What frustrates me about all the Clarke hate is that I think it comes from a misunderstanding of where Clarke fans are coming from. Nobody is saying that Clarke has never done anything wrong and that she should never be held accountable for the choices she’s made that have caused pain. We’re saying that she should be held just as accountable for her choices as every other leader has been held accountable for theirs—both by the fans and by the narrative itself.
This has been true of some main-characters-turned-leadership-figures. Octavia became an undeniable villain and was held accountable for what she did because she explicitly did them to keep herself in power. For the first three seasons, Bellamy was absolutely held accountable for his actions; especially in Season 3, the narrative clearly painted him as being in the wrong, and even now, fans see S3A Bellamy as out-of-character when, from his perspective, there was no good choice, and he truly was doing what he thought was best, even if that was Bad™. What the audience was shown (both in the story itself and in how it was presented to us) told us without a doubt that siding with Pike was Wrong.
Eventually, though, while we saw guilt from Bellamy in Seasons 4 and 5, the narrative finally let him be the hero. And don’t get me wrong; I am so, so happy for that. Bellamy is my favorite character on the show; he deserves happiness and self-love and forgiveness. However, once Bellamy was finally allowed to make choices with no good outcomes and be forgiven for it, it was Clarke whose actions became more and more criticized by the narrative and, subsequently, by the fans.
The first major instance of this is the bombing of TonDC. Again: don’t get me wrong. The choice Clarke made was a Bad Choice that resulted in terrible chaos and death. But one has to remember that evacuating the village would have alerted Mount Weather to the presence of Bellamy, who really was, as Clarke said, “the key to everything.” Without his presence as a spy, it would be practically impossible to save both the Sky People and Grounders trapped in the Mountain. And the Mountain Men’s extreme prejudice and cruelty towards the Grounders suggests that they would not have stopped their brutality once they were able to leave the bunker.
Clarke knew that letting TonDC be bombed was wrong. She explicitly said it. But her suggestions of finding another way to get people out (e.g. starting a fire to evacuate the village) were promptly shut down by Lexa, who was both a more experienced leader, resulting in Clarke’s respect, and who had a hell of a lot more power than Clarke did. Between letting the village be bombed and telling everyone of the upcoming strike, the former would result in the lesser casualties. Yes, it was morally wrong. But so was the other choice. There was no good decision. That’s the show’s whole thesis. But while other characters have been “let off the hook” for their decisions, this one has clung to Clarke throughout the show.
Then there’s making the list. Oh, the list. Was it horrible? No question. But Clarke is held solely responsible for this as if she just wanted to make a list of the hundred people who deserved to survive. Clarke agonized over making this list. She did it so that Raven and Bellamy wouldn’t have to. She put it off and tried to avoid it for as long as she could, while Raven pressured her into doing it as soon as possible. In the same episode, Raven tells Clarke that “choosing who lives and dies is your specialty” — before Raven has to make that decision herself and denies medicine to a dying child so that it could be used for those who survive Praimfaya. What Raven learns that episode is that nobody could make this decision morally. It’s an amazing moment for her. Raven shouldn’t be deemed a horrible demon for this choice, and thank God, she isn’t. But if Raven shouldn’t be demonized, Clarke shouldn’t be demonized either. The List isn’t Clarke being a bad person; it’s Clarke being forced into making a terrible choice.
And though the show might have us forget it, let us remember that the reason it needed to be determined which 100 people would be allowed to survive in Arkadia is because in the previous episode, the group sent to retrieve the hydro generator from the Ice Nation decided to use that machine to ensure the escape of the Skaikru prisoners trapped there. Now, again: there is no good choice. They could either save the prisoners now and destroy the machine, or they could take the machine that would ensure all Sky People could survive in Arkadia during Praimfaya and doom the prisoners. It would result in terrible casualties either way. But their choice is only touched on briefly upon their return, when both Raven and Clarke are shocked at Bellamy’s decision, and Bellamy says, “I am not sacrificing any more innocent lives,” and Clarke responds, “You just did.”
But that’s it. It isn’t focused on again. The narrative suggests that Bellamy’s was the Right Choice because it did save those people, but it never fixates on how that decision ensured that only 100 people could survive in Arkadia, instead of every Sky Person.
It’s the same with Clarke taking the bunker. The show suggests that Clarke was horrible and cruel and Bad for taking it. It was undeniably a Morally Ambiguous Choice. But Clarke took it with the very rational expectation that Luna would win, considering that she was immune to the black rain and, from prior knowledge, probably the best fighter there. Clarke didn’t know that she was in a TV show and thus Octavia wasn’t going to die even though she had only been fighting for a couple months. I’m going to stress it again: Clarke taking the bunker was a morally wrong decision. But it was not irrational.
Bellamy opening the bunker was, again undeniably, a good thing. But it was not the unequivocally, undeniably Moral decision that the show portrayed it as. For one, it was unknown if opening the bunker would expose it to radiation that would doom humanity. For another, more relevant thing, opening the bunker once again meant that only 100 Sky People would live, and most of the people who had been guaranteed life would now be sentenced to death. Now, Skaikru didn’t have a higher right to live than anybody else; nobody in the show was saying that—not even Clarke, who knew that if Luna did win the conclave, the Grounders’ system of hierarchy through battle would mean that they would honor that Luna “fought for no-one.”
But even though we see that this choice meant many of the Sky People were doomed, Bellamy is just barely held accountable. In the next episode, when he, Clarke, Murphy, and Emori set out to save Raven (Murphy and Emori’s plan being to stay in the bunker on Science Island), Bellamy is distrustful of the pair of them, asking Murphy “what he’s really up to.” Murphy’s response: “You killed us when you opened that door. You know that, right? What, did you think our people were going to waste a spot on Emori? On me?”
He’s right. That doesn’t mean Bellamy was wrong or that he should be demonized for his choice, but it’s true that what he did, as Murphy so eloquently put it, screwed a lot of people over. But that’s the extent of people holding Bellamy accountable for the morally ambiguous things he did. It’s never touched on again.
By Season 5, Clarke is an anti-hero. And again: she undeniably does Bad Things. But so does everyone else. Including Spacekru. Leaving Bellamy to die was Bad… but it was in reaction to Bellamy manipulating her daughter into taking the chip, which, as we saw from the many Wonkru members who were more loyal to Octavia than the Flame, put her life in absolute grave danger. Shock-collaring Madi to keep her close was, again, completely and undeniably wrong. But what is also morally wrong is putting a child into a war zone. They’re not comparable, but neither are Good; but only one is vilified by the narrative and fans.
None of these decisions mean that any of these characters are Bad People. But they have all made these decisions. Holding Clarke accountable for her actions is a good thing; holding only Clarke accountable for her actions, and ignoring what others have done, is myopic.
I’m hoping that the moment in the trailer where Raven calls her out is also a growing moment for Raven (and ideally all of Spacekru) where they also acknowledge that they have been forced to do Bad Things. But the new trailer and Raven’s comment have resulted in a renewed onslaught of Clarke hate, and I’m so frustrated and so tired of Clarke’s morally ambiguous actions being the only ones demonized.
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