This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
It's nice to see how far this show's come since the 100 first landed on Earth to the awful tune of Imagine Dragons' Radioactive. Since then, some things have changed and some certainly haven't. In S7, we're presented with a rather interesting plotline that connects elements from previous seasons together -- Becca Franko, the Second Dawn bunker, and the Commanders/Flame. It's a great setup, but once again the show's potential is hampered by poor writing.
Yes, it's another season of "I'm trying to save us" and "we did it for our people" and "this is how we do better," except that being the last season, you'd expect all of this to actually end up somewhere. It takes some time, but we are eventually introduced to the Disciples, another society that Clarke and her friends must destroy, even though they spend most of the season dismissing the Disciples' belief in the "Last War." It seems that all they needed to do was give Cadogan the Flame (which they don't need anyway), except Gabriel destroys it for some reason, meaning that Cadogan now needs to extract the code from Madi's memories. And to prevent the Disciples from getting to Madi, Clarke kills Bellamy (who's now been converted into a Disciple) over Madi's sketchbook, after which Madi voluntarily goes to Cadogan anyway. This was such an asinine plot point that I had to look it up and see if there was a real-world situation going on that led to it...
What all this has in common is low-quality writing. Some characters were simply boring (Echo, Hope, and Jordan come to mind) by nature, but others were specifically ruined by the writers (not just Bellamy, but Sheidheda, who's reduced to a convenient plot device by the end). They manage to make Clarke even more insufferable this season as she continues to do whatever she pleases without any real consequences. The stakes are meant to be high, but it's all an illusion thanks to the impenetrable plot armor she has. After killing Bellamy, Clarke is instantly forgiven by Octavia and Echo, even though the latter had wanted to commit genocide over his apparent death earlier. They explain that it's because Bellamy was already brainwashed by the Disciples, even though everyone buys into the Last War and transcendence in the next few episodes. The very worst Clarke Kent scene was when she hilariously strolls through a hallway full of highly trained Disciples and takes them all out with a few grenades and dual-wielded guns. Even at the end, when she apparently dooms all of humanity by failing the test (which would've made a better ending), it turns out there's an instant redo and everything ends up being ok. In science fiction (not that you could really consider this show sci-fi given that they treat ionizing radiation like a virus), there are generally set rules, constraints on what can or cannot happen. For the last episode of S7, the rules are made up as we go, which absolutely kills the gravity of the plot. Why does Raven stepping in and Octavia delivering a cheesy speech mean humanity gets to un-fail the test and transcend? And what convinced these "aliens" in the end? Because the remnants of humanity stopped a battle that they never needed to fight? If that's all it takes to transcend, I can't imagine what the Bardoans were like to deserve being annihilated.
Worldbuilding-wise, it annoyed me how utterly useless the Disciples were given their training and technology. I mean, they have the equipment to turn invisible on command (best utilized when a group of them take out Sheidheda's entourage in the blink of an eye), yet they must've allowed the "protagonists" to escape half a dozen times, not to mention the countless Disciples that were killed despite them being in a clearly advantageous position. It just undermines the weight of the conflict when a supposedly dangerous faction is made a joke of.
All this is not to say there weren't bright moments, like Murphy and Emori's relationship, the "flashback" episode, and the soundtrack. But all the good is greatly outweighed by the abysmal writing, which makes S7 the worst season, easily. It isn't a crash and burn like GoT S8, but more like going out with a whimper. We deserved better. The 100 deserved better.… Expand