Editor’s Note: TV moves on, but we haven’t. In our feature series It Still Stings, we relive emotional TV moments that we just can’t get over. You know the ones, where months, years, or even decades later, it still provokes a reaction? We’re here for you. We rant because we love. Or, once loved. And obviously, when discussing finales in particular, there will be spoilers:
I was 15 years old when I discovered The CW’s post-apocalyptic survival series The 100.
I found it the same way I reliably find most shows I end up loving: loyal disciples of the series made their way onto my Twitter timeline with GIFs and clips, causing me to instantly open up whatever streaming service it required to begin my binge. At that time, Season 2 of the series had already aired and was streaming on Netflix, and the Season 3 premiere date was set for a mid-January release. That summer, I immersed myself in the world of The 100: the epic questions of humanity and loyalty, the examination of the cost of survival, the quest to actually live instead of just survive, and the true pain of crushing loss and earth-shattering love. I built myself a home both within the forested floors of Earth, amongst the Grounders and Sky People and within the fandom itself. For those not in the know, The 100’s sprawling lore and endless mysteries inspired a Lost-esque, theory-filled fever, causing the fandom to mythologize its characters, creator, and storylines into an all-consuming buzz of love and adoration. That is, until March of 2016, when it all came crashing down.
Let’s rewind: The CW’s The 100, based on the book series of the same name, was an outlier in the teen drama lineup of the once-prolific network. The series follows Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor), the eventual leader of the titular 100 teenage prisoners sent to Earth to determine if it’s survivable decades after a nuclear war sent most of the population to space on a now-failing station. She discovers the horrors and wonders of what’s left on the planet, testing the limits of humanity and compassion through their survivalist journey. As it turns out, the Earth wasn’t uninhabitable or uninhabited, as an entire culture was in place amongst the “Grounders,” a group that hadn’t made the cut to join those in the stars and lived on Earth through the destruction. Season 2 introduced the leader of the Grounders, Heda Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who allied herself with Clarke in order to take down the second season’s Big Bad.
Across her various appearances in Seasons 2 and 3, Lexa became the kind of lightning-in-a-bottle character that inspires a cult ferocity, the type of character that people grow attached to and entire fandom cultures spring up around. And at the time, that was mainly due to her outlier status as a genuinely complex and engaging lesbian character. She was allowed to have a tortured past (her lover was killed at the hands of Brenda Strong’s Ice Queen—a feud that could have carried the series for seasons on end if properly handled) while also remaining strong, depicted as soft and sweet, while still being smart and brutal. With Clarke, Lexa let her walls down and became the picture of a shy, awkward romantic-type willing to give peace a chance because she believed in the musings of this girl who fell from the stars; as a leader, she encompassed all the brutal teachings of the Grounder culture, while ultimately pushing for change, for the betterment of both her people and these new outsiders. She was cunning, she was kind, she was a badass, and she was gay—the complete package for a viewership starved of complex or meaningful characters for years on end.
And the relationship between Clarke and Lexa was just as important, as Clarke’s status as the network’s first bisexual lead elevated their blossoming love story that was so beautifully colored by both respect and betrayal. Their romance continues to develop until, eventually, they consummate their relationship in Season 3’s seventh episode. But, of course, good things just can’t last for lesbians on television, and merely a few minutes later, Lexa is shot and killed by her advisor Titus (Neil Sandilands).
As you can imagine, taking out one of TV’s coolest lesbian characters not in a grand battle but instead at the whim of a stray bullet (hi, Tara from Buffy!) at the hands of her father figure who was actually aiming at her aforementioned lover, did not exactly go over well. The heart-wrenching sequence checks almost every box that separates a problematic slaying of a queer character from the kind of death typical of these survivalist shows: Lexa’s father figure killed her in an attempt to murder her female lover, firmly establishing that her death was a direct result of her queerness, and she died immediately after finally attaining true romantic happiness, a trope that has plagued lesbian characters on television for decades. Even in the context of the series’ penchant for violence and major character death, Lexa’s passing feels particularly cruel, ultimately sending a dismal message that the only end for a leader attempting to make change within a violent culture is, in fact, a violent one. Lexa opened her heart to love and compassion, both for Clarke and for the betterment of her people’s lives, and she paid the ultimate price for it.
After Lexa was killed, the Internet exploded; queer audiences across the globe came together to voice their displeasure at the loss of this character and the problematic nature of the storyline itself. And while Lexa was not the first lesbian character to die on screen that year (27 LGBTQ+ characters were killed off in 2016 across various networks and shows), the combination of multiple senseless deaths and her status as a truly unique lesbian character created the perfect storm that would eventually brew into a revolution. The backlash was so intense that showrunner Jason Rothenberg wrote an open letter to fans apologizing for the storyline, but the wheels had already begun to spin towards tangible change. Many television creatives pledged to be more considerate when killing off queer characters, and The CW eventually went on to become the top broadcast network for LGBTQ+ representation for multiple years in a row according to GLAAD’s yearly reports. Lexa’s death ushered in a new era for lesbian representation specifically, slowing televised deaths and creating an elevated awareness for how lesbians have historically been portrayed on screen.
But while the rest of the television industry was moving on from Lexa’s death through little steps towards real, tangible change, The 100 remained tethered to her demise for the rest of its run. Throughout the series’ remaining four seasons, Lexa would be brought up time and time again, always hanging just around the periphery of Clarke and her storyline. From existing within the mind of Clarke’s adopted daughter to her visage making an appearance in the series finale, Lexa’s end continued to haunt the narrative and never truly allowed The 100 to move on from its biggest misstep, with deep regret echoing through every reference and mention of her name.
It’s a puzzling dichotomy, where the series continued to try to make it right with an audience that all but abandoned The 100 after Lexa’s death, desperately attempting to reconnect with viewers that would never return. And while it was deeply cathartic to see Debnam-Carey don the iconic warpaint and pauldron once again in that last episode, her final appearance only further cemented just how much the series suffered in the wake of her demise and what The 100 could have become if she hadn’t been so unceremoniously cast aside. In many ways, The 100’s inability to move past Lexa and her death is emblematic of the series’ legacy as a whole: while fans will remember the show for what it was (a deeply ambitious and oftentimes messy sci-fi romp), Lexa’s death and the impact it had on queer representation and TV at large will always be the series’ footprint.
More than anything, Lexa’s death still stings beyond words, even all these years later. Whenever March rolls around, I find myself shunted back to that fateful March night, when “Thirteen” aired and changed the television landscape as we knew it; when I began mourning the loss of this fictional character as if I knew her. The reality is that, in some ways, I did know her. I knew Lexa’s kindness through the strangers that became friends in online communities held together by love and admiration for the series and the pairing of Clarke and Lexa; I knew her strength through the confidence she gave me in embracing my own queer identity; I knew her sorrow through the distinct loneliness that often colors a queer existence, one that Lexa herself knew all too well.
For myself and so many other fans, Lexa’s death was the end of more than just a single character; it marked the end of something special created amongst a community and put an arrow through the chest of a character that felt like the future for intriguing and well-done lesbian representation. No matter how much The 100 tried to rectify it, Lexa’s death will always be its shrouded legacy, and even with its net-positive impact on television as a whole, the loss of such an iconic character will remain a wound that just won’t close.
Anna Govert is the TV Editor of Paste Magazine. For any and all thoughts about TV, film, and her unshakable love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you can follow her @annagovert.
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