TELEVISION EPISODE REVIEW: The 100 S5 Ep04 'Pandora's Box'

World’s collide as our favorite groups of survivors, previously scattered to the winds, begin to reunite in this brave new world. However, new dangers lurk around every corner.

The 100 – “Pandora’s Box”, Season 5, Episode 04
Airdate: May 15^th, 2018
Director: Dean White
Writer: Jason Rothenberg
Based on the Book by: Kass Morgan

What You Should Know:

Bellamy and crew (minus Murphy and Raven) have reached the ground and confronted the Prison crew, negotiating for Clark’s release. Murphy and Raven remain on the Eligius IV as a safety precaution, guarding over the 283 prisoners in cryo-stasis. Wonkru remains trapped in the bunker and has degenerated to a gladiatorial method of justice at the behest of Bloodreina.

What You’ll Find Out:

Hold onto your butts, dear reader, because this episode is a busy one! The brief period of a divided narrative among our many parties is over, and this week’s episode checks in on all of our survivors, pushing some together and ripping others apart.

We open in the bunker as Marcus fights for his life in the arena. Abby had been stealing pills, for an addiction rather than affliction it would appear, and Marcus took the blame. While he survives his first fight, he fails to earn his freedom and is ordered by Octavia to fight again, which he refuses to do. Indra is shown in these sequences as being a reluctant ally to Abby and Marcus, doing what she can within reason to ensure Marcus’ survival. The fact that Indra would betray to the decree of Octavia in any fashion seems to point to a large narrative arc here, in which we witness the slow decline of this new Roman empire. Corruption at the fringes, bloodlust at the center, and justice by lynch mob harkens back to the earliest days of The 100, an unsustainable system that becomes even more complicated when those who have become interpellated into it are inevitably freed from their prison and set loose in the world.

While the battles rage on in the bunker, a different form of combat emerges between Bellamy and COL Diyoza. With her crew held hostage, Bellamy negotiates not only the freedom of Clark but also the Prison crews’ help in freeing Wonkru from the bunker. Although Diyoza capitulates eventually, she also has machinations in place to betray all parties but her own crew in the hopes of replacing their deceased doctor with Abby. The crew drills through the Polis wreckage, opening a hole in the roof of the arena just moments before Octavia slays a righteous Marcus, and the 814 remaining Wonkru (down from 1200) is evacuated, reunited Bellamy and Octavia, as well as Clark and Abby.

While Indra, Clark, and Abby make plans to help Marcus escape, Shaw and Diyoza work on plans of their own. Shaw attempts repeatedly to hack through Raven’s firewall and set their captive crew free but is stopped at every turn (setting up a potential relationship for further down the road). Once Abby has been evacuated, Diyoza determines the need for subtly is over, and has Shaw open the bay doors on Eligius, venting the oxygen, to kill Raven and Murphy, removing Bellamy’s leverage over her. The plan goes awry when Murphy, rather than killing the prisoners, decides to free them instead, forcing Shaw to close the doors rather than kill his own crew, but also trapping Murphy and Raven on a ship with 283 violent criminals.

As the prison crew in Polis turns on Wonkru and the rest of the survivors thanks to their superior firearms, Abby agrees to join them in order to prevent further bloodshed, provided Marcus is allowed to accompany her.

Where these events leave us is here: Abby and Marcus are on the way to Eligius IV with the heavily armed prison crew; Raven and Murphy’s status is unknown, but they were last seen staring down the waking prisoners; Bellamy is quickly becoming aware of the fact that the Octavia that emerged from the bunker, Bloodreina, is not the same as the Skyrippa who went in; and the remaining survivors have now been banned from Eden, condemned to Polis.

A war looms on the horizon.

What Just Happened?

The episode is titled “Pandora’s Box,” which is an incredibly fitting title for the events we have just witnessed. Pandora’s Box originates in the Hesiod-written Greek myths as an urn (later mistranslated to box) gifted unto man out of vengeance by Zeus for Prometheus giving humankind the gift of fire. When opened, the urn releases death and sickness into the world, and though it is shut quickly, those unforeseen consequences have already been loosed on the world, leaving nothing but hope inside the urn. A number of connections can obviously be drawn between this myth and The 100.

The most obvious of connections involves the two distinct “openings” in this episode—the opening of the bunker and the opening of the cryo-chambers. In later-recorded versions of the Pandora myth, there are versions of the urn which contain equal parts “good” and “bad” contents, which certainly begs the question of which of the boxes opened in this episode may in fact be Pandora’s Box, and what is the nature of the contents of the boxes?

Somewhat more subtextual here is the notion of the “gift of fire” that was bestowed on humankind. Fire was the catalyst for the gifting of the box in Heriod’s tale, and in a sense, once again, Praimfaya serves as the catalyst for our two boxes in this episode. Is it possible to think of Praimfaya as a gift? Will the newly emerged Wonkru and Prison crew unleash death and sickness on the world (who knows what one-hundred-year-old diseases the Prison crew might be carrying)? Only time will tell for certain.

Rating: 10/10
Final Thought: Best episode thus far of an incredibly strong season. If this season happens to herald the end of the show, I have no doubt that we will go out strong.