Life has never been easy for anyone on The 100, but the situation is even more dire now with the imminent end of the world from another Praimfaya (Nuclear Apocalypse). Bellamy (Bob Morley) and Clarke (Eliza Taylor) return to Arkadia in Season 4's second episode, “Heavy Lies the Crown,” and keep that information close while looking for a way to save humanity.
Bob Morley spoke with Collider by phone to discuss how Bellamy’s past mistakes will influence his decisions going forward, the end-of-the-world secret Bellamy and Clarke are keeping, whether Echo (Tasya Teles) can be forgiven, a new adventure squad and the troubled sibling relationship with Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos).
In the premiere, Kane (Henry Ian Cusick) had a heart-to-heart with Bellamy about letting go of his past mistakes. How will what Bellamy has done affect his decision-making process going forward?
MORLEY: It's absolutely going to affect the way he handles situations. He's carrying around so much guilt. Kane was trying to say to him at the end of the first episode, "Okay, you've done some bad things, but if you keep carrying that weight around it's not going to have a positive impact on the rest of what you're trying to achieve."
I think he tries to take on Kane's word as much as he can, but there's always that underlying current of him feeling like he has become something that he despises. I think that gets in the way of him wanting to lead and make decisions, so that's what he's gonna try to do. And, that's what Kane's trying to instill, “put these things behind you at least and approach what's in front of you with a clear head.”
Do you think he'll overcompensate for his past mistakes?
Oh, you know, people have a tendency to do that-- to go the polar opposite of what they've done before if they've felt like they've done something wrong. There is definitely-- he definitely has the ability to go to the other extreme. Bellamy kind of rocks between the two and he doesn't always balance and that's where the tension is for him usually. Yeah, the option is to go to the other extreme and try and be a complete savior could be quite detrimental as well and it's something I think he's going to have to deal with and try and find a balance there.
Bellamy and Clarke return to Arkadia with the big secret. How do they approach it?
What they are dealing with is almost essentially what Abby (Paige Turco) and Clarke's father, Jake, were dealing with back in Season 1. There's this want to keep people informed, but there's also this want to try and not cause a panic. So, they have to deal with that issue out there and try to figure out what's best for the people and what's best for them.
And, how to deal with the situation, you know, like Bellamy says in the beginning, "We'll figure out how to deal with this and we keep it a secret until then." Right now, the whole goal is to work with Raven (Lindsey Morgan) and those who are in the know to solve the problem before presenting it to anyone. That's the challenge there is solving the problem which is a pretty impossible task.
As you mentioned, only so many people know about the secret. What's the thought behind letting people know or not letting people know what's going on?
In Season 1, Jake wanted to tell everyone about the Ark dying and there was this fear that people would panic and it would just become pandemonium. And it ended up being leaked through Clarke, I believe, we found out in Season 1. There's that same fear. What happened to Clarke when she leaked that, she lost her father. There's always some sort of deterrent in her to stop and to keep it to herself until she knows what's going on. There's that fear of there being absolute panic and that's not something they particularly want on their hands right now while dealing with such a huge problem. They kind of weigh the options there and figure it out from there.
Bellamy and Echo have a complicated history. In this world, enemies often become friends and friends become enemies and back and forth. Do you think it's possible for Bellamy to overcome her betrayal?
I don't know if it is possible. It caused him a lot of pain and grief and it caused him to make some decisions, but he can't blame everything on her -- the decision he made after Mount Weather was blown up to go and join Pike and go on the offensive. Those things, he has to take his own responsibility for. He can't entirely blame someone else for decisions he's made, but she was definitely a catalyst in turning him into changing his mindset.
It's a matter of whether she proves herself trustworthy of him again, because she's betrayed him a couple of times. And then, Bellamy's still dealing with his own demons of what he's done in previous seasons, so he needs to get over that before he can even start contemplating repairing or building a bridge with Echo.
Can you talk a little about the mission that Bellamy goes on in Episode 2?
Bellamy's always keen to have missions all the time. An idle hand ... he doesn't really know what to do with himself when he's pent up. We see this grouping, I guess the second birth of another Adventure Squad, we go out on missions. I think the thing that [Executive Producer] Jason [Rothenberg] and the writing team likes to do is put us with unlikely groupings and pairings and see how they interact.
It gives us a chance to explore our characters with other people. You'll see Harper (Chelsey Reist) there and Monty (Christopher Larkin) and Bryan (Jonathan Whitesell) and Miller (Jarod Joseph), and we're making our way out to get this water reclamator, so there's obviously going to be problems because nothing ever goes smoothly.
What's something you're looking forward to fans seeing this season? What were excited to do this season as Bellamy?
I'm really excited for the fans to see more of the world that we have on the ground and getting to see some new characters. Bellamy and Octavia are quite awesome this year. Obviously, Bellamy and Clarke teaming up this year as a leadership partnership kind of thing. And a lot of Bellamy and Kane, which is great because I love working with Ian Cusick. This season, I definitely worked with a lot of different people and you'll get to see Bellamy with a lot of characters you wouldn't usually see me interacting with, so that's pretty exciting. And, of course, the big influence of the Ice Nation this season is something to watch out for as well.
How much is Bellamy aware of what's going on with Octavia?
At the end of the Season 3, Bellamy expressed how he didn't want her to go down the same path that he did wanting revenge and having this blood lust. It didn't bode well for him at all. There's a huge concern for her in that aspect. He knows that he can't give her all this advice that feels he could or he's capable of because their relationship isn't that strong at the moment. They also need to go through a lot of healing before they can kind of listen to each other again.
There's a huge amount of concern as always with Bellamy and Octavia. It takes time to get through those problems and those difficulties. He knows how he feels about her, but I think she's still deciding about is blood thicker than water and what can she let fly because he's her brother. It's more a question of her journey and how she interacts with Bellamy.
The 100 airs Wednesday nights on The CW
