Ranked: The 15 Saddest Deaths on CW’s The 100

14. Pike’s massacre

Season three was a rough one for fans of Bellamy. His grief led him down a very dark path, and the choice by the writers to center a storyline about xenophobia and fascism on two men of color was a poor one.

Episode five of the season–“Hakeldama”–was when things truly started to go off the rails and a powder keg in the form of a massacre killing 300 grounders sent to protect Skaikru went off in the middle of the narrative. It was around this time that it became clear The 100 writers loved killing characters en masse and writing the consequences of such an action, something that would later become redundant and lose its effect due to overuse.

The grounders were killed by a team led by Pike that included Bellamy. Though Bellamy tried to spare the wounded, he could only save Indra whose plot armor allowed her to inform Clarke and Lexa of what happened.

The reason for the massacre was steeped in the fear that should Lexa’s position on the alliance ever change, Skaikru would be surrounded, easily captured, and subject to her whims. Lexa didn’t have a good track record with keeping her word and had broken in it when it came to the failed insurgence at Mt. Weather resulting in Bellamy, Clarke, and Monty committing genocide to save their people.

Pike’s massacre is included on this list because of the sheer amount of death used to send a message. Coalition warriors lost their lives over a possibility, not a guarantee and had done nothing to deserve their deaths. They were killed to showcase that Skaikru was hostile toward the alliance, unwilling to let go of the mass killing they suffered when an Azgeda spy blew up the converted Mt. Weather and didn’t trust grounders to protect them because of previous unprovoked attacks.

The massacre was also a stain on Bellamy’s character that he had to carry for the rest of the series and a brief but costly regression from the leader he had grown to be.