To say that many people die on The CW’s new series, The 100, is an understatement. The body count is actually pretty insane and we’ve only seen the first six episodes! The show definitely holds the record for the most deaths in a series on broadcast television. And some of these deaths you will NOT. SEE. COMING.
The futuristic sci-fi drama, which follows a group of juvenile offenders as they learn to survive on an Earth whose populous had been decimated by a nuclear apocalypse, reveals many unknown threats both on Earth and on the Ark space station where the delinquents had been ejected. Though survival may sound simple enough, the challenges faced both on the ground and in space prove extremely difficult.
We spoke with The 100 creator and Executive Producer Jason Rothenberg along with Executive Producer Matt Miller, who spoke about why death on the show was necessary.
“[The show] needs to feel like there’s real-world stakes in it and that important characters can die,” Miller explains. The beauty of having such a large group on Earth is that there is always an opportunity for new characters to be introduced and new characters to potentially kill off, so even if the show focused only on the 100, it could go on for a few seasons and cycle through so much fresh blood.
“Whatever helps keep the actors in line,” jokes Rothenberg about the future fates of the characters on the show. “We want this world to be a world where people die, where the violence is real. There are real stakes, it’s about what kind of world do they want to build and it’s going to hurt sometimes.”
Hopefully when the show does decide to bring forward new characters, their introduction will not feel forced. Remember the disaster that was Nikki and Paolo on Lost? Fans HATED the duo because the two showed up out of nowhere and acted like they were there with the main group the whole time. Had Lost aired the deleted scene that originally introduced Nikki and Paolo, fans would have embraced the pair.
Find out who dies and who survives when The 100 makes its series premiere on Wednesday, March 19, at 9 on The CW.