**Spoilers ahead**
Released in 2014, The 100 follows a group of one hundred juvenile delinquents on their journey from living in an international space station to living on the Earth, which has been uninhabitable for over a century due to the nuclear war. The main focus is on the main character, Clarke, who is one of the people under eighteen going to the ground with the other members of the hundred. She comes from a family that is deeply intertwined with the politics of the Arc (the name for the space station) because her father was an important engineer. Due to her connections on the Arc with the chancellor, Thelonious Jaha, and her natural leadership skills, Clarke becomes the leader on the ground once she and the hundred arrive.
Once on Earth, the hundred have to face a multitude of challenges. Some of the more obvious ones include finding food, shelter, and water. However, there are aspects about the planet that did not line up with what they were taught in their “Earth Skills” class on the Arc. For example, they soon find out that there is a mysterious acid fog that completely covers the region in which they landed (around what is now Maryland and Washington D.C.) and they discover that there are survivors on the Earth that had managed to survive the nuclear apocalypse. Seasons one and two deal with these themes.
The show follows the characters as they develop new forms of politics on Earth, new relationships with each other, and new relationships with the survivors of the nuclear war (known to us as “grounders”). While Clarke is the main character, with the later seasons, other prominent characters feel just as important as her. This makes the dynamics between characters seem particularly realistic because we get a vast number of perspectives from a diverse group of people. The outstanding acting also adds to this sense of reality.
It would not be right to talk about The 100 without mentioning the continuous theme of womens’ empowerment that flows throughout the show in all of its seven seasons. As I have already mentioned, Clarke is the main character and she becomes the leader of the hundred. In future seasons, we learn that the current political system on the ground (of the “grounders”) is dominated by powerful, warrior women. The best part about this is the fact that the theme is never explicitly mentioned to be empowering to women or giving women power in high-up places. It is simply the way the political system works.
The same is true for the show’s LGBT characters. The creators of the show clearly made conscious decisions to portray gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters as multifaceted individuals without any of the unfortunate stereotypes typically assigned in other television shows and movies. It helps to envision what our future might look like as we progress as a society.