'The 100' Season 7 Countdown: Should 'Clexa' be the endgame and can the anomaly make it happen?
When it comes to relationships on 'The 100', especially those that involve the main character, Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor), we enter very dangerous territory. After all, the biggest fandom wars for the show revolve around "Clexa" and "Bellarke." Clexa fans ship Clarke with Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carrey) while Bellarke fans ship Clarke with Bellamy Blake (Bob Morley). In the books by Kass Morgan that the show is loosely based on, Clarke and Bellamy being romantically involved is canon.
Of course, Bellarke fans still have hope seeing that Bellamy is still alive (though with Bellamy notoriously missing in all promotional material for the final season, we are not certain) and there could be a resolution in the final episodes. For Clexa fans, that hope was dashed as soon as Lexa and Clarke's relationship was made canon on the TV series -- a crime against LGBTQ representation even as the producers killed off Lexa in the same episode that she and Clarke first sleep together.
In the seventh episode of Season 3 titled 'Thirteen', an unnecessary turn of events leads to Lexa's flamekeeper shooting her when he was instead aiming for Clarke. It was clear that Lexa's death was only to motivate Clarke's story, and many fans were understandably upset. Since then, there has been a significant drop in the show's viewership. Thus began The 100's woes with its LGBTQ fanbase. Nothing they did ever made up for Lexa's death, not even Lexa's surprise appearance in the Season 3 finale. It also sparked a widespread conversation about television's treatment of LGBTQ characters and even today, we wish 'The 100' had taken a different route.
Of course, producers had to write off the character since the actress Alycia Debnam-Carey booked a regular role on 'Fear the Walking Dead'. But surely, if she had to die there were better ways? Even so, though Lexa has been dead for quite some time now -- and even if Clarke and company are now on a totally different planet -- Clexa fans still want their endgame to be realized. One fan tweeted in response to the showrunner, Jason Rothenberg, "I just want a Clexa endgame," while another wrote, "Alycia liked the trailer and the last time she liked it was 2016. So that means clexa is endgame."
Now, this would be an odd thing to achieve on any other show. But 'The 100' is science-fiction and a particular story arc this season could help make it a reality. We are talking about the anomaly, which viewers first saw in Season 6. Many fans speculate that the anomaly might make time travel possible. There are a few reasons for this -- Octavia Blake (Marie Avgeropoulos) looked older when she came back from the anomaly, and the presence of adult Hope Diyoza (Shelby Flannery) when just days earlier she was still a fetus in her mother's womb.
This does not, however, signify whether the anomaly can help people travel back in time. Perhaps these are just temporal anomalies caused by a gravitational wave. On seeing the previews for the first four episodes, we do see similarities to Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar', in which we saw characters communicating with their past selves. Lexa came back from the dead once when Clarke went into the City of Light at the end of Season 3 to defeat Becca. Lexa's consciousness was present in the Flame, which every Commander takes on, and we were able to see her interact with Clarke again -- Eliza Taylor told us that this was one of her favorite scenes in the show.
Will Alycia Debnam-Carrey make one last appearance on the show? We hope so -- if not for the story, then at least for the fans. But as Sachin Sahel told us, ship wars have caused too much grief among the fans of the show. Whether or not Lexa returns, hopefully, with one season left, fans can appreciate all sides.
The final season of 'The 100' premieres tonight on The CW at 8/7c.