Picking up just moments after Season 3 ended, “Echoes” involved every single main cast member and several prominent recurring ones on a show with a very large group of characters. There were a lot of important events occurring here, but early on, it felt pretty jumbled, as we were jumping back and forth between so much, so quickly.

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The 100: Season 4 Premiere Photos 12 IMAGES

This is a testament to the impressive amount of story The 100 has going on at one time, of course, but it did feel like some of this should have been spread out a bit more and held for next week. In this one hour we learned about the fate of both Roan and Indra, saw the fallout of ALIE on the Grounders, checked in with Murphy and Emori, checked in with Monty and Harper, saw how those back at Arkadia took the news about the power plants, how Jaha was received by everyone post-ALIE, and so much more… All important to cover, but perhaps lessened by the need to quickly move on to something else to include all of these elements in this episode.Also, while I ended up loving what occurred with Octavia later in the episode, it felt odd to end Season 3 with her walking off, having killed Pike, and then she’s pretty much immediately back working with everyone almost immediately after.However, the episode grew notably stronger as it went on, and was filled with some great moments. Echo’s return and escalation into a fierce threat was pretty awesome – portrayed quite vividly when she sliced the throat of a woman daring to oppose her. The 100 has excelled at building up peripheral characters of this sort, so to take Echo from “girl in the cage next to Bellamy’s” in Season 2, to her one-episode return/betrayal in Season 3, and now to this incarnation is a very cool thread to follow. And having her at Roan’s side is a nice wild card element to add in, as Roan himself certainly has his own sense of honor, yet also has some huge dreams (“rule everything”!) that Echo is more than happy to feed into.When I wrote my review of the Season 3 finale, I noted that I was glad to see Jasper coming out of his funk. But then showrunner Jason Rothenberg confirmed that originally, Jasper was indeed going to kill himself (which was actually filmed) after being fried from ALIE in the footage, only for them to decide to cut it. That being the case, it was hard not to think, “Oh no, not more of this…” seeing him nearly kill himself in the premiere, only to be interrupted. I actually liked Jasper’s storyline last season – and I know it split people – but trying to sustain a second year of that attitude would be a bad idea. That being the case, his reaction to Raven’s news that the world was going to end was a fun curveball, as suddenly, a weight was lifted and he seemed ready to embrace life… because it was all going to end soon anyway.Plenty of characters still don’t know the truth, but there’s strong potential this season to explore just how varied people’s reactions will be to being told the end is nigh, and Jasper is one extreme example of that.The 100: Season 3 was almost entirely completed before it began to air, which meant there was little that could be done to course correct for its most divisive and problematic plot points. That being the case, it was interesting to see how the premiere tackled both Bellamy and, by way of mentioning her, Lexa. With Bellamy, there was some notable acknowledgement at the end between he and Kane about trying to move forward and do better each day – a nice sentiment, albeit mixed in with a “Don’t look back” mention that sounds a bit extreme. (Bellamy, after all, should look back on his horrible actions, if he’s working to atone for them).On the Lexa front, it was nice to get that moment between Clarke and Abby, discussing Clarke’s love for Lexa – as we were reminded that the Flame is still very much an object of immense importance (both emotionally for Clarke and symbolically/physically to the Grounders). All of which reinforced what a big deal it was for Clarke to hand the Flame over to Roan in order to secure his help.I mentioned earlier that Octavia not having truly gone off on her own played oddly following last year’s finale, but it was more than made up for later by Octavia unleashing hell on those Ice Nation guys! The whole “Sneak her in inside Ontari’s body bag” plan (using Jaha, no less), coupled with how she just decimated those guards, was a really cool and exciting sequence and another moment that underlined just how much this character has evolved since the show began.Some other thoughts:-Roan said he was the “eldest son” of Nia, which would certainly seem to indicate he’s not the only son of Nia. Hmm…-I felt like Raven’s ALIE-provided upgrade was a bit murky last season, but am curious to see how it works moving forward, since it’s clearly a pretty important new skill set!-If you didn’t “Aww” when Kane and Indra had their big hug, what’s wrong with you?!