Meta Station

A sneak preview of the Kabby roundtable podcast going up this week! After we'd wrapped up and said our goodbyes, we ended up spending another fifteen minutes just exploding with emotions about how much we love Paige, including the importance of strength through vulnerability, what she means to us as women, why it matters that TV shows invest in complex roles for actresses over 50, and how the Kabby fandom brought us all together. Come feel feelings with us!

P.S. Erin's not here, but Claire is joined by four special guests - Sam, Brittany, Emily and Jenn! You'll meet them properly when the full podcast is released, but for now, please enjoy the post-credits scene that's basically just seventeen minutes of us crying about how much we love women.

Welcome back to Meta Station for our recap of an amazing episode which is simultaneously a heartfelt emotional drama (Indra saying “I love you!” Kane taking care of Abby! Miller and Jackson kissing! Clarke and Bellamy fireside-bonding again!) and a FUCKING HORROR MOVIE (demon sandworms erupting from stomachs! Eligius IV’s very own Hannibal Lecter! Shock collars for everyone!)

Also we’re solidly #TeamIndra over #TeamCooper, we want a whole webisode spinoff of just Madi roadtripping with the Spacekru girls, Erin thinks Blodreina would be a very bad penguin, we’re gonna be super real with you and let you know that Clarke and Bellamy definitely ate people, Raven/Shaw is everyone’s new OTP, the Lincoln parallels are EVERYWHERE, we’re more than a little worried about the looming possibility of an Ethan/Madi murderbaby conclave, Bellamy is Octavia’s Fredo, and “Don’t Do Drugs or You’ll End Up Getting Blackmailed By Serial Killers” is a WAY more effective anti-drug slogan than anything we learned in school.

OMON GON OSON!

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0:00 – Hello and Welcome, Let’s Recap All Our Wild Theories That Have Already Been Proved Wrong This Season, and Discuss Our Remaining Ones

0:07 – Niylah kom Wonkru, Human Butcher?

0:11 – Shit Went Down In That Bunker and Miller and Jackson Do NOT Want to Talk to Clarke About It

0:15 – “We Could Have Used You in the Bunker” Presupposes that the Bunker Wouldn’t Have Fucked Up Clarke as Much as It Did Everyone Else

0:17 – Clarke as the New Lincoln

0:22 – Bring Us ALLLLLLLLLLL the Indra vs Cooper Palace Intrigue, Please and Thank You

0:28 – The Great and Terrible Beauty of “All of Me For All of Us”

0:40 – Octavia, Indra, Bellamy, Niylah, and “Love Is Weakness”

0:49 – Gaia, Nightblood Novitiates, and Blodreina’s Succession Plan

0:58 – Madi, #1 Skairipa Stan, Is Unlikely to Fangirl Quite So Hard Over Blodreina

1:01 – Biblical Plagues, Biological Warfare, and Mother/Daughter Mad Scientists: TIME FOR SOME SANDWORM DISCOURSE!!!

1:10 – Clarke and Bellamy Getting to Know Each Other Again

1:20 – Heads and Hearts and Reversals Thereof

1:28 – Okay So Like . . . This Is For SURE a Love Triangle

1:31 – Give Echo a Great Arc This Season That Doesn’t Screw Her Over in the Aforementioned Love Triangle, Please and Thank You

1:39 – Madi and the Road Trip Adventure Squad Was Everything We Never Knew We Wanted

1:43 – Octavia’s “Love Is Weakness” Delusion Is Not Borne Out By Fact

1:48 – Shaw and Raven, Our New OTP

1:50 – The Sinister Magnetism of Paxton McCreary

1:53 – We Love Charmaine Diyoza With Our Entire Hearts

1:59 – Diyoza’s Achilles Heel May Be Underestimating Shaw and Raven

2:06 – Kabby Fans, Please Ease Your Minds, Kane and Abby Are Not Going to Bang Diyoza or McCreary Except In All the Amazing Fanfic We’re Going to Be Getting This Season

2:10 – Abby the Addict vs. Abby the Scientist

2:18 – It’s So Important That the Addiction Storyline Is Also Being Fair to the Emotional Impact on Kane

2:24 – Mr. Abby Griffin Gets His Political Mojo Back and Then Is Immediately Humbled By Tequila and His Failure to Put a Ring On It, In Our New Favorite Kane Scene of the Entire Series

2:31 – Always Take the Second Shot, Diyoza

Join Erin for a special bonus podcast of flailing over the OTT Bellarke-ness of 503 and 504 with special guests Chash (@chashlet/ponyregrets), Brittany (@bgonemydear), Elizabeth (@leavemearoan/hawthornewhisperer), and Crystal (@wordyblerd)! We talk hugs, mugs, Madi, and--because this IS Meta Station--the nature and challenges of noncanon shipping, the trouble with triangles, and what Roan and Jaha must be talking about in the afterlife!

Hello and welcome back to Meta Station! We picked up this week with all the Raven and Murphy we didn’t get to last time (with bonus soccer and Murphy being an unexpectedly solid bro), and spent a great deal of time falling head over heels for Lieutenant Zeke Shaw (stop trying to make “Miles” happen, show) as he, in turn, fell head over heels for that pain-in-the-ass computer genius thwarting his every plan. We’re also beside ourselves with glee at all the weird mysterious backstory hints we’re getting, from Order Eleven to the missing Eligius 3, and watching with great excitement as the trio of Diyoza/Shaw/McCreary gets more and more messy with every passing day. True to our brand, we spent nearly an hour and a half on Marcus Kane and his relationships with the women at the heart of this episode – Octavia, Abby and Indra – and the way his very existence threatens the entire social and religious structure of Wonkru. (Does Octavia know she’s literally his new Pike? And HOLY SHIT FAM, has he EVER been more relieved to see Bellamy?????) As a wee preview of our upcoming OTP roundtables, we also each gave ourselves a segment to just explode with feelings about our ships: Erin is HYPED that Clarke and Bellamy each have their partner back, while Claire is stoked as hell that Kane and Abby appear to be headed for a season-long arc where they aren’t separated, and we both lost our shit at both the Bravenlarke reunion, and how beautifully the show is nailing Abby’s addiction storyline so far. Plus bonus Blake feels, and fun with Pandora’s Boxes! HOLY SHIT THIS EPISODE WAS GOOD

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0:02 - Murphy and Raven and Useful Uselessness

0:16 - Clarke Is Alive, and the Weight of the World Is Off Raven's Shoulders

0:20 - Clarke Means So Much to So Many, and We Are EMOTIONAL ABOUT IT

0:25 - Season 5 Is Balancing Character with Plot FLAWLESSLY and It Is GLORIOUS

0:32 - We Reject This "Miles" Nonsense

0:35 - Zeke Vs. Raven Was a SHEER DELIGHT

0:43 - Who Changed the Launch Code: Raven or Zeke?

0:47 - Miles Ezekiel Shaw: Already a Double Agent?

0:50 - SPECULATION SPECTACULAR: Raven Edition

0:54 - SPECULATION SPECTACULAR: Eligius Backstory Edition

0:58 - SPECULATION SPECTACULAR: Erin's Grand Unified Shanghaiing Theory of Second Dawn and Order 11

1:06 - SPECULATION SPECTACULAR: "Cure" for What?!?!?! That Creepy Stomach Shit?!?!

1:11 - Diyoza/Clarke Parallels *AIR HORN*

1:17 – McCreary on One Side, Indra On the Other: Fracturing in the Ranks

1:22 – Kane In the Fighting Pit: Myth, Memory, and the Fragility of Blodreina”

1:31 – Octavia Is Not Exactly 100% Pleased to Be Out of the Bunker

1:35 – Kane and the Power of Story, Part 1: Mothers and Memories

1:40 – Kane and the Power of Story, Part 2: Marcus the Dangerous Revolutionary

1:47 – Kane and the Power of Story, Part 3: Forcing Wonkru to Look at Themselves

1:55 – Kane and the Power of Story, Part 4: Rewriting His Own Narrative to Become a Better Man

1:59 – Kane and the Power of Story, Part 5: Forcing Blodreina to Remember Who Octavia Was

2:04 – Bellamy Is NOT Feeling This Whole Metamorphosis Biz

2:16 – If You Didn’t Cry at That Kabby Scene, You’re DEAD INSIDE

2:25 – The Agony of Loving Someone With an Addiction

2:28 – The Last Thing Out of Pandora’s Box Is Abby Griffin

2:39 – Kane and Abby Are the Last Survivors of Their Entire Generation

2:43 – A Bellarke Reunion Scene Uninterrupted by Some Kind of Immediate Crisis? IS IT CHRISTMAS

2:48 – BRAVENLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARKE

2:53 – Other Potential Pandora’s Boxes

What House is Monty? Who would be the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher? Which character does Erin think is the Filch of the Ark? Join us as two Ravenclaws and a Hufflepuff discuss our Hogwarts/Spacekru headcanons.

A pair of brief outtakes to illustrate that A) we are literally twelve years old, and B) it's really all William Miller's fault.

Hello and welcome back to Meta Station, where the takes are HOT and the zombie supersoldiers are COLD, and the jokes are weird because we’re both on book deadlines and slowly losing our minds. Erin unfortunately cannot be with us today, as she is dead, on account of what a motherfucking drama queen Bellamy Blake was when he strode dramatically into the spotlight holding his dad mug aloft to rescue Clarke from death at the hands of Claire’s new MILF crush Diyoza. But prior to her untimely demise from FEELS ATTACKS we had tons of shit to say about everything from the increasingly chilling Season 1 Grounder parallels (somewhere in the afterlife, Anya is genuinely touched that Clarke was paying such close attention), to Zeke Shaw as the show’s second and FAR more successful attempt at the Finn Collins character template, to what in the wide wide world of sports “don’t let Diyoza weaponize the cargo” could mean, to how hard Emori is winning this breakup. Our first two fairly modest nitpicks of the season came into play this week – we’re not wild about the narrative failing to pick a lane with Becho, and Claire would like to see Harper with a little more plot agency – but everything else is still so fantastic that we’re perfectly willing to give those cakes a little more time in the oven and we still have faith they’ll be satisfying in the end. For those of you who like it when we get existential, we spent about twenty minutes talking about religion; for those of you who like it when we’re complete garbage, stand by later this week for an outtake where we lose our shit over William Miller tweeting at Claire that he refers to that gun as “the strap-on.”

Okay team, let’s do this thing. ACTIVATE KODIAK!

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0:00 – Hello and Welcome, ERIN IS LOOPY AS HELL

0:02 – We Already Love the Structure of This Season

0:07 – Grounder!Clarke Takes Us Back to Season One While Reminding Us Why the Term “Mama Bear” Is Not Always a Cute Compliment

0:19 – Jesus H. Christ We’re Gay for Diyoza

0:24 – Introducing Paxton “Graveyard” McCreary, Actual Worst Person on This Show

0:33 – R.I.P. Detroit

0:39 – McCreary vs. Shaw: Chaotic Evil vs. Neutral Good

0:44 – So They DID Solve a Problem Like Finn Collins

0:46 – It’s Ben Franklin with the Key and the Kite (You See It, Right?)

0:50 – “Two Suns, No Sunscreen”: Our Nightblood Eligius Theories Just Took a Sharp Right Turn

0:55 – Hytholodium, Raven, and Order Eleven: Is Kodiak an ALIE-Chipped Super Soldier?

1:03 – “First We Pray”: Diyoza, Gaia, the Bible, and a Lengthy Digression on Religion as Story

1:22 – Abby and McCreary: Lots of Plot Options, None of Them Good

1:27 – Emori Is Really Winning This Breakup

1:35 – When Does Harper Get to Do Something That Isn’t Just Motivating Another Character’s Plot?

1:41 – In Which We Side-Eye the Noteworthy Absence of Becho In This Episode, and Hope the Show Did Not Destroy Tasya’s Twitter Mentions in Exchange for One Kiss and Nothing Else

1:54 – “Murder, Murder, Murder . . .”: GOD THE BRAVEN IN THIS EPISODE WAS LIIIIIIIIIIT

1:58 – Saginaw, Grandpappy Blake and Arthur C. Clarke: Characters Who Know Pre-Praimfaya Earth As a Myth Finally Meet People Who Lived It

2:05 – Sorry, HOW Many People Does Bellamy Have to Decide Whether or Not to Kill, Again?

2:10 – This Episode Was a Masterclass in Dramatic Irony

2:14 – This Bellamy/Madi Team-Up Gives Us LIFE

2:29 – “She Is”

2:41 – We Feel Bad That We Didn’t Get to Talk More About Raven But We’ll Save It For Next Time

Take a journey with us and imagine Bellamy Blake blasting open the bunker doors with McCreary's air cannon only to find his dad in a MURDER PIT while his sister just CHILLAXES ON HER SKULL THRONE 'cause it's just another day in Blodreinaville.

To tide you over until Murphy returns to your screens tomorrow, here's an outtake from our delightful interview with Richard Harmon, where we put him through the same exercise we gave Sachin with "Back to the Future": recasting his favorite movie using characters from "The 100."

Hello and welcome back to a much grimmer and bloodier Meta Station than the one we all enjoyed last week! Claire and Erin and joined by our friend Crystal (@wordyblerd on Twitter), a freelance writer/TV critic formerly of Black Girl Nerds, to scream at the top of our lungs about “The Red Queen,” which shot straight to the top of our all-time series fave lists, for a whole host of reasons: from the small (Miller sparring! Niylah sass! Ovid references! Ark backstory! THE CHANCE TO YELL ABOUT BILL CADOGAN AGAIN!) to the huge (Octavia gets her best episode yet, but R.I.P. Thelonious Jaha, listen to our whole conversation about his storyline here – https://soundcloud.com/meta-station/take-me-to-wells-yu-gonplei-ste-odon-thelonious-jaha).

Along the way, we get the origin story of Blodreina and her scary murder pits, Gaia becomes perhaps the most terrifyingly powerful person in the bunker while Indra starts to have second thoughts, Mackson is everything and we’re emotional about it, we get a new morally gray lady to fall in love with, neither of us can quite pronounce “metamorphoses,” and Kane and Abby face the dark side of every life-or-death decision they’ve ever made (though they do it while handcuffed together and gazing lovingly at each other, because Jason Rothenberg has ABSOLUTELY been reading Claire’s fanfic).

Anyway remember last week when Clarke’s new home was colorful and pretty and had ribbons and fruit and decorations and a cute lil’ family YEAH WELL WE’RE NOT IN SHALLOW VALLEY ANYMORE, TIME FOR BLODREINA TO FUCK UP SOME HARDCORE SHIT, SLAP SOME RED PAINT ON YOUR FOREHEAD AND LET’S GO DOWN TO THE MURDER PITS WHERE ALL THE FUN IS HAPPENING AND LET'S DO THIS THING

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0:00 – Hello and Welcome to Our Special Guest, Crystal!

0:01 – From the Ashes of the Show's Many Octaviae, Rises Blodreina

0:07 – The Indra-Miller-Octavia Family Unit Is a Gift We Didn't Know We Needed

0:23 – NIYAVIA RISING: It’s So Nice That Octavia Has a Friend, But Also, We Ship It With Our Entire Hearts

0:26 – Metamorphosesisizeses

0:35 – Power Dynamics, the Mythology of “Blodreina”, and Indra’s Journey

0:38 – CADOGAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNN

0:42 – Life Is Death Is Creation Is Destruction: Jaha and Gaia's Ultimate Insight

0:50 – We Love Bunker Power Player Gaia and Are Also TERRIFIED OF HER

1:02 – Blodreina Is the Culmination of Every Facet of Octavia's History

1:08 – Hoo Boy It Is Time For Kane and Abby to Clear the Air, and We’re Here For the Angsty Reckoning

1:18 – Kabby, Mackson, Madi: Love as a Force in How People Make Decisions

1:25 – Kara Brings All Kane and Abby’s Chickens Home to Roost

1:37 – We Stan Kara Cooper, Reluctant Rebel

1:48 – Pike, Kara, and Farm Station: The Ethics and Politics of Subsistence

1:52 – The First Rule of Octavia’s Fight Club Is WE AREN’T SURE TBH WE STILL HAVE A BUNCH OF QUESTIONS

1:57 – Indra, You Have Created a Monster

2:05 – Eligius! Cannibalism! Madi! It’s Time For Our Favorite Pastime, Wild Flailing Season Speculation!