“Anaconda” is episode eight of season seven of The 100.
For once there’s no teaser. The episode opens straight into Clarke and the others coping with what Gabriel told them in the previous episode, “The Queen’s Gambit”, that Bellamy is dead. The door opens and the Shepherd – Bill – is there with Anders and Disciples. Bill says he’s coming in alone and unarmed. His people call him the Shepherd but they can call him Bill. They have him, so let his people go. Clarke agrees.
With Bill alone in the stone room with them, Clarke says she’s seen him before. Bill says she must be Clarke then. Clarke tells the others she knows why the Second Dawn logo was on the burial shroud; Bill says that means they were on Nakara. Which explains the smell. Clarke asks how Bill is here. A very long story.
Niylah asks Clarke who he is in Grounder. Clarke says this is the crazy cult leader who built the bunker they lived in for years. B ill says they weren’t a cult, but a collective of great minds dedicated to the continuance of their race. Bill asks Niylah to speak slower. It’s been there so long and it sounds so different. But the language survived. Is his daughter in the Key? Gabriel explains Bill means the Flame. Bill says that Becca said it would merge with the human mind. Before he burnt her at the stake, Clarke responds. Bill asks if Callie told her that. Clarke recognises his face, knows things she shouldn’t, speaks a language his daughter made up as a child.
In the past, one girl is stitching up the head wound of another. On the news is an article about Becca and Polaris. There’s a knock and the girls hide the illicit substances and medical kit, then the stitcher’s mother enters to tell her daughter, Callie, that her father is calling. She sees the wound on the other girl, Lucy, and compliments Callie on her work. Take the call. Callie tells Lucy to gear up; Treekru needs them.
Callie is talking to her brother, Reese, when her father, Bill, comes on the hologram. They’re arguing about Callie’s choice to drop out of MIT when Bill is told there is a situation. He tells Callie to get her mother, Grace, and tells her mother Anaconda. She asks if it’s real. It is. He’s already sent a chopper. It will be there in five.
Callie is refusing to go with Grace, but Grace shouts at her and gets go bags. Lucy isn’t in the Second Dawn. Anaconda is code for the missiles are already in the air. Callie doesn’t think it’s real; it’s all a lie. It is. Lucy asks if everything is alright and Grace sedates her. It will be better for her this way. Grace asks Callie if she wants to live or not. If she doesn’t, Grace will stay too. As they are on the helicopter, a missile lands and takes out a city. Definitely not a lie. At the bunker, Reese is directing people in and one, whose girlfriend is outside, is choked unconscious. An alarm warns incoming and the bunker is sealed as a missile lands.
Bill is working on the rock. Callie asks if he cares about the 11 billion who are dying. Grace says he cares; he’s just a narcissist with sociopathic tendencies. Bill says that’s the nicest thing she’s said to him in two years. He found the rock at Machu Picchu. There were seven symbols on the wall and seven points chart a course through space (which sounds rather similar to a Stargate). He thinks he’s finally got it. He hasn’t. Grace tells Bill he needs to reassure people. And this family cannot be seen fighting. Reese tells them how many arrived and it seems they have enough supplies.
Callie has gone. In the airlock, the young man who was trying to leave earlier has taken out his guard. He wants to go out and she has the code. Callie agrees, if they put on suits first and get Tristan out of the airlock. She left her best friend to die and there’s room in the bunker. Time to fill it up. Turns out both were at the same protest. Tristan comes too and points a gun; he’s willing to kill the young man. Then Reese and others turn up. Someone is knocking outside, but Reese won’t let them in. Callie wants them to do the right thing together. He says this is.
Most of this takes place in the past and it explains a lot of things, regarding Becca, the Grounders and how the Second Dawn came to be on another planet. And it’s also a backdoor pilot for a potential spinoff series.