Technically, Octavia is a personality that shouldn’t even exist. Born in secret, her mom’s defiance of the Ark’s one-child coverage. Pressured to develop up hidden underneath the floorboards of her household’s rooms. The truth that Octavia survives lengthy sufficient to succeed in the bottom once more is pretty wonderful in and of itself. However that’s solely the start of her story. Over The 100’s run, we’ve seen Octavia develop from rebellious teenager to highly effective warrior and hero. She’s saved humanity greater than as soon as – bringing a number of cultures collectively, uniting the clans, and proving that people and Grounders may dwell in relative peace by permitting herself to like Lincoln, a stranger with whom she had little in frequent.
But she’s additionally been a harmful enemy, pushed by rage and grief to take up arms towards the very folks she claims to like. When given the prospect to actually lead, she grew to become a vicious despot who manipulated her folks and refused to tolerate dissent, forcing them to embrace cannibalism with the intention to survive, constructing combating pits the place these she condemned needed to kill each other for sport and destroying the algae farm that may have stored the bunker survivors from going to conflict.
What’s really outstanding about her story, nevertheless, isn’t that Octavia has endured trauma after trauma and nonetheless stored going – that’s the essential hallmark of The 100 at this level. It’s that her character has been allowed to develop and alter on account of the various horrors she’s each lived via and dedicated, and the girl she is now incorporates apparent items of all of the variations she was earlier than. From expressing remorse and sorrow over horrible decisions to studying from these errors and attempting to make higher ones, it’s onerous to call a personality on this present who’s grown extra absolutely into herself than Octavia. (Perhaps Clarke. Perhaps.)
Granted, I don’t know that any of us would have ever guessed that Octavia’s endgame would involve (a version of) motherhood, or that lastly repurposing her rage towards combating for one thing relatively than towards one thing else would supply us with such a wealthy new perspective on her character. Regardless of all of the pacing and focus issues in Season 7, the story of Octavia’s second discovered household has been a real spotlight of this ultimate run of episodes, and few features of this season have been as emotionally satisfying as watching the best way that her love for Hope has allowed her to recalibrate how she feels in regards to the different essential folks in her life.
Her time on Sky Ring not solely allowed Octavia the chance to discover ways to be a father or mother, however the probability to understand how a lot of who she is – and the way she pertains to child Hope – exists due to Bellamy, and the hassle he put into taking good care of her once they have been youthful. Regardless of how troublesome issues could have gotten between the Blake siblings, that is quiet proof of the fidelity of their connection and it’s confirmed a surprisingly shifting solution to hold their bond alive, although the 2 have barely shared the display this 12 months.
