The 100 Boss on How Motherhood Changed Octavia

One of our biggest burning questions about The 100 Season 7 was where did Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos) go when she went into the Anomaly in Season 6, and what exactly happened to her there? We finally got our answers, and it showed us an entirely new side of Octavia.

After following Diyoza (Ivana Milicevic) into the Anomaly, Octavia found herself on a planet she'd eventually call Skyring to find Diyoza giving birth. We even got a nice parallel of Octavia helping to deliver and soothe baby Hope the same way Bellamy (Bob Morley) did for her. 

As for the time gap... there seems to be a pretty massive time differential between Sanctum and Skyring. During the scant seconds between when they both entered the Anomaly, months had passed on Skyring, answering one of our big questions about how an adult Hope could have appeared in the Season 6 finale. Time obviously moves differently on this planet, accelerated by its proximity to a black hole, so the few seconds we thought Octavia had spent inside the Anomaly last season was actually years for her.

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"The time dilation on Skyring is such that you can spend years on Skrying and only, you know, minutes or seconds or days are passing on both the next planet that we're going to go to, which is called Bardo, and Sanctum," showrunner Jason Rothenberg explained to TV Guide. "And that's why it functions so well for the people on Bardo as a prison because they could send people to Skyring -- that they call Penance, by the way. Skyring is a name, as we know, that Hope made up and that stuck for our heroes on Skyring, but it's called Penance by the people who founded the sort of penal planet. In a weekend of their lives, someone can go and like, learn their lesson pretty good in 10 years, and then come back and sort of fall back right in where they left. So it's an interesting concept for a prison."

For those of you paying very close attention, Bardo is a planet that showed up in the new opening credits, and its atmosphere is listed as "not breathable." We'll learn more about the mysterious civilization that lives there soon. We'll also get some insight into Hope's years after the soldiers took Octavia and Diyoza away.

As for her early years, it's now obvious why Hope seemed so familiar with Octavia in the Season 6 finale. Octavia and Diyoza raised Hope together, and they found peace, family, and a new life with each other. Though she still fought day in and day out to return to Bellamy in those 10 lost years, Octavia eventually made peace with her fate and found a way to be truly happy and fulfilled on Skyring -- something she never had on the Ark, in the bunker, or on Sanctum.

"I love that story," Rothenberg said of Octavia's journey in this episode. "I love seeing those lost years. I love seeing what happened... when she went into the Anomaly and then came back out. Years passed -- what we now know to be roughly 10 years -- and she had a whole life. She fought it for a while like Octavia would, but eventually, she settled into it and she had a family and she became, for all intents and purposes, one of Hope's two moms and loved that child like it's her own child. And it really does change her and deepen her and give her priorities that didn't exist before." 

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We'll no doubt see those priorities up close and personal later this season, since this week's episode also revealed that she could still be alive. 

Back on Skyring in the present (kind of), Hope's memories of her life there returned, and she revealed that she stabbed Octavia with a non-lethal tracker that would transport her back to Bardo. Assuming the people on Bardo patched her back up, Octavia could be alive and a prisoner, just like Bellamy, and presumably Diyoza. Once our heroes find their way to that planet, which they inevitably will, they'll have to launch a full-scale rescue mission to get all three of them back.

The 100 airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on the CW.