What are our 15 saddest deaths on The 100? Check out our ranking!
Love or hate the series, The 100 has had a devoted following throughout its seven-season run, but it was also plagued by controversy.
Much of this largely stemmed from its handling of death with certain characters and the sheer amount of grim, dark storytelling that rarely allowed for moments of catharsis, joy, or hope the longer the series went on.
It’s very difficult to discuss The 100 without also talking about loss. The series and its characters are defined by death, whether it was executed by their own hands, the hands of others, self-sacrifice, or suicide. As such we’ve compiled 15 of the saddest deaths on The 100.
To give some perspective on our selections, our interpretation of sad includes fan reaction, impact on the show’s direction, and consideration of common harmful tropes. We’ll be ranking from sad to saddest, but before we begin, let’s start with an honorable mention.
Honorable Mention – Clarke Griffin
Technically, Clarke Griffin survived the series but that doesn’t mean her character was anything but a dead woman walking in the final season.
Let’s be clear. Clarke is the heart of The 100. Since the beginning, her choices have had a major effect on storylines in positive and horrific ways. She was the driving force of the series who carried the weight of decisions that shaped the lives of her people and her loved ones. But if you’ve watched season seven then you know that the Clarke the audience fell in love with was barely a part of the story.
Relegated to the sidelines, Clarke Griffin was an afterthought in The 100‘s last run on our screens. Arguably, she could have died in season six and not much would have changed in the final season. Think about it. Out of all of the storylines that make up the last 16 episodes of this beloved show, Clarke wasn’t at the head of any of them. Minor characters and antagonists were.
She was absent for much of the Sanctum arc which was lead by Murphy, Emori, Indra, and Sheidheda. The Bardo/Sky Ring arc was led by Octavia, Hope, Echo, Diyoza, and Cadogan. If we’re being generous, Clarke was a part of the effort to find Bellamy, but if you cut out her journey from Sanctum to Nakara to Bardo and just had her be abducted and sent to the planet nothing really changes.
In the end, Clarke wasn’t even the character that saved the world. The one thing that is usually the case on The 100–Clarke’s propensity for being the clutch member of the crew who saves the day–didn’t happen. Raven and Octavia ensured their people ascended while Clarke lamented her losses and cradled her daughter in her arms. She gave up, something Clarke rarely does for long and certainly not with her people’s lives hanging in the balance.
We’ve included Clarke Griffin as an honorable mention on this list because of character assassination. It is sad that as lead, Clarke was given so little to do and was written so far out of character that she was nearly unrecognizable. For such an impactful and meaningful character to be written in a way that makes her unnecessary to her own show in its final season is not only disappointing, and disheartening, but also infuriating.
She became a shade of her former self and the series is poorer for it. In my experience, if you’re a fan of Clarke Griffin, season seven is basically unwatchable. I’m glad she survived to the end, but the Clarke in season seven is not the Clarke of seasons one through six. She’s just not.
While Eliza Taylor delivered a performance that raised the quality of what she was given by leaps and bounds, it’s incredibly unfortunate that the stand out sci-fi character she played had an ending like this. No one would have imagined a lackluster finish for Clarke Griffin especially when the only thing that makes her a hinge pin in the final season is the murder of a big bad and her best friend, two deaths done for shock value. So, Clarke is alive, but the character we knew is very much dead.
15. Anya kom Triku
Back before Lexa stole the hearts of many The 100 fans, Anya kom Triku was the first leader of the grounders that we were introduced to in season one. Sarcastically referred to as “grounder princess” by Raven Reyes, her position of authority was well recognized by the delinquents despite the irreverence.
Anya presented a challenge to the space-born Earthlings who failed to understand the animosity and violence directed toward them by the grounders. She held them responsible for the torture of Lincoln and the burning of a village which was collateral damage in the wake of the flares they had sent up when trying to signal to the Ark.
To her and her people, the delinquents were nothing but invaders. Still, after many battles of will and an actual fistfight, Anya and Clarke came to an understanding. The beginnings of an alliance was started after Clarke rescued Anya from Mt. Weather and proved herself capable of handling her own and outsmarting her.
Then Anya was shot by a Camp Jaha guard effectively killing the new alliance and ending her presence on the show. Her significance lived on in her connection to Lexa who was her second as a child.
Anya is on this list because of thrown away potential. Her story abruptly ends. She’s shot for shock. While not the first character to be tossed aside by The 100 writers without regard, it was sad to see her go in such a way when she was one of our first introductions to the grounders and their culture.
Not to mention Dichen Lichman was wonderful in the role and it would have been interesting to see how Anya was as a liaison between Skaikru and the Commander. What a waste of an Asian woman of color in a leadership position within a futuristic post-apocalyptic show. Sour grapes doesn’t even begin to describe our feelings.
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.
13. Finn Collins
Funnily enough for a character who only makes it through one and a half seasons, Finn Collins was a polarizing character in The 100 fandom. And to this day is not looked back on fondly especially by bellarke fans.
Some of it has to do with the writing choice to only put ten days between when the delinquents landed on Earth and he fell for Clarke, and when she found out about his girlfriend and mega genius, Raven Reyes. It caused strife in the storyline and put two great female characters in a lopsided love triangle very few people wanted.
Though a big part of it also has to do with the way Finn died and a complete reversal of his initial characterization which was a peace-making pacifist.
See, if you remember, Finn slaughtered 18 grounder villagers in his quest to find Clarke in season two episode five “Human Trials”. And then Clarke and crew spent the next three episodes dealing with the consequences of his actions until he was mercy killed in episode eight, “Space Walker.”
It was frustrating watching them bend over backwards to save him and seemingly not require any sort of punishment to be enacted on him for what happened. He also had a severe lack of sufficient remorse considering Finn killed in the double digits and his season oneself would have been absolutely devastated and trying to make amends from the get-go.
Obviously, struggling with that writing choice becomes hypocritical later on in the season when Clarke lets a bomb drop on TonDC in order to preserve the mission in Mt. Weather and then participates in genocide, two actions that do not have consequences resulting in punishment.But Finn’s slaughter of the grounder villagers is the first onscreen mass killing of innocents in the series so our reaction to it was quite strong.
Anyway, Finn is on our list because love him or hate him, the pain both Clarke and Raven went through at his loss was heartbreaking. Raven’s desperation to save him and Clarke deciding safety could only come at the end of her knife was a lot to handle as a viewer. His death also haunted Clarke in the rest of season two and pushed her to make decisions she would later regret.
12. Finn’s slaughter of the villagers
It seems only right to include The 100‘s first violent en masse killing of innocents on our list. Up “Human Trials,” mass death in the show was either a consequence of technology failure, self-sacrifice, or an act of war. But then Finn took a gun into a grounder village he believed was holding his friends hostage and started firing when a grounder he’d rounded up tried to escape. He only stopped once he saw Clarke enter the village but by then 18 grounders were dead.
The 100, for the majority of its run, dealt with heavy subject matter such as trauma and its effect on the human psyche. In large part, the series explored how far its characters were willing to go to protect one another and what actions would push them to the brink. Survival sits at the core of the show’s narrative but so does a willingness to sacrifice the lives of others to save the people you love.
Finn’s slaughter of the grounder villagers is one of the only depictions of a senseless murder in the show. It was reactionary and meaningless in the sense that he seemed to have lost the ability to control himself. Therefore, his killing spree was a manifestation of the stress his mind had been under since being dropped on Earth and witness to war and death.
Ultimately, Finn paid for his actions, but we’ll never forget the look on his face as all of those people died.
11. The Mt. Weather genocide
Since we’re on the topic of mass killings, we can’t do a list of saddest deaths in The 100 and not include the Mt. Weather genocide. While the society itself was abhorrent, the slaying of over 300 people including children and the Mountain Men helping Bellamy to set the Skaikru and grounder captives free, was hard to stomach.
We spent a good portion of the season with Maya Vie, a young woman who worked in the medical ward assisting with decontamination and quarantine breaches. It was her knowledge of the facility and courage to embrace her family legacy of rebelling against the blood treatments taken from unwilling grounders that enabled Skaikru to defeat Mt. Weather. But it came at a cost.
Though she chose to break from a societal system that kidnapped grounders to use as living blood banks, she, at one point, was not only a part of that system but helped it succeed. As such, Maya was not granted a living redemption by the narrative, and she died in Jasper’s arm.
The Mt. Weather genocide was difficult because it was the first time an entire society was killed and three of our heroes made that decision. They literally pulled a lever and hundreds of people died of radiation. Talk about a season-ender with “Blood Must Have Blood Part 2.”
10. Madi Griffin
Like Clarke, Madi got shafted in season seven and was nearly unrecognizable. The young girl we met in season five who killed the Eligius prisoners that were about to murder spacekru was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the writers reduced her to a scared child who only wanted to live a normal life and couldn’t seem to make decisions.
It’s not that we begrudge Madi wanting to break from a culture that demanded she sacrifices her childhood, and potentially her happiness, in order to lead grown adults at the tender age of twelve. It’s that her fierce sense of protectiveness and importance to the narrative vanished when the writers stopped caring about her story in any significant way.
And when Madi did return to the focus of a storyline it was to once again be the victim of Clarke’s decision to kill people in order to keep her safe including Bellamy , a man she knew to be her mom’s best friend and who she trusted because of all the stories she heard about him from her.
Madi’s inability to shoulder the weight of Clarke’s willingness to sacrifice all she holds dear to protect her is what led Madi to surrender her mind to Cadogan. Consequently, she lost motor function and became trapped in her own body.
Clarke spoke of her as if she were already dead introducing an uncomfortable element into the show that suggested because Madi was now disabled, her life was essentially over. Mind, Madi could hear her mother despite being unable to respond and if Clarke had used the M-Cap machine she may have been able to speak with her in some form.
Not only was this sad but when she ascended in “The Last War,” Madi chose to live out her existence as some kind of hive-like sentient mind light instead of returning to Clarke because she didn’t want a life a life where there was no one her age to fall in love with. It was a nonsensical ending for a character that deserved so much better than what the final season gave her.
9. Charmaine Diyoza
Out of all the character’s on this list, the scene-stealing Charmaine Diyoza has the most satisfying death. We’re aware that’s an odd thing to say about a character we thoroughly enjoyed, but we mean it sincerely. Diyoza’s death in “A Little Sacrifice” made sense for her character. She sacrificed her life to ensure her daughter, Hope, didn’t commit a horrible act of genocide, an action she’d attempted to take out of anger and despair over all Cadogan and his followers had stolen from her.
Diyoza is the definition of doing better. She was a terrorist whose initial fight to save America from a fascist regime warped into multiple attacks claiming the lives of innocent citizens. Her regret over her actions led her to a desire to start over and give her daughter a life without fighting and impossible decisions.
Though Diyoza was unable to shield Hope from a traumatic childhood, her sacrifice prevented her from making a mistake she couldn’t take back. Genocide as shown through both Bellamy and Clarke after season two has a lasting effect on those who commit it in the series even when they’ve justified the reason to themselves.
We were sad to see Diyoza go despite her death being a chance to give Hope what she didn’t have, an opportunity to be pulled back from the ledge without the blood of hundreds on her hands. Still, the last scene between the mother and daughter duo was heart-wrenching.
8. Abby Griffin
Granted Abby’s character changed so much from season to season, and Clarke adopted her worst traits as a mother, but her death in “Adjustment Protocol” was brutal.
The Sanctum plot consisting of body-snatching was unsettling, to begin with as was Abby’s choice to go along with it to keep a version of Kane that no longer inhabited his original body. As such, the narrative lashing back and subjecting Abby to the same fate as the man who sacrificed his life for Kane’s make sense but it was still a shocking and awing moment.
When she entered the room and it was clear that wasn’t Clarke’s mom anymore, and we got chills. The 100‘s intensity elevates each season, as does the trauma they put Clarke through, and taking her mother in this manner was a lot.
Remember, Clarke had been body-snatched herself and would have died had she not been saved by Bellamy. She only got to hug her mom and check-in before going off to save the day as Clarke is wont to do in most of the series. She, however, could have never guessed it would be the last time she would see Abby. And then she had to push her mother’s body out of an airlock and into space in order to stop the Lightborns from killing more people so they can live for hundreds of years.
The further we get into this list, the worse it gets, y’all. It’s like walking down tragedy lane and reminiscing just how much this show put its characters and audience through. And we’re only halfway done.
7. The Culling
The Culling in “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” is our last mass death on the list, but it’s the first one on the show and the only one of its kind. It’s also very difficult to talk about without getting teary.
See, in season one, much of the Ark’s plot hinged on the storyline that the space station was running out of oxygen. It’s the entire reason the delinquents were sent to Earth to see if the planet was a viable means of escaping their fate. The problem, however, is the Ark Council didn’t believe in transparency because they feared a revolt by the public.
Kane and Jaha planned to quietly kill the Arkers in one section by shutting off the oxygen while they slept. This way they could claim that it was a tragic accident without having to tell their people that they have to cull 320 members of the station in order to give themselves more time to find a solution to the decreasing oxygen levels in the Ark.
Unable to let this happen, Abby releases the video of her husband, Jake, talking about the oxygen shortage. He’d been executed in his attempt to tell his people what was going on. But instead of mass hysteria, people volunteered to give up their lives to give their loved ones more time.
320 Arkers made the ultimate sacrifice in a selfless act to save their people. The Culling is the only time in The 100 where a mass death was done willingly in order to save others. It’s the one point in the series where faith in the capability of selflessness in humanity is given space to be believed in without cynicism and with overwhelming proof.
6. Monty Green
Monty is the only character on this list who didn’t die tragically, but his death in “Damocles Part 2” was nonetheless sad.
At the end of season five, after another nuclear bomb hit Earth, every surviving human would have to wait ten years for the planet to be habitable again. Everyone but Monty and Harper chose cryosleep to pass the time quickly. Those two, however, decided to wait out the time together and experience the peace they’d had in their six years in space after the last time Earth was radiated.
But ten years turned into decades. The Earth did not become habitable. The pair put their son, Jordan, into cryosleep so that he could have a life outside of the two of them like he wanted. Though they still didn’t go into cryosleep or wake up their friends to help them decode the Eligius III mission files.
No, Monty and Harper lived out their lives as survivors who chose peace over more fighting and wars and hardships that stemmed from seemingly endless murders and killings.
In his final video to his friends, Monty was able to present them with a new planet. One where they would have the chance to start over and do better, something he’d always wanted for his people. It was a beautiful ending to his character but deeply upsetting for fans who’d been with him since season one.
5. Wells Jaha
The murder of Wells Jaha, the prince of the Ark, at the hands of a grieving twelve-year-old in the third episode of the first season, is why some Black viewers either immediately tuned out of the show or decided not to tune into the series altogether.
It is disturbingly common for Black characters to die violently in genre fiction. Wells’ death is particularly upsetting because of his innate goodness and determination to see the delinquents through the difficulty of being on Earth.
In “Earth Kills,” Charlotte murdered Wells in an effort to slay her demons. Meaning a boy whose entire characterization was based on wanting to help people got likened to evil because of the actions of his father. And subsequently paid for it with his life and died alone after just reuniting with Clarke who found out he wasn’t responsible for her father’s execution and only took the blame for it so she wouldn’t be angry with her mom.
Black characters dying for shock value, and in an effort to protect or renew white innocence, isn’t new. It’s just ever more hurtful each time that it happens especially when what should be a significant passing isn’t treated as such.
Wells was Clarke’s best friend but the episode following his death centered more on saving and protecting Charlotte as well as on blaming others. And while Charlotte decided to kill herself in the end, it just all seemed to be too much and infuriating because the narrative quickly moved on on the ground as if he never really mattered.
4. Jasper Jordan
Jasper’s death is one of the most tragic of the series because after two seasons struggling with depression because of the Mt. Weather genocide and the loss of Maya, he commits suicide.
Fans dealing with their own issues with mental illness took Jasper’s death in “The Other Side” hard because he lost his fight to stay alive and there was almost a romanticized quality to the writing around his passing. While the narrative doesn’t agree with his choice, the communal suicide decision he initiated was done via a massive party. One last hurrah before death.
It was twisted and heartbreaking to see that many young people give up on life. When Monty found Jasper, he was nearly gone, and the audience had to watch as these two best friends said goodbye. Devon Bostick and Christopher Larkin’s performances were astounding, making the scene even more devastating.
Jasper started the series as an optimistic and mischievous teenager with a happy disposition who loved having a good time and creating things with Monty. But he ended his series run as a disillusioned and disenchanted young man who had seen too much death and didn’t think life was worth living anymore if he had to live in such an endlessly violent world that required him to sacrifice over and over again in order to survive.
There aren’t too many fates sadder than Jasper’s on The 100.
3. Lincoln kom Triku
Setting aside behind the scenes matters that made Lincoln’s death a reality in the series, the imagery involving his execution in “Stealing Fire” was jarring considering the deaths of Black men across America at the hands of those in authority.
Pike shot him in the head and left his body to lie in a puddle. It’s a graphic image that is meant to have an emotional reaction and it did. The story around Pike is frustrating because, as we mentioned earlier it’s about xenophobia and fascism but it’s perpetuated by two men of color, and its victim is also a man of color who dies at the command of the state.
There’s so much wrong with that arc’s entire structure, and the fact that Lincoln dies in that manner is abhorrent. He dies in a way that Lincoln would, by sacrificing himself to save others, but the violence enacted on his body too much.
Lincoln spent the season as a victim of an authoritative government and died because of it. He was alienated from his people and was executed in front of his love, Octavia. His death was the kind that would make skin crawl because he was another character who only wanted peace for everyone and a way to co-exist without fighting all of the time.
2. Bellamy Blake
*deep breathes* Once again, putting aside behind the scenes matters, a man of color was killed violently on The 100 and this time it was the male lead. Regardless of how you feel about Bellamy, getting shot in the heart by his best friend Clarke after falling prey to a cult was just not it in terms of satisfying character deaths.
Not only was Bellamy noticeably absent for the majority of the final season, his death in “Blood Giant” made absolutely no sense. Clarke shoots him after he already handed off Madi’s sketchbook to a fellow disciple, and she doesn’t even manage to get the sketchbook back in the end. He just dies alone, betrayed by one of the people he loves most, and no one but Madi is even mad about it.
Bellamy makes it onto our list as a sad death because it was a pathetic end to his character on a show that spent a good portion of its narrative time on him and his storylines. Talk about throwing character development and a whole missing persons plot that ended up being useless in the garbage for the sake of shock.
Not to mention, no one he loved tried to save him from himself with more than a singular conversation about his choices. It was bizarre. Echo, Octavia, and Clarke spent more than half the season trying to reunite with Bellamy, but when they finally did all the fight went out of them when he actually did need saving.
The plot clearly usurped character here and it was glaringly obvious.
1. Lexa kom Triku
You probably guessed Lexa’s death would be ranked the saddest on our list. Her accidental murder by her fleimkipa Titus just hours after Clexa made love for the first time was not only tragic but traumatic for a large swathe of The 100 fan base.
It triggered a backlash that reverberated through fandom. People who weren’t even viewers of the show weighed in on the writers’ handling of her character, her death, and the aftermath of her loss both in the show and outside of it because she was a lesbian character.
A much-needed conversation about the “bury your gays” trope entered the mainstream immediately after “Thirteen” aired and devastated fans took to social media. An outpouring of grief, the likes of which those involved with the series did not anticipate, flooded timelines and feeds.
Lexa’s death forced showrunner Jason Rothenberg to contend with a writing decision that played into a harmful trope that hurt his audience. Fans weren’t only grieving Lexa’s loss, they were also expressing their fury over being subjected to yet another depiction of an LGBTQ+ character whose life ends abruptly and violently directly after a moment of happiness and love.
No matter a writer’s intention, the message when that happens is that LGBTQ+ people will never have access to love. That even in fictional worlds, they cannot count on lasting happiness like their straight and cis counterparts. It’s a message that can affect a person’s mental health and their ability to see a future for themselves. It’s also a message that is harmful because it’s not true.
It’s a skewing of reality for LGBTQ+ people who live full, happy, and loving lives in their communities, with their families and friends. Their partners, spouses, and children. And it’s a message that makes it very difficult for teens and young adults who are struggling with their identity to feel seen and valued by mainstream storytellers who use the deaths of the characters that represent them for shock and buzz.
In the wake of Lexa’s death, a movement centered on educating people about harmful tropes written time and again for LGBTQ+ characters and advocating for better representation for the LGBTQ+ community in media was started. LGBT Fans Deserve Better was birthed from this movement and so was the fan convention, Clexa Con.
Out of pain came action but that doesn’t mean the circumstances weren’t incredibly sad for all the fans who were hurt by the death of Lexa kom Triku, Commander of the 12 coalitions, and lover of Clarke Griffin.