. Not that it was my sort of evil plan from the beginning, but I'm definitely glad that it worked out that way.
The past couple of seasons revolved around themes of false gods, false prophets, and cults of personality. Is Bill the ultimate personification of that in this universe?
Rothenberg: Yes and no. He's an interesting character in the sense that, yes, he's antagonistic obviously, but what he's after is transcendent of the human race. What he's after is what is the next step in human evolution and he believes he's found a way to get it. And of course, he's become obsessed with it and, of course, he's become willing to do whatever it takes to get there, all of which is sort of disqualifying him from deserving it. [Laughs] But his goals are good, I think. Whether or not that's real is something that we'll see moving forward or if he's totally digging in the wrong place.
On some level, it's the story of a prophet who maybe drank his own Kool-Aid and became obsessed with his goals, but it started out as a good goal.
Octavia and Bellamy's dynamic has been a big emotional backbone in the main series. With the prequel, we've got Callie and Reese's own antagonistic dynamic in this episode. Is this going to inform the planned direction for the prequel?
Rothenberg: Yeah, definitely! Cain and Abel was sort of the touchstone for their story. There is love between them, for sure. I feel like we captured lightning in a bottle with Iola Evans and Adain Bradley. The Reese role is a tricky one because we needed someone who -- despite the fact that he's an antagonist, despite the fact that he's out to do our hero in, his own sister -- we see levels in his performance, and he's a sweet person, by nature -- that comes through in his performance that I think is crucial to that role. And Iola is just electric as an actor, she really is. Whether or not this show is picked up, that girl is bound for great things. She is just unreal and doesn't know yet how good she is, she was perfect as Callie.
How was it going back to the beginning? It's always interesting going back before Armageddon hit so how was it flexing those muscles creatively?
Rothenberg: It was amazing! In [the prequel] series, my plan is go back every episode and do flashbacks regularly to pre-apocalypse Earth. We really want to use flashbacks as a [storytelling] device, to illuminate characters and show who they were before the apocalypse and how it changed them in the present-tense of the story. So it was really great to shoot in a house, in a bedroom, and I really look forward to being able to do a lot of that in the series, if and when this thing gets ordered.
Are there any updates, since the last time you and I spoke, from Mark Pedowitz or anyone at The CW?
Rothenberg: No, we're still in limbo, we're still waiting for an order, hoping that it happens. We could use all the help we can get from people like you and our fans online. Write your Congressman! [Laughs] Tell them we need the show because it's a show that I'd love to continue. I feel like it's taken on an added prescience in this world of protests and the pandemic that it didn't have before that has made it so much more resonant now. So I'm hoping we get to tell that story in a big way.
What made Washington, D.C. and Baltimore the logical setting for the start of the show and the prequel?
Rothenberg: That's a great question... Mount Weather is a real thing that's close to where we said it is and so I really wanted to play around with stuff like the Lincoln Memorial and, obviously, Season 1's story was set in and around Mount Weather. That was just sort of the natural place where the rest of the show had to take place. And Polis got its name for Becca's [space] pod, which said "Polaris" on the side but three of the letters were burned out, which is why they ended up calling it Polis, and that was in Baltimore, which was the logical place to start the prequel. I'm not quite sure why I chose it originally but, most likely, it was the Mount Weather connection.
We're moving into the second half of the final season. Are we going to see any more glimpses of Bill's past on Earth before we close out the main series?
Rothenberg: Of Earth pre-apocalypse? No. But everything we saw in this episode is significant to the season, for sure. Cadogan is driven to recreate the code that Becca entered to get to the stars and what she believed to be Judgment Day, he believes to be some kind of last war we're going to fight to, ultimately, earn our next step in human evolution. So that all becomes the driver for him.
They believe that Clarke has the Flame because they stopped watching the TV show after Season 3 and apparently never saw it come out of her head. We need to know why Diyoza, Echo and Octavia are Disciples, all of which is at the end of this episode and the beginning of the story we're telling going forward.
One of the big questions in the prequel timeline is the fate of Grace. She didn't get the Nightblood injection like Callie or Reese before going out in the wastelands in that radiation suit.
Rothenberg: Yeah, her story will certainly be a huge part of the first episode [of the planned prequel] because we know she's got a hazmat suit with limited oxygen, needs that Nightblood. Her daughter doesn't know that she's out there; can she get to Callie before the oxygen runs out? When Reese and Callie get together and Callie finds out that mom was banished by dad without Nightblood, I can envision a version of the story where the two of them, together, go after their mother, temporarily putting aside their differences in order to save mom. Whether or not they do -- spoiler alert: they will -- I feel like is definitely an important part of the first episode of the season.
As we're moving into the endgame for the series, what can you tease? You mentioned Diyoza and the others becoming Disciples, but what can we expect moving to the end of Season 7?
Rothenberg: We are definitely approaching the end of the series and the end of our story. And the question that Abby asked way back in the pilot of the original show, which wasn't really stated as a question, but Kane said that he would do whatever it takes for the human race to survive even if it takes it down to a cosmic atom, to which Abby replied that it was her job to make sure that we survived. The question that comes to a head in our finale is: do we deserve to survive? After everything we've done have we finally learned our lesson? Can we finally stop killing each other in the name of tribalism and what's right for our families and our nation at the expense of other families and other nations.
That is sort of the trajectory of this story and whether the answer is if we deserve to or not, is not something I'll divulge at this moment. [Laughs] But the story we're telling in this prequel really sets that up.
The 100 stars Eliza Taylor, Marie Avgeropoulos, Bob Morley, Lindsey Morgan, Richard Harmon, Tasya Teles and Shannon Kook. The series airs on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.