The 100 4×04 Review: A Lie Guarded

After it turned out that the secret bunker Clarke, Bellamy, and Jaha went searching for in last week’s episode of The 100 was useless, but that there was hope in nightblood, I really wanted to believe that “A Lie Guarded” would be an episode about searching for a permanent fix and nothing more.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. While Abby, Raven, and their hodgepodge group of Skaikru people and Grounders did find their way to Becca’s secret lab, there was so much else going on in “A Lie Guarded” that this small triumph seemed almost pointless. Of course, this isn’t the first time that The 100 has piled up too many plots at once, but at the moment I seriously wonder how they can keep going from season to season when the writers seem intent on using up all of their conflicts as soon as possible.

“A Lie Guarded” could have easily focused on one specific story, perhaps even two, but instead the episode jumped back and forth between things going downhill in Polis to the Skaikru people finding out about Clarke’s list to the life-and-death fight with ALIE’s drones on the island…and the latter even included some back and forth about Luna, as well! Everything seemed rushed, most of it wasn’t fleshed out very well, and I can’t even imagine how messy the next couple of episodes are going to be.

They threw in a couple of deaths for good measure – Bellamy’s hunting buddy Doug (who even is Doug, anyway? no really, were we supposed to care about him?) and Nyko (sad to see him go, but not an overly emotional loss). On the other hand, Octavia’s death being a total fake out was predictable and therefore annoying. But hey, kudos to her horse for finding her like that, on the riverbank who knows how far from the cliff she walked off of.

I also can’t help but think that Roan is jumping the gun a bit, going to war with Skaikru…even if he has Bellamy and Kane as captives. True, they weren’t completely honest with him, but man these Grounders and their tempers! (And their lack of foresight.)

Speaking of lack of foresight, why oh why didn’t Clarke have that list locked up somewhere truly safe? Why was it just lying around for Jasper to find when he wandered into the Chancellor’s office to stage a prank? And why did they have to find the list and announce its existence and read off the names in “A Lie Guarded” when, as is VERY clear, this episode had quite enough going on already? I suppose it was nice of the writers to give Jaha some agency again, but the fact that this, the discovery of Becca’s lab, and Octavia’s not-death were all wrapped up in neat little packages left a lot to be desired.

I suppose it’s nice that Murphy is still interesting, at least.

What did you think about “A Lie Guarded”? Was it too much, or just enough? Do you think that Bellamy and/or Kane are truly in danger of being killed off anytime soon? Let us know in the comments!

Author: Tara Lynne

Tara Lynne is an author, fandom and geek culture expert, and public speaker. She founded Ice & Fire Con, the first ever Game of Thrones convention in the US, and now runs its parent company Saga Event Planning.

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