Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Three months after Mount Weather, Clarke is living among Grounders when Bellamy and Kane enter their territory to bring her back. At Polis, Lexa’s leadership brings the clans into an uneasy alignment with Skaikru, while Arkadia divides over Pike’s hard line against the Grounders. Pike executes Lincoln, leaving Octavia determined to avenge him. Jaha’s search for a City of Light puts the A.I. ALIE in the middle of the political crisis: her chips promise relief from pain but strip people of choice. Lexa dies in a stray gunshot, and her Flame, an A.I. holding Commanders’ memories, becomes the disputed center of succession. Ontari takes power after killing the other Nightblood candidates, while Clarke learns that the pacifist Luna is the last alternative.
Clarke carries the Flame to Luna, but Luna refuses the Commander role, leaving Clarke to use Ontari’s Nightblood in a transfusion and implant the Flame in herself. In the finale, she enters the City of Light to follow Raven’s code-based route to ALIE’s kill switch; Lexa and the Flame’s creator Becca help her reach it while Bellamy, Abby and the others defend Clarke’s body from chipped attackers. ALIE warns that unattended nuclear plants are melting down and most of Earth will become unlivable within months. Clarke shuts her down anyway, restoring people’s free will and the pain ALIE had suppressed. After the fighting, Octavia kills Pike. The survivors now have months to find shelter from a second nuclear catastrophe.