‘The 100’ boss reacts to the strong Lexa reaction
While immediately following the shocking episode of “The 100” entitled “Thirteen,” there were a few interviews from creator Jason Rothenberg describing the decision to kill off the character of Lexa, a powerful person beloved by most fans. However, many of those interviews were conducted before the public had a chance to really react to what happened, and that said reaction led to internet outrage. While the logistics of the death are clear (Alycia Debnam-Carey was a regular on “Fear the Walking Dead,” so they had to write out Lexa somehow), the reality is still that this is another powerful LGBTQ character killed off on TV, and her death came after the relationship was heavily promoted and many viewers were excited about it.
Now, Rothenberg has given his first in-depth interview on the subject to TVInsider, and in it he explains further specifically what he would say to fans now, and how there are certain things that he would do differently had he anticipated this level of trauma from the fans:
“I would say, first of all, that it’s taken me a while to get perspective on it myself and to put myself in the position of somebody who was hurt like that. And I hope that eventually they can start to put themselves in our position and understand that we would never want to hurt anybody like that. We would never want to hurt our fans. We love them, we owe them everything, we owe them the fact that we just got a Season 4 to them. We want to take them for a ride, we don’t want to hurt them. And because we didn’t anticipate this sort of level of pain over this fictional death, we were doing what we always do on Twitter, which was celebrating work that we’re proud of. In hindsight, knowing what I know now and sort of realizing the things that I’ve realized, we should have done less of that. We should have done less buildup knowing where this was going to end up and knowing how this was going to affect people.”
The real truth here is that there’s not really much that Rothenberg can say or do to win over fans who now feel like the show abandoned their interests, so the reality is that “The 100” will move forward and those who want to continue watching will. This is more of a cautionary tale now for other shows to realize the best way to support a fan base, and how not to spend so much time promoting something that will later break fans’ hearts. You want to be excited for your work (that is always good), but you also have to be careful talking about stories with an expiration date.
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