'The 100' Cast Talks Season 3: Clarke Gets 'Crazy,' Jaha Is 'The Most Hated Man in America'
Even though the premiere of Season 3 has been pushed back, anticipation for The 100 remains high.
Stars Eliza Taylor, Marie Avgeropoulos, and Isaiah Washington, along with creator Jason Rothenberg, spoke to reporters at San Diego Comic-Con and dropped some major hints as to what we’ll see when the series returns.
Most everyone was tight-lipped about the first episode, though it’s not their fault: The cast has only seen one script. Taylor did say this about Clarke: “I’m going to be getting pretty crazy in the woods by myself. Like, full survival mode.” As for what she’d like to see, she says, “I’d like to see her lose her mind a little bit.” Also, “I cried a lot in Season 2. Like, a lot. I’d like to see her get tougher and more badass.”
“I’d also like to see her find Lexa, because she has some unresolved issues there,” Taylor adds. At the show’s panel, they confirmed Alycia Debnam-Carey, who’s now part of the main cast of AMC’s new series Fear the Walking Dead, will be able to reprise her role.
Related: ‘The 100′ at Comic-Con: Season 3’s Time Jump, Clarke vs. Lexa, and More Scoop
The action begins three months after the end of the last episode, and Avgeropoulos says Octavia and Clarke have some unresolved issues to deal with of their own. With Octavia having finally “found her place in the world,” with the grounders, she says, “You’re going to see, in Season 3, a bunch of new groups introduced to the audience.”
Avgeropoulos hopes that Octavia will get to spend more time with Indra. “Adina [Porter] is such a wonderful actress and woman,” she says, “and we have really good onscreen chemistry together.” Not content to leave it to chance, she says, “I asked Jason to write us some scenes together again.”
Clarke isn’t the only one going dark. Washington says that Jaha is going in the same direction: “I don’t have a clue how the audience is going to respond to this rendering of Jaha.” He’s both worried and elated. Last season, when he read that scene about “Jaha basically saving Murphy and choosing to toss the other individual/supporter/follower off the boat,” he was on a plane. He screamed out loud, terrifying the other passengers. “I was so embarrassed,” he says. But after calming down and re-reading it, “I started laughing. 'Oh my God — I’m going to be the most hated man in America. Oh, I can’t wait to do it!'”
“He still wants to be useful to the arkers,” says Washington, and A.L.I.E. seems to be his key to that. “He still wants to lead, and now he has someone that is in possession of a nuclear warhead. Can you surmise and figure it out? Who’s got the biggest gun now?”
Rothenberg says Season 3 will be epic and also different. “As different from [Season] 2 as two was from one.” The major question they’ll be answering is, “What does it mean to be human?” Obviously, A.L.I.E. represents that theme, but also people are dealing with the “post-traumatic stress of the life they’ve lived since they’ve landed,” Rothenberg says. In particular, after all that Clarke has been through, the question is, “Will she be able to become a human being again?”
“There’s two huge stories we’re telling. One is this AI thing; the other is this continuing grounder/sky peopler conflict. And through that story, we definitely build out the universe,” Rothenberg says. “We’ll understand the clans. People who we’ve mentioned before, we’ll meet. We’ll understand the politics of the situation, what happened before, how they came together into a coalition under Lexa, and what happens — potentially — when it all goes boom. And then the other story — the AI story — will eventually impact that in a really serious way. Then it’s all crazy… er.”
Season 3 of The 100 premieres in early 2016 on The CW.
