The 100 Boss Explains What Those Major Twists Mean for Season 6

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for The 100 Season 5 finale. Read at your own risk!]

Some season finales you can see coming a mile away, but The 100's Season 5 closer was absolutely not one of them.

After sensing his defeat was near, McCreary (William Miller) decided that if he couldn't have Eden, no one could. The explosives he launched at the single survivable piece of green on the planet went off just as everyone escaped onto the Eligius IV. Clarke (Eliza Taylor), Bellamy (Bob Morley) and Madi (Lola Flanery) made the difficult choice to put everyone into cryo-sleep while Eden recovered from the explosion, hoping that in 10 years, they'd all wake up and get to live peacefully together. That future wasn't meant to be though.

Monty (Christopher Larkin) and Harper (Chelsey Reist) stayed awake on the Eligius IV, growing old and dying in peace like they always wanted. But before they passed, they realized Eden wasn't going to recover and sent Eliguis IV deep into space to a habitable planet Eliguis III had in the hopes of their friends forging a new society there.

The final twist is essentially a reboot of The 100's original premise, and TV Guide talked to showrunner Jason Rothenberg about what this new planet means for Season 6 and the dangers it will present when the show returns.

The 100 Season 6 Probably Won't Be the Last

Does this new planet we've found have a name?
Jason Rothenberg: It does, but I can't reveal that name yet.

What are the odds we're going to find some Eligius III people down there?
Rothenberg: I think it's a safe bet that they will find some incarnation of who's left from Eligius III. Of course, it's 125 years after they left ... and it's probably been a hundred years more than that since Eligius III landed on that planet. And so, we're talking about 200-plus years of time that's elapsed for Eligius III, whatever that mission was. So really, the sky is the limit in terms of what we find there, and part of the fun of Season 6 and beyond is exploring that. What's become of them, what's become of the culture? It's a totally new world, literally and figuratively. I think it's incredibly exciting for me, personally. It's just essentially re-piloting with characters that we already know and love.

What are you guys most excited to explore about a totally new planet, where you could presumably have a new ecosystem, new wildlife, new everything.
Rothenberg: I mean, world-building has always been one of the things that I get the most excited about, and this is obviously that on steroids. So you know, it really is starting over again in so many ways. I think people will be very surprised with what our heroes encounter in Season 6. We're obviously fairly deep into breaking that season already; we've been working with the writers, I've been working already since mid-May, we start shooting in a couple weeks. It's going to be insane. I mean, it really is. Hopefully people go for that ride. We try to change it up every season, obviously. Last season was quite a reboot in many ways with the six-year time jump, but this is something else entirely. This is another book. This is a new book, basically.

Harper and Monty choosing to grow old together rather than go into cryo-sleep was so sad but kind of a happy ending for them too. Why did that feel like a nice way to end their journey?
Rothenberg: I really wanted to give Chris and Chelsea a good goodbye. Especially Chris, who's been a series regular since day one and loved Monty. I loved that relationship, it was unlike any other relationship in the show. They had a happy life. They had a whole life. They experienced something that none of our characters have ever experienced before which is peace for really their whole lives. Once everyone else went into cryo, they had a child, they raised that child, they said goodbye to that child when that child got old enough to make his own choices and wanted to experience life beyond just the two parents that he lived with for 26-plus years. I don't know, to me it felt like a beautiful completion of their story. Monty's journey this season was obviously, he was done killing he wanted to stop the cycle. They talked about ... just living there and turning that farm into something viable again and that's what they did. They just did it on the show while everybody else was sleeping.

Tell me a little bit about their son, Jordan!
Rothenberg: He's a blank slate, you know? He doesn't have any experience. He's never been off that ship. Everything he experiences in Season 6 is going to be new and fresh and he's going to be wide eyed and excited and horrified. I mean, he's heard stories about all of these people much in the way Clarke told Madi stories of them over that six-year time period. So, similar to Madi ... this was his story growing up, they're his heroes. But unlike Madi, he's a contemporary of theirs. He's the same age as they are now. Essentially, he went to bed when he was old enough to be the same age as them and yet when he wakes up, he has zero life experience. Much of Season 6 is going to be about, at least in the early going, they really do want to honor Monty's wishes of doing better. Jordan represents his parents, I think, really nicely. He's a character I'm really emotional about. I think the people are going to love him.

Henry Ian Cusick Talks Kane's Fate in The 100 Season 6

What can you tease or reveal about Kane's fate, which was left kind of up in the air.
Rothenberg: Well, you know, the truth is that Abby's addiction storyline had a cost and Kane's choices had a cost. Vincent was kind of the embodiment of Abby's addiction in many ways and it took a toll on Kane physically as well. Obviously, yes, he is kind of hanging in limbo. Cryo-sleep is the only thing keeping him alive at the moment and we will pick that storyline up back again in Season 6. He's not leaving the show, at least yet. I want to always honor a character with a good death or at least an on-camera death, if at all possible. Whether you think it's good or not is up to the viewer obviously. Some people have hated them some people have not.

There were so many betrayals and burned bridges in Season 5. Is this new planet going to represent sort of a second chance for all of these relationships moving forward?
Rothenberg: Yes, they're going to try to heed Monty's call for them to do better, to be the good guys. Clarke in particular, is going to internalize that and really try. But a lot of the Season 6 story, in the early going anyway, is about the fact that as hard as you want to escape your past, your sins, they come back. They come back to haunt you, and it's not easy. Just because they're on a new planet doesn't mean the things they've done don't follow them there. And so it'll be things that they're grappling with pretty far deep into the season. ... So ultimately, all those relationships are going to continue in one way or another. They're gonna be revisited. People are going to have to reexamine their priorities in light of the new situation. You're either Wonkru, or an enemy of Wonkru, but now there really is only one. These people are the refugees from Earth, and there are prisoners, and there's Wonkru, and there's people who were formerly Skaikru. Everybody is in the same boat, literally. And they're going to all encounter what's waiting for them on the ground together.

The 100 will return at midseason on The CW.

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