We finally get the scoop on what happened with Octavia and Diyoza back in season 6!
Last episode Gabriel, Hope, and Echo went into the anomaly together but where did they go? Or…rather when did they go??? Turns out the answer is where, and it’s to another planet. Hope has been here before – she named it Sky-Ring when she was little cause she looked up and there were rings in the sky, but its official name according to Gabriel is Beta.
Beta is a prison planet (what is with this show and space prisons, right?), separated from Alpha by a “bridge” that creates a time dilation where well, time works differently between the two planets. You go to Beta via the bridge, you show up in a different time then when you left Alpha (essentially, time moves faster on Beta – if you were in Sanctum for a day nearly a century has passed on Beta). The Disciples realized prisoners could serve life-long sentences in mere days using the unique properties of the two planets. Ok, that’s about all the higher physics I can take for now, let’s focus instead on the story.
Octavia arrives in Beta three months after Diyoza, despite having followed her into the green only a few seconds after. Once Hope is born, we have a happy family of three. Except for the fact that Octavia is desperate to get back to her brother. This storyline is fairly straight forward: Octavia winds up torn between trying to go back and staying with Diyoza and Hope (hello Auntie O!). Diyoza is happy to make that decision for her when she destroys a suit Octavia finds while they are planting a garden. Oh well. Octavia seems to resign herself to the quiet life (though Hope is eager to get battle training from her) and writes a farewell letter to Bellamy. The disciples find the letter and come looking for the person who wrote it.
Now, technically this interaction comes off as menacing, but I was thinking about it and, if you consider the fact that the disciples are running a prison planet, wouldn’t it make sense they would be concerned for any wayward civilians that might accidentally stumble upon it? Granted, if they have information on Diyoza and Octavia, it’s possible their discovery of them would be of a more hostile nature, but I’m curious to see how this pans out because that’s where their storyline ends. Diyoza is captured while Octavia manages to hide Hope before running away herself. How does Hope get to Alpha? What happens to Diyoza? What happens to Octavia? We shall see…
The other storyline is a little trickier and it involves Gabriel, Hope, and Echo. Echo has Octavia’s drive – get back to Bellamy, while Gabriel is super curious about where they are, and Hope is just trying to get to the disciples while explaining things to her two tag-alongs. We learn that Diyoza might be dead and that Hope wasn’t trying to kill Octavia just tag her so the disciples could pull her back (due to “science” people can be tracked, tagged, and transported via their biometric signatures – this is also the “science” that allows for the existence of the mind-drives and explains how exactly that shit works). Fun fact: mind-drives are really called memory drives and they are the equivalent of black boxes for people’s minds. Another fun fact: it all comes back to Becca.
Yes, The 100, is one of those sci-fi shows that actually builds upon the foundation it created in season two, rather then, you know…just going crazy with new shit that in no way connects to the old. I like it, even if I’m not entirely sure it works. It’s always been a cuckoo-bananas show, but one that has the characters and mythology to support all the nutso twists and turns. It is also, and I can’t stress this enough, one of the few shows (sci-fi or otherwise) that really puts lady characters front and center. Granted, men aren’t left high and dry – it isn’t a reversal of situations where say women get all the good lines and agency and men are just left to look pretty and get rescued, rather this show really promotes the feminist ideal: equality! Ok, off my soapbox I go…
Becca – the scientist we discovered in season two who created the AI A.L.I.E. who caused the nuclear fallout that lead to mankind fleeing to space – is back! She somehow led an expedition to Alpha, or, at the very least helped Russel Lightbourne I (along with the other Prime families) in their expedition to Alpha. She created the memory drives, she appears to have discovered the temporal link between Alpha and Beta, and we know for a fact she tried to go back to regular Earth and use her science for good. I’m wondering if the end reveal of this show will be that there is some highly advanced society trying to manipulate the events of the past using the scientific discoveries our protagonists are only just now stumbling upon. That would be cool.
One last thought – it’s interesting to note the similarities in this show and The Magicians. Not only did the Dark King make an appearance (as Russel Lightbourne I), but a similar storyline appears between Octavia and Diyoza as happened with Eliot (Hale Appleman) and Quentin (Jason Ralph). Also, that show had a Dark King and this one has a Dark Commander. Granted, the conditions and outcomes are different, but still…
Overall, I liked this episode. It gave us lots of information about not only what happened to Octavia, Diyoza, and who the hell Hope is, but a deeper understanding of the show’s underlying mythology and how it works.
Next episode promises to take us back to Sanctum, let’s see if Russel really gets that death sentence he’s been itching for, and if the Dark Commander can get around it!
