The 100 season 5, episode 2 “Red Queen” killed off an original series regular who had been with the show since the pilot. Showrunner Jason Rothenberg reflects on [spoiler]’s time on the show.

This week’s episode of The 100 marks the fourth time the CW sci-fi series has killed off an original series regular. (I know, it’s a shockingly low number! The others were Finn and Jasper — and technically Lincoln, though he wasn’t initially a regular.)

Article Continues Below

Isaiah Washington’s Thelonious Jaha, former Ark Chancellor, finally succeeded in sacrificing himself to save his people, wounded in a fight with a Grounder and using his last hours to ensure that Octavia Blake accepted Skaikru as part of her newly formed Wonkru.

Related: The 100 showrunner Jason Rothenberg previews season 5 premiere, Monty’s dilemma and more

Ahead of season 5, it was announced that Jaha would no longer be a series regular, which led to most fans assuming that he would be dying in some more-or-less horrific fashion.

But at the end of the day, Jaha died saving his people, surrounded by friends who still cared about him, knowing that he would be leaving a legacy behind both in the form of his words to Octavia, and the twice-orphaned Ethan. For better or worse, Jaha’s exit was actually the least traumatic death scene The 100 has ever done.

Thelonious Jaha put his people first, and he was willing to do whatever it took to save them. He believed that he had to be the one to save them — at times bordering on delusional, at other times well past the point of delusion — but within that capacity, he always acted in what he believed to be his people’s best interest.

Exactly because that uncompromising ruthlessness (and tinge of delusion), Jaha was also an extremely polarizing character in fandom. But I personally always really liked him, and sympathized with the desperation he clearly felt watching the people he had sworn to protect on the Ark dwindle in numbers and face annihilation several times over.

Isaiah Washington did a fantastic job with the role, and his presence on The 100 will be missed. With Jaha’s exit, we are losing one of the original pillars of ‘team adults,’ and an actor whose name and clout drew many viewers to The 100 in season 1 (Washington and Henry Ian Cusick were the actors that initially drew my interest).

To commemorate the end of Jaha’s journey, I asked showrunner Jason Rothenberg to say a few words about what the character has meant for the series, and why they chose to write him out in such a sympathetic fashion in The 100 5×02 “Red Queen.”

‘The 100’ showrunner breaks down Jaha’s death scene and legacy

“Jaha is one of my favorite characters,” says Jason Rothenberg. “I think Isaiah [Washington] is such a good actor, and he really upped the game of anybody he was in a scene with.”

Of course Rothenberg is well aware of the fans’ mixed opinions about Jaha, with many believing him to be an outright villain as opposed to someone fighting the same desperate fight to save his people as most of The 100‘s other leaders do.

“He’s not always been seen as heroic, as far as the story perspective is concerned,” Rothenberg admits. “Obviously sometimes he’s been an antagonist, and other times not. But he’s always been someone who does what’s right, as he sees it, to save his people.”

When it came to writing Jaha out of the series, there were obviously a hundred different ways the writers could have done it. Since the audience knew ahead of time that Washington was leaving (and there’s really not much chance of a character walking off into the sunset on this show), the big mystery was how exactly it would happen, and how gruesome it would be.

But, in what was perhaps the biggest plot twist of “Red Queen,” Jaha’s death was not gruesome at all. In fact, it was downright peaceful.

Choosing to kill a character off gently and with minimal trauma is not something The 100 does often, but in this particular case, Rothenberg worked hard to make sure Jaha’s story ended on a (relative) high note.

“It was really important for me that we were on his side,” Rothenberg explains. “It was important for Jaha to go out as a hero, and for us to feel sad and devastated by his death — as opposed to the way you might cheer for the death of a villain or somebody you don’t like.”

“So that was a priority of mine, and the one big goal that I set out for the writers as we began to break the episode,” he continues. “It needed to be a story that allowed us to feel sad, as opposed to excited, when this character left us.”

In terms of how Jaha’s death might impact the story and the characters moving forward, Rothenberg points to Octavia as someone who might be particularly affected by his final actions.

“What happens between them affects Octavia forever, going forward, it really does,” says Rothenberg. “Ironically, she learns the true meaning of leadership and what it costs and how to do it from the guy who essentially floated her mother, and who is the source of so much of her childhood pain.”

Reflecting on some of Jaha’s best moments on the series, Rothenberg immediately calls back to the incredible chemistry between Washington’s Jaha and Richard Harmon’s Murphy in season 2, which is generally considered one of The 100‘s best unexpected character team-ups.

“That was one of the most surprising, exciting pairings we did, that we definitely rode on for a season,” he says. “And of course Jaha and Henry Ian Cusick’s Kane were great together, from the beginning.”

Although The 100 has come a long way from the pilot, and the cast has changed and grown a lot since then, Rothenberg still remembers the early days of casting and how things changed when Isaiah Washington joined the series.

“Isaiah was the first actor we hired — certainly of the ‘grown-up’ actors — and he added instant credibility to The 100,” Rothenberg reflects. “He was one of the reasons why we were then able to attract actors like Henry Ian Cusick and Paige Turco [Abby]. So I will always be grateful to him for that.”

RIP Thelonious Jaha, and thank you to Isaiah Washington for his work on The 100. I for one will miss the o.g. Ark Chancellor! Look forward to another feature dedicated to Jaha later this week, and check out the full 5×02 “Red Queen” review here.

#JahaOUT