Battlestar Galactica and The Hunger Games thrive on a similar kind of pressure. Both trap remnants of human civilization within unforgiving systems with brutally high stakes where one slip-up means certain death. Throw desperate young people into the mix and force compromised leaders to make impossible decisions about who gets to survive, and you’ve got a real pressure cooker going. These sci-fi worlds may be fantastical, but their most intense conflicts emerge when personal loyalties clash against the practicality of survival.
That same volatile combination powers The 100, The CW’s post-apocalyptic action series that premiered in 2014 and ran for exactly 100 episodes. All 100 of those episodes are currently free to stream on Pluto TV.
Set 97 years after a nuclear catastrophe rendered Earth uninhabitable, the series follows the descendants of humanity’s survivors aboard the Ark, an orbital space station with a rapidly failing life-support system. Their potential solution is as absurd as it is delicious: Send 100 beautiful, incarcerated teenagers to the ruins of Earth to see whether radiation burns them alive from the inside out.
Why teenagers? Because of the Ark’s draconian laws, adults who commit any kind of crime are immediately “floated” out into space as a cheap form of execution. After all, they can’t spare the dwindling resources on tons of criminals. Lawbreaking minors are imprisoned until they come of age when they are retried — and likely still executed. So there’s a bunch of incarcerated teens already available who will probably die either way. This bleak premise comes from Kass Morgan’s 2013 young-adult novel of the same name, though the book and television adaptation were developed almost simultaneously. Showrunner Jason Rothenberg’s version quickly charts its own course, retaining the central setup while substantially changing the characters, mythology, and story. It also gives The CW the perfect excuse to cast a bunch of good-looking teenagers in a soapy ensemble drama with a gritty sci-fi backdrop.
The titular 100 are a motley assortment of petty criminals, violent offenders, and Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor), a political prisoner locked up after discovering that the Ark is running out of oxygen. There’s also Octavia Blake (Marie Avgeropoulos), who was imprisoned for the unforgivable offense of being born (people can’t have more than one child). Once the 100 reach the ground, however, they discover a fresh start in a beautiful, dangerous world where nobody is coming to enforce the rules — and humanity may not be quite as extinct as they were told.
The first few episodes lean heavily into the most stereotypically CW version of that premise. Everyone is attractive, romantic complications begin before anybody has time to get hungry, and radioactive monsters randomly appear as if to remind the characters to stop flirting and start surviving. When the newly liberated teenagers chant “Whatever the hell we want!” in episode 1, The 100 momentarily feels like spring break.
Very quickly, however, Rothenberg dismantles this fantasy of complete freedom. The 100 need food, shelter, medicine, and protection from all sorts of threats that are already watching. Clarke recognizes the urgency of their situation and emerges as a natural leader, while Bellamy Blake (Bob Morley) fears that restoring contact with the Ark might jeopardize their newfound freedom. Their competing visions create a political struggle over what this fledgling society should become and make them rivals. The chemistry between Carke and Bellamy is also positively electric, sparking a “Bellarke” shipping fandom. (Actors Eliza Taylor and Bob Marley even got married in real life!)
Meanwhile, the adults aboard the Ark are confronting their own crisis. Chancellor Thelonious Jaha (Isaiah Washington), council member Marcus Kane (Henry Ian Cusick), and Clarke’s mother, Dr. Abigail Griffin (Paige Turco), all know that thousands of people will suffocate unless they find a solution. As the Ark begins to fail, these leaders have to grapple with the weight of committing more atrocities just so a fewer number of people can survive just a little bit longer.
Battlestar Galactica meets Hunger Games
That structure is where The 100 begins to resemble Battlestar Galactica. Both series revolve around dwindling populations governed by fragile institutions, and both understand that maintaining human civilization can be brutal. Sometimes, making the right decision to protect what’s left of humanity is still a tough call that makes you lose sleep at night.
The teenagers on the ground also evoke The Hunger Games, and also Lost with teens. (Lost fans will delight in seeing Cusick, who played Desmond Hume, along with Alessandro Juliani who played Lieutenant Felix Gaeta in 2004’s Battlestar Galactica series — and a handful of other recognizable genre actors.) These kids have essentially been sacrificed by an authoritarian society. They’re also given the risky opportunity to build a new civilization in a lush, green forest. Survival gradually turns Clarke and her fellow survivors into political symbols, soldiers, and reluctant leaders. Their greatest obstacle isn’t defeating a single villain. True to many apocalyptic stories, the major challenge comes from figuring out how to stop every frightened community from treating every other community as expendable.
The show’s first season steadily expands what initially appears to be a straightforward survival story. In the wilderness, they discover rival societies of “Grounders” that survived the nuclear apocalypse, ruins of the past, and evidence that the Ark’s version of history is not totally accurate. Most characters fall into familiar teen-drama archetypes, yet then they reveal an intense capacity for violence. Alliances shift quickly. Victories always come at a great cost. And The 100 isn’t afraid to kill off a major character in a shocking spectacle if it serves the story.
By season 2, the world of The 100 grows larger as the conflicts become more complicated. Even heroes like Clarke sometimes do terrible things, and people you once considered villains evolve into something more three-dimensional. The resulting story is faster and pulpier than Battlestar Galactica, but both shows explore the moral compromises people make when extinction is at stake.
The 100 is peak CW drama
The 100 also remains unmistakably a CW series. The romances are messy, the betrayals are frequent, and nearly every major character looks suspiciously camera-ready after spending days in the wilderness. That combination is part of the appeal. Rothenberg delivers a grim political sci-fi story inside an accessible young-adult adventure, giving it the momentum of an addictive soap opera. There is always another major revelation, big smooch, or looming catastrophe waiting at the end of an episode. It is, at times, deeply unserious despite all the inherent drama. When one of the 100 begins a relationship with a Grounder, a random unnamed character spits out the insult, “Grounder-pounder!” It still makes me laugh years later.
Across seven seasons, The 100 repeatedly reinvents itself and pushes its characters into increasingly strange new areas of science fiction. Especially once you get past season 2, it barely feels like the same show — in a good way. Later seasons can’t always match the confidence of the early terrestrial plotlines and intimate scope, but Rothenberg’s willingness to make big swings is more admirable than recycling the same kinds of conflicts and drama over and over.
What remains consistent throughout is that central question: What does humanity deserve to become after surviving the end of the world? Several generations removed from ancestors that destroyed the Earth, these various survivors (Grounders or not) have to reckon with the sins of their forebears. They’re forced into a life of violence just to survive — and have to grapple with all that trauma that comes with it… but it’s a good thing that trauma bonding is a fruitful basis for sloppy romance.
All seven seasons of The 100 are now available to watch free on Pluto TV. The complete series would take you about 70 hours to watch in its entirety, but the gripping first two seasons alone make a compelling case for taking the trip back to Earth. Just give those beautiful juvenile delinquents a chance.
