The 100 reveals horrifying, if expected, truth in The Dark Year: Recap

The horrible truth about what took place during the dark year in the bunker was revealed during season 5 episode 11 of The 100.

Over the course of five seasons of The 100, there have been many hard to watch scenes of violence and gore as the characters do whatever it takes to survive. Yet, the reveal of how the people in the bunker had to survive after their protein source was destroyed, ranks as some of the most horrifying scenes of the series.

As many fans correctly theorized, the dark year referred to when the people in the bunker became cannibals in order to survive — a story that Clarke and Madi learn as they work to save Abby from the overdose at the end of the last episode.

It all starts with Clarke being found by McCreary, and coming clean to him about shutting down the eye and that Octavia and Wonkru will be at the valley in six days to attack. McCreary and his men are in no condition to fight a war, they need Abby back on her feet to cure them. His solution is just to give her more pills.

Seeing as that will just kill Abby, McCreary gives Clarke 24 hours to get her mother ready to cure them. Or less McCreary will kill Madi.

Clarke doesn’t actually know how to get Abby ready to work in the time frame McCreary gave her. But, Abby has been through this at least a couple other times and has developed a way to rapidly detox. The only problem is that it tends to stop her heart. It is during all of this that Abby starts to open up about why she started abusing the pills: The dark year and her role in it.

Two years into life in the bunker, a fungus has knocked out the protein crops in the farm. It will take at least at year to replant the healthy crops, but everyone will be dead long before then without protein. So, that is when Abby makes the suggestion that they use the people who die in the fighting pits as their new food source.

At the first dinner with The 100‘s version of Soylent Green an the menu, a large group including Kane decide to starve instead of eating people. Octavia is not going to force her own people to be cannibals, but Abby insists that everyone must eat. If people die of starvation, there will not be enough meat on their bones help feed Wonkru.

Octavia must do whatever it takes to get all her people, especially Kane, on board with the cannibalism plan at any cost. So, at the next dinner, when a man refuses to eat because the meat might be his brother, Octavia shoots him. She start shooting everyone who refuses to eat until Kane agrees to eat the meat.

Guilt over this event has been what is driving both Octavia and Abby’s actions throughout season 5 of The 100 and helps to explain why Octavia burned down the farm. She wants to get away from the horrible memories of what she was forced to do in the bunker. Once Wonkru is in the valley, she can be the type of leader she really wants to be rather than the one she has to be.

But, Clarke has ruined Wonkru’s element of surprise in the name of keeping Madi safe. A choice Madi doesn’t agree with, especially after the flame showed her some of the other not-so-heroic things Clarke has done throughout the show. Clarke knows she is not a hero, but she does whatever it takes to save her people, and now her people is Madi.

Still, word of Clarke siding with McCreary is not sitting well with anybody. Hiding out in a cave, Murphy, Raven, Echo, Kane, Emori, Diyoza and Shaw, warn Bellamy that Octavia is now walking into a trap. Seeing as they can no longer go back to the bunker, they have to find a way for Wonkru to get into the valley without an major battle that will destroy the last livable piece of land on Earth.

A plan that becomes much easier to formulate once Diyoza figures out that McCreary is working off of the detailed battle plans that she drew up. Knowing that, the cave group works with Bellamy and Wonkru to come up with a plan of attack that is less likely to destroy the entire valley.

Except that after the events of the dark year, Kane wants Octavia nowhere near a leadership position anymore. He doesn’t know that it was Abby who pushed Octavia to force cannibalism on everyone. So, the episode ends with Diyoza and Kane approaching a newly cured McCreary about helping him win the battle.

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Some other odds and ends from this episode of The 100:

• Raven and Shaw are now officially an item. Sadly, this show is never very kind to Raven’s love interests. Hopefully, this relationship will end differently of Raven.
• Bellamy is now helping Octavia only because it helps his family and that no longer includes Octavia, only the crew that was in space.
• If the battle goes well, Bellamy has arranged that Spacekru gets 80 acres of the valley. So, Monty can finally grow something other than algae.