'The 100' Season 7: How will Clarke and Bellamy's evolved leadership affect how they rebuild Sanctum?
Over the past six seasons on 'The 100', we have seen many different kinds of leaders. Of them, watching Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor) and Bellamy Blake (Bob Morley) evolve as leaders right from the first episode of the series was fascinating. Both Clarke and Bellamy started out quite differently with their time on Earth. Clarke, though a little reluctant at first, started as the sensible leader — making the decision to go to Mount Weather to gather supplies right away.
Bellamy, on the other hand, became a leader because he was hiding something — that he shot Thelonius Jaha (Isaiah Washington) on somebody's request so he could accompany his sister, Octavia Blake (Marie Avgeropoulos) on the trip to the ground. While Clarke's decisions were motivated by survival and establishing contact with the Ark, Bellamy was motivated by looking after Octavia and preventing the people from the Ark from coming down and prosecuting him.
To that end, the two rarely cooperated, and in the fourth episode of the first season titled 'Murphy's Law', they began to see from each other's perspective. This is when the two characters started to rely on each other to become stronger leaders. This is what led to the co-dependent leaders they became. Of course, this was cemented when they decided to pull the lever that would save their people but led to the deaths of many innocent people at the end of the second season.
Season 4 saw Bellamy and Clarke relying on each other like it was nobody's business. And if they didn't have to go their separate ways when Season 4 ended, their relationship might have been completely different. During the six years after the first Praimfaya, Bellamy had many people to rely on, including Monty Green (Christopher Larkin), John Murphy (Richard Harmon), Raven Reyes (Lindsey Morgan) and Echo (Tasya Tales). Clarke just had Madi (Lola Flannery), whom she adopted.
Because of that, their motivations again differed a lot for the first time since the first season and this led to Clarke and Bellamy clashing quite a bit in Season 5. This led to what we thought might be irreparable damage between the two characters. We saw what kind of leader Clarke could be without Bellamy at her side. Again, they worked through those issues, and in Season 6, we saw what Bellamy could become without Clarke. It was only when he thought he lost Clarke that the forgiveness process could truly begin. Since Clarke just came back to life as the season ended, we are yet to see what their relationship and co-leadership will look like now.
Since this is the last season, we expect the wartime to be over by the end of Season 6. Leaders who were forged during wartime do not do so well in peacetime and we may see both retreating from their leadership roles as the final season ends. Of course, with Bellamy missing in all promotional material, we wonder if that means his fate is going to be quite unbecoming. At this point, we don't know when Clarke and Bellamy will meet again, but just as how Bellamy rallied for Clarke's survival last season, we are sure than Clarke will rally for Bellamy's survival.
'The 100' airs on The CW every Wednesday at 8/7c.