Why Octavia Blake From “The 100” Is The Ideal Character

Proper storytelling is an art form, one where a truly good piece of work is achieved by balancing a varied range of components, from tone to pacing, to create a palpable emotional investment within the consumer.

Traditionally, one of the tried and true cardinal elements of good storytelling is the presence of well-rounded character development. Critical as it may be, it’s also an element that can be difficult to perfect. A truly good character shouldn’t simply be defined by their actions, but by the motivations that lead them to those actions and whether or not the story justifies those decisions. One such character is Octavia Blake from The CW’s The 100.

What Makes A Good Character?

The process of creating character development is the art of crafting a believable character by giving them individualized personality and depth. As is usually the case with literature, there are a plethora of ways this can be executed, but there are three specific elements that can ensure a more interesting character:

1. A thoughtful backstory that ultimately defines who the character is at their core. The events from this backstory will, either subtly or majorly, inform a character’s future decisions and reactions while setting a foundation for further growth or regression.
2. Characters should exhibit consistent strengths and flaws. In addition to adding immediate depth to a character’s personality, inherent dispositions establish to the viewer how the character thinks and behaves. If properly executed, any reaction that a character has to story elements will feel natural, no matter how unexpected the circumstances.
3. If all else fails, a character should have an interesting story. Whether a character is the protagonist, antagonist, or a side character, the most interesting parts about them are often tied to their personal journey rather than the overarching storyline. The more ebb and flow, the better. If a character’s personal story meshes well with the main story’s plot, the more dimension is added to the story, overall.

The G.O.A.T.

A character that perfectly exhibits these traits is Octavia Blake from The 100. Octavia’s story is one of the high highs and extremely low lows, often diverging from the main plot of the show only to effortlessly meld at key points to deliver some of the most impactful plot developments of the series.

In the book series The 100 is adapted from, Octavia Blake plays the prescription drug-addled troublemaker and in the first few episodes of the show, she portrays the boy-crazed troublemaker. Now that the show is reaching its conclusion, Octavia has risen to become one of the most — if not the most — dynamic, transformative characters in the series with what is certainly one of the most overwrought, yet impactful, storylines of the entire show.

Rough Beginnings

Octavia Blake’s background is simple but impactful; having been born a second child into a spacecraft-dwelling community that enforces a deathly strict one-child policy, Octavia spent her formative years hiding under the floorboards of her family’s meager dwelling, with her older brother Bellamy as her only companion.

After being discovered years later, Octavia is arrested and sentenced to be sent down to the presumably uninhabited Earth to see if it’s once again ready for human habitation. After Bellamy gets himself sent to Earth to protect her and 101 teenagers end up living free-range on a planet they have next-to-no knowledge of, chaos inevitably ensues, especially when they come to discover that the Earth is not nearly as uninhabited as they’d been led to believe.

The Rebel

Octavia Blake’s story truly starts when she meets and falls in love with Lincoln, a kind-hearted ‘groundling’ who teaches her that there’s more to life than the increasingly destructive conflict that’s been arising between their warring groups. Lincoln teaches Octavia to be a self-sufficient free-thinker, providing the first significant element to her character development — the party girl becomes the rebel. This is doubly significant because this marks where Octavia Blake’s story begins to notably diverge from the path of her companions, including her brother — the growing rift between them becoming a large point of contention that significantly impacts both of their storylines for the rest of the series.

Where the rest of the hundred become soldiers, fighting to stake their claim to some part of the Earth, Octavia begins to identify more closely with the grounders, preferring to wear their clothing and becoming the first to learn their language. As the rift between their peoples grows, so too does the disconnect between Octavia Blake and her former compatriots, who she never felt fully a part of due to the circumstances of her birth. Octavia felt more at home with the perceived ‘outsiders,’ a trait that can be seen throughout her story.

The Warrior

Her next big arc comes with the death of Lincoln, after his execution at the hands of the Arc’s radical leader, Commander Pike. After exacting her revenge on Pike, Octavia completely detaches herself from the rest of Skaikru, the denizens of the Ark, and her brother, who she blames for having a role in Lincoln’s death. She fully immerses herself in Trikru culture, earning the respect of the Trikru Indra, becoming her right-hand and completing her transition from rebel to warrior.

The show comes to see Octavia Blake in a much darker place during her time with Trikru. She’s become emotionally closed off and violent, adopting Trikru‘s warlike tendencies, even to the point of abandoning the free-thinking principles she’d learned from Lincoln. In this chapter of Octavia’s life, she’s lost much of her personality; an intentional decision to show how she’s taken comfort in becoming a soldier who has to neither think nor feel while clashing with her perceived enemies, her brother, and his kru.

By the time season 4’s climax comes around, Octavia Blake’s story has taken a firm backseat, chronicling her moody descent into self-isolation. However, during the events of the Final Conclave, the 12 clans of grounders and “sky people” send champions to fight for the right to claim a bunker that would protect them from Praimfaya, an incoming solar flare event that will spell the Earth’s second apocalypse. Octavia wins the Final Conclave and makes the decision to allow all 12 clans to live in the bunker under her rule, becoming Wonkru.

After Praimfaya has come and gone, Octavia struggles to lead a clan of 1,100 survivors, uncomfortable in her newfound position. Throughout the series, Octavia had never shown any interest in becoming a leader, running mostly on instinct and battle prowess. She’d been elected to enter the Conclave and had won because the only other option for her would be death, but finds herself wholly unqualified and unconfident in her ability to make difficult decisions. Nevertheless, Octavia Blake is determined to bring peace and civility to the clans after the event of the Final Conclave, installing a council made up of members from each original clan to assist in fair decision making.

The Blood Queen

Her next prominent transition comes only a few months into Wonkru‘s six-year isolation when a coup takes place within the bunker, resulting in a loss of their sustainable food supply. With food sources critically low and no longer able to sustain their numbers, Octavia Blake’s natural instinct to survive kicks in, and with urging from a member of her former council — and former Skaikru leader — Thelonious Jaha, Octavia takes full control of the bunker, donning the title Blodreina and ushering in years of harsh totalitarian rule.

While the events of the next six years mark an extremely dark period in the series, and for Octavia Blake in particular, it’s important to note the consistency in Octavia’s actions during this time. In times of trouble, Octavia has continually fallen back on her survival instincts to pull herself through. This can be traced all the way back to the Ark when she spent over a decade living under a floor to keep herself and her family safe, always looking over her shoulder, always ready to flee. Since then, Octavia has learned to fight back rather than flee, taking comfort in her ability to competently confront her problems physically.

To Octavia Blake, to be strong is to be aggressive, and to be aggressive is to survive. When the bunker reaches critical levels, it makes sense for Octavia to fall back on a methodology that has so consistently worked in her favor. Not only does she resort to her basic understanding of how to survive — which informs who she deems worthy of survival — she also turns to the show’s tried and true method of crisis control, culling the herd. Back on the Ark, any crime was punishable by death, the terror of which followed Octavia until her inevitable discovery and capture.

Throughout the rest of the show, a common occurrence has cropped up where there just isn’t enough space and the chosen solution is to autocratically choose who gets to live and who gets to die. This can be seen in the initial events of the Ark, the Mount Weather story arc, and the events leading up to the Final Conclave where each clan chose 100 people to potentially win access to the bunker during Praimfaya. Therefore, when Octavia installs a trial-by-combat system to punish offenders within the bunker, her calamitous decision is understandable, if abhorrent.

The Dark Year

The lowest point of Octavia Blake’s downward spiral comes during the dark year when disease has compromised the bunker’s remaining protein supply. After urging from Abby Griffin — resident medic, farming expert, and all-around terrible advise giver — Octavia introduces cannibalism to the bunker.

Opting for a waste-not-want-not approach to their continued survival, Octavia decrees that anyone who enters the fighting ring and loses becomes dinner. She enforces this violently, executing someone who refuses to participate after realizing that the meat cube sitting on his tray is, in fact, his brother who had died in the ring shortly before.

Rock Bottom

Six years after Praimfaya, the earth shows signs that it is again ready for some sort of habitation and the remaining survivors — old and new — converge around the last bit of livable land on the entire planet, Shadow Valley. By the time the bunker is rediscovered by those who had survived outside of its walls, the bunker has gone from 1,100 inhabitants to just over 800. Bellamy reunites with his sister only to strongly oppose her management style, formulating a plot — along with her closest companion and mentor Indra — to poison her, ending her reign of terror. Shortly after, it is revealed that Octavia chose to hide that the bunker’s hydro-farm was once again functional, afraid of losing the control she’d painstakingly claimed over Wonkru.

After facing her brother’s betrayal and Wonkru’s rejection, Octavia starts to realize that her best-laid plans have gone off the rails to a devastating degree. Instead of reflecting on her decisions and choosing to grow from her mistakes, she doubles down on her bid to secure Shadow Valley for her clan, setting the hydro-farm ablaze to reinforce her control over the clan and forcing them to join her crusade for the valley. After yet another betrayal sends Octavia’s plans for securing the valley disastrously awry, Octavia is left to blame for the deaths of dozens of Wonkru members who’d followed her into battle.

Despite the devastatingly misguided events that ensued during her time as Blodreina, Octavia Blake’s primary motivation had always been the survival of Wonkru. Now faced with the realization that she’d been the catalyst for hundreds of unjustifiable Wonkru deaths and effectively dooming them, Octavia finally recognizes that in order to save the whole, she’ll have to sacrifice herself as a proper leader would. Initiating a solo attack in the hopes of giving the remaining survivors of her siege time to escape, Octavia is saved at the last moment by reinforcements. Now, left alive to face the consequences of her actions, Octavia recognizes that her leadership has failed and that the best way to remedy their situation is for her to step back. Perhaps too little, too late, Octavia finally begins to turn a corner by conceding her leadership, bringing Blodreina’s reign to an end.

Uphill Battle

Jump ahead 125 years into the future, after having caused and escaped yet another apocalypse, the refugees wake up from cryo-sleep to find themselves orbiting Planet Alpha, a new planet ready for habitation. Octavia Blake finds herself reviled by her companions and completely cut off by her brother. Despite having lived a relatively solitary life, Octavia experiences true loneliness for the first time, without the ever-present support of her older brother to fall back upon.

Struggling under the weight of her conscience, Octavia lashes out, blaming others for her actions, rather than accepting the part she played. In a confrontation between a group of Sky People against Octavia, she fights a mob of those who’d felt the brunt of her poor leadership. Octavia eagerly enters into the fight, once again turning to what she understands, proving her strength or accepting her weakness through physical combat.

When it looks like Octavia is about to lose, the fight is interrupted, leaving Octavia without the absolution she’d been hoping for. After trying and failing to regain Bellamy’s respect, Octavia struggles to kick the old violent patterns she’s become accustomed to. Left to navigate their uncertain circumstances on this new planet effectively alone, Octavia adopts a fatalistic mindset, often impulsively entering into dangerous situations.

While on a redemption mission to find the rebel leader, Gabriel, she encounters the ‘anomaly,’ a green spectral light that no one has ever gone into and returned from. After going into the anomaly and returning shortly after with no memory of her time away, Gabriel gives Octavia a drug cocktail to help her remember her time within the rift. During this time, Octavia experiences an up-close confrontation with her many inner demons. She finally comes to terms with Lincoln’s death, acknowledges that her spiral began when she disregarded Lincoln’s teachings and took revenge on Pike, and finally defeats Blodreina, finding the redemption she’d been searching for.

Reading Octavia Blake

Part of what makes Octavia Blake’s story so compelling is that it’s one that takes the full circuit from battered but hopeful adolescent to agonizing destructive young adult, only to come back around. The next chapter of Octavia’s arc sees her regain her sense of purpose, emotionally reconnect with her brother, and realize the potential for happiness outside of herself, allowing her to rebuild meaningful connections with others.

By no means is Octavia Blake a perfect character. In fact, in a show that primarily explores the moral ambiguity of humanity, Octavia has proven to be one of the most categorically divergent characters the show has to offer. While the show does an overall decent job of maintaining consistent characters, there’s often not enough story to go around to ensure a deeply poignant transformative storyline for a cast so large.

Even for some of the more prominent characters, their development tends to often feel one-note, as their characters tend to end up in similar situations over and over again, like Bellamy and Clarke constantly entering into various political conflicts in order to try to protect their respective groups or loved ones. In cases like Raven and Murphy, their conflicts are largely internal, fighting against the clock to resolve their own issues in order to come in, help save the day, and move the story along.

Octavia Blake benefited from being a secondary character for much of the series, allowing her to develop silently in the background while the rest of the story played out, only to appear in different stages of her development when her milestones came around. Her story progression feels large because her character went from having a minor impact on the story to suddenly having an extreme impact on the story. Afterward, Octavia’s character continues to be used to introduce interesting story elements to the plot, where many other characters find themselves in slightly different iterations of the same sort of situations they usually deal with.

Octavia is a wildcard, not tied to any particular entity or plot element, giving the writers free rein to use her character in dynamic ways and giving the show some much-needed dimension, arguably making her one of the most important characters in the show. Whether you love her or hate her, Octavia Blake is a powerhouse character to watch with an intensely absorbing story to follow, making her a prime example of what an expertly constructed character can prove to be.