The race to get A.L.I.E. out of Raven is on

The 100 S 3 E 11 type TV Show network The CW genre Sci-fi

The gang is back together. The gang is back together. The gang is back together.

Like all episodes of The 100, “Nevermore” was heavy. Raven’s life was hanging in the balance. Monty had to make an impossible decision. And series-long mistakes were unearthed and had to be relived.

It was dark, yes. But I also couldn’t help but be giddy at the end of the episode. The gang is back together. These tough teens are stronger when they work with one another, and now that they’re common goal is A.L.I.E., there’s no way they won’t be able to take her down. (I hope.)

A.L.I.E. will do whatever it takes to get her second piece of software, and that’s apparent from the first minutes of episode 11. Clarke, Jasper, and Raven are on their fleeing road trip out of Arkadia. Clarke is very confused about what’s going on — she can’t understand why her mom was letting the Arkers shoot at her — but Jasper 1. wants nothing to do with her (“I saved your life, that’s more than you deserve”) and 2. is busy looking for the hideout cave. They have to get Raven inside before she wakes up or else A.L.I.E. will know exactly where to find them.

Jasper had radioed ahead to inform the cave group of the situation, which they think sounds kind of nuts … because it is kind of nuts. Octavia doesn’t care what’s going on at Arkadia, though; she wants to GTFO as fast as possible. Turns out being around your brother who was partially responsible for killing the love of your life isn’t super great. Bellamy tries to apologize, but O won’t hear it: “Turning Pike in does not make you one of the good guys Bellamy.”

Bellamy tries to rationalize why he massacred the Grounders by saying they were starving Arkadia out and could have attacked at any time. Although we all know this is a bogus excuse, it’s good to see Bellamy stand by it. He shifted to the bad side so quickly that we need to see his character motivation this time. We need to know that, as a character, Bellamy has learned from his mistakes and more organically gone back to the side we trust.

But, yeah, Octavia doesn’t buy his reasoning either. She tells him that the only reason he agreed to go with Pike on his Grounder-killing mission is because he was hurt and lashing out is what he does. Then she places the blame of not just Lincoln’s death, but also Monroe’s on him, as if he weren’t feeling bad enough.

They don’t have much time to hash out their sibling issues, though, because Jasper has showed up and is yelling that they have to get Raven inside before she wakes up. Octavia realizes she’s needed, so she stays … for now.

Once inside the cave, Jasper has a whole lot of explaining to do. He tells the group (Sinclair, Clarke, Monty, Bellamy, and Octavia; Miller, Bryan, and Harper are outside the cave and then kind of disappear for the rest of the episode) about A.L.I.E. and how everyone at Arkadia is now chipped, including Monty’s mom, how Raven isn’t Raven anymore, and how Raven was trying to get A.L.I.E. out of her by using the wristbands. You can see why they thought Jasper’s story via the walkie-talkie sounded kind of nuts.

Raven wakes up right about then and sees Clarke asking if the City of Light pills look like her handy-dandy Commander chip. A.L.I.E. realizes it’s her second version, and the A.L.I.E.-possessed Raven — let’s call her R-AI-ven — goes berserk. Apparently being possessed by an AI gives you the same results as Max Rager.

Raven runs outside to see where they are so that A.L.I.E. can come get the Commander chip. Luckily, she doesn’t see anything recognizable before Jasper drugs her with his last dose of knock-out juice. It just so happens that Clarke knows where to find a wristband to “kill” R-AI-ven, and the gang sets off on an adventure together.

NEXT: To Niylah’s house we go…

The rover pulls up to Niylah’s outpost, but Clarke’s former one-night stand isn’t so happy to see them: Her father was killed in the massacre, so she’s no longer a friend to Skaikru. Clarke tries to reason with her that this group had nothing to do with that (which we know isn’t exactly true), but when Raven starts to wake up, there’s no time for convincing. Bellamy cuts to the chase and points the gun at their host’s face and demands to be let in.

Inside, they take a blindfolded Raven to the back room, away from the eyeshot of Niylah because people in the City of Light could identify her. Mere seconds after they are able to tie her to the bed, Raven dislocates her right shoulder so she can reach the ties on her left arm. Oh, and if that weren’t enough, in the process, she has also reopened the wounds on her wrists.

It should come as no surprise that the AI that destroyed an entire world would go to these lengths to get what she wants, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch. Raven as R-AI-ven is like a rabid animal, and the only thing that can stop her is the flame. Clarke says, “If you let Raven die, you’ll never get it.” A.L.I.E. may be willing to gamble with Raven’s life, but not the tech. So she tells Raven to let them help her.

After Clarke resets her shoulder like she’s a bad ass Callie Torres and redresses her wounds (the dirty rags they use for wound covers will never not bother me), she says they should take shifts watching Raven. Jasper is not up for taking orders from Clarke though and makes that immediately clear.

Guess he doesn’t forgive you for murdering his girlfriend,” R-AI-ven says. This possessed woman is all about making things uncomfortable. While Jasper goes outside to cry (aww! Jasper has been waiting for someone to give him a hug since 301!!), she starts in on Clarke: “Do you ever see their faces… of all the people you’ve killed?” Clarke tries to ignore it — she’s able to stay calm when R-AI-ven blames her for Wells’ death and Finn’s death, but she starts to falter when she says, “I bet you got Lexa killed, too.” Thanks to Abby being in the hive mind, R-AI-ven is really able to go in for the kill: Clarke’s dad’s death.

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Clarke can’t listen anymore and tries to gag her, but R-AI-ven bites her arm. Clarke gets so mad she yells, “We’re going to fry you,” as the guys pull her from the room. And that is when A.L.I.E. and Raven piece together what the gang is doing and where they are going…

Sinclair and Monty did some backward engineering to figure out what Raven was trying to do with the wristband: create an EMP. With the wristband from Niylah in hand, all they needed was an electromagnet, which they could get from the Drop Ship. So Monty and Octavia, a somewhat unlikely pair, go to retrieve it.

NEXT: What happens at the Drop Ship, stays at the Drop Ship​

On the way there, Monty confronts Octavia about wanting to leave the group. In a very Jack Shephard move, Monty tells her, “We’re your people. We were sent down together. We survive together.”

Octavia tells him she felt at home only with Lincoln, that she doesn’t belong anywhere else. “I’m nothing,” she says. “You’re one of the 100,” Monty reminds her. It was such a simple statement, but it really hit me — although, it didn’t hit Octavia. “Not anymore,” she says.

Thanks to the hive’s ability to act collectively, Monty’s mom is at the Drop Ship to greet them. She hugs him and pretends that she’s acting of her own accord. And even though Monty knows this isn’t his mom, he’s still just a teenager who wants to know why his mom almost got him killed. “How could you turn me in?” he asks her.

It’s heartbreaking — but Monty knows he won’t get the answer he wants out of his AI-possessed mom. To prove this, he asks her what his dad’s favorite color was. When Hannah doesn’t answer, Monty says it was brown, the color of Hannah’s eyes — and that’s not something you forget … unless you have swallowed a City of Light key.

A.L.I.E. can’t let the two of them leave with the electromagnet, so Hannah fights back while trying to get Monty to take the City of Light pill himself. Hannah ends up getting a sword to Octavia’s throat. Monty’s yelling at her to stop, but when she doesn’t, he shoots his mother in the shoulder.

And lest you forget, there’s no pain in the City of Light, so it doesn’t slow Hannah down a bit and she makes contact with the sword on Octavia’s neck, so Monty has to shoot her in the chest and race back to Niylah’s. Oof. Y’all know I wanted Hannah to die, but NOT LIKE THIS.

A.L.I.E. knows that the electromagnet is on its way, but she hasn’t given up hope R-AI-ven can break her friends. So after picking at Clarke’s emotional wounds, Bellamy goes next. “I’ll let her beat me up for a while,” he says. R-AI-ven is basically just like, hey remember when we had sex? “There’s not much to talk about anyway.” The AI’s got jokes!

While Bellamy’s in the room with the shell of their friend, Clarke and Jasper are left alone together. There’s been tension throughout the episode, obviously, and Clarke uses this time to finally apologize. She says she never wanted to hurt Maya, but he just says, “Shove your regret up your ass.” Jasper goes back into the room with R-AI-ven; apparently he’d rather take emotional abuse from her than be around Clarke for another second. And then R-AI-ven asks a great question: “Why do you give Bellamy a pass for murdering your girlfriend?” Then she needles into him about how he’s so sensitive about losing Maya when everyone has lost someone, how he used to steal other people’s medicine on the Ark, how he’s ultimately selfish. Look at R-AI-ven with all these season 1 deep cuts!

Then Bellamy takes his turn again. Raven wonders why Bellamy never takes credit for the massacres he’s been responsible for: Mt. Weather, the culling on the Ark, Gina, the Grounder army. And, unfortunately, Niylah overhears this in the room next door and realizes a person responsible for her father’s death is in her house. She bursts into the room and slaps him. Obviously this isn’t great for those of us hoping Niylah would join Team Skaikru, but the bigger implication is that A.L.I.E. sees her face and instantly knows where they are. “Help is on the way, “ A.L.I.E. tells Raven.

NEXT: Save Raven, Save the Ground​

Frustrated, Bellamy goes outside and starts punching things. Niylah follows him and asks if that helps him feel better. He again tries to reason away what he did, but he does say he’s sorry. “People like you always are,” she says. He doesn’t have time to reflect on that because Octavia and Monty — looking very worse for wear — are back.

All they have to do is connect the battery to the device Sinclair has set up and put the wristband on Raven. A.L.I.E. tells her she won’t be able to get her help before they do this — and Raven knows too much — so R-AI-ven starts banging her head against the headboard in an effort to kill herself.

Clarke whips out the flame and says if R-AI-ven stops, she’ll give it to her. While she pauses to consider this, they’re able to slap the wristband on Raven’s arm. Amid R-AI-ven pleading that it will damage her brain, they flip the switch. The first attempt fails because the battery isn’t strong enough, but the second time — using the rover battery — it works. Kind of. Raven screams and passes out … she still has a pulse, but they can’t get her to wake up.

In a fit of rage against the world, Jasper takes Clarke’s precious flame and attempts to smash it. “It’s Lexa!” Clarke screams just before he destroys it. He stops — and it gives Clarke an idea: They need to remove the AI from Raven just as Titus did from A.L.I.E. So Clarke slices open the back of Raven’s neck … at first nothing happens and then it turns to silver. Once the silver stops running, Raven coughs and says “ow.”

She feels pain — which means the real Raven has returned. Praise! (I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if she hadn’t survived.)

As the episode is ending, Jasper hands back the chip to Clarke because he couldn’t do the same thing she did to him; Monty realizes he might have been able to save his mom; Octavia is borrowing some sexy new clothes from Niylah; and Bellamy is like, “Guys, we gotta go!”

Clarke apologizes to Niylah for not being truthful about Bellamy, but then tells her to leave the outpost as well. Before they leave, Bellamy takes a moment to reflect on his actions of late. He asks Clarke, “What do you do when you realize you might not be the good guy?” She replies, “Maybe there are no good guys.”

I love that Clarke used her mother’s words of wisdom from the season 2 finale, and I recognize that there are a lot of gray areas when it comes to the Ground and war and whatnot — but I think it’s been pretty firmly established that what Bellamy did was wrong. Killing people in their sleep is wrong. Period. I appreciate that Bellamy’s finally realizing what he did was not good, but I hope his rehabbing isn’t done quite yet.

As they load up the rover, Raven tells them she knows why A.L.I.E. wants the second AI so badly: “It’s the only thing that can stop her.”

“Then let’s stop her,” Octavia says. “We survive together.”

THE GANG IS BACK TOGETHER.

But of course, here’s Jaha to ruin everything: He’s in the City of Light with A.L.I.E. Now that the news of the second AI is out, they decide the only solution is to kill them all. Good luck! Because when these kids work together, they become a pretty formidable force.

What did you guys think of “Nevermore”? Are you heartbroken for Monty? Do you think Bellamy has learned his lesson enough yet? How sweet was that moment when Sinclair said Raven was all he had left!? What do you think Miller, Bryan, and Harper are up to? But most of all: HOW GREAT WAS LINDSEY MORGAN!? Hit the comments below with your thoughts or talk to me on Twitter @realdalener.