The 100 showrunner Jason Rothenberg talks season 5 plans
By Cody Schultz
Photo Credit: The 100/The CW Image Acquired from CWTVPR
The 100 showrunner Jason Rothenberg on looming character deaths, incorporation of flashbacks, character growth, Season 5’s major threat and more!
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When The 100 returns for its fifth season in early 2018 on The CW, the show will enter a new chapter via a six-year time jump which looks to bring with it a world of change. Dynamics will be shifting. New leaders will rise as others will fall. Death will have claimed the lives of a character or two. Oh, and a new threat lurks in the shadows ready to cause chaos! Needless to say, fans are in for a world of change come Season 5 and have quite a lot of questions about what’s to come.
Luckily, Hidden Remote had the chance to catch up with showrunner Jason Rothenberg in a roundtable style interview this July at San Diego Comic-Con where we had the chance to learn more about what’s ahead in Season 5, discuss the use of flashbacks, discover the new threat which will be at the forefront of the show come Season 5 and more!
Q. With this time jump, is it possible that not every character will have survived?
Jason Rothenberg: Yes, it is possible. I don’t want to tell you who, or if, but six years is a long time. They were only on the ground for 10 months … and a lot of people died while we were on the ground, and certainly they’re not out of harm’s way. Some of them.
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Q. Might we get to see how the past six years have unfolded via the use of flashbacks?
Rothenberg: [Flashbacks are] a pretty big part of the season. There’s a lot of cool stuff that happened during those six years and I don’t wanna just talk about it. Especially the things that were formative, that turned Octavia into the Octavia we will see when the door opens and we go down there for the first time.Things under the ground got really, really… I mean it’s almost redundant for me to say ‘dark’ when we talk about this show, but things got really different when they found out that they were trapped. They could have been out for a year. Same thing in space. And they’re not back yet and there’s a good reason why. And the psychology is very different for somebody that knows there’s a five-year… I’m out in five. I can live through that. But if I’m here forever, I’m gonna behave differently.
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Q. Which character’s growth are you most excited to dive into this season?
Rothenberg: I always get excited about the new characters just because as a writer it’s fun to create new characters. We’re gonna meet three really powerful new characters. For me, [though], it’s always about Bellamy, Clarke, Octavia… their changes are pretty extreme this season and it’s been fun to write.
Those three in particular this year, they’re the sort of extreme change-ies. And so it’s been really fun so far this year to see how far I can push that, to see how much we can change a person from what we know of them and still have it feel like that person and not feel out of character.
Q. Can you tell us anything about the major threat the characters will face in Season 5?
Rothenberg: The thing about this season is that the Earth is survivable now. The radiation levels are down and you can breathe the air, but it’s still mostly wasteland except for this sort of Garden of Eden that Clarke has found her way to. The prison ship has come down into it and there will be lots of people aboard that ship who want this garden for themselves. The battle for Eden is an ongoing thread this season.
RELATED: Christopher Larkin reveals his hopes and predictions for Monty
Be sure to check out our complete interview with Jason Rothenberg below for more on The 100‘s upcoming fifth season!
Next: Eliza Taylor previews the evolution of Clarke, time jump changes
The 100 will return in Spring 2018 as part of The CW’s midseason lineup!
Which characters are you most worried might not survive the six-year time jump? Are you looking forward to seeing the flashbacks to the past six years and how they’ve unfolded? Thoughts on the this season’s major threat? Keep the conversation going in the comments section below.