As President Dante Wallace says, "Welcome to Mount Weather."
After four months of wondering, we finally learned what was beyond that white-washed exam room: more questions. And that's not a bad thing.
For those new to The 100: It's been 97 years since a global nuclear apocalypse. The Ark—where all the refugees of Earth lived in space—was running out of supplies. 100 incarcerated youths were sent to the earth to see if it was survivable. Turns out it was… and other inhabitants had been surviving it all along.
When season 1 ended, we saw seven stations of the Ark had been brought to the ground, spread throughout the (Vancouver) wilderness. Mecha Station, in which Abby and Kane traveled to Earth, was the only one we saw land successfully. Jaha was left alone in space. The remaining 100 were fighting off grounders at the Drop Ship with a rocket-fuelled explosion. Bellamy and Finn were presumably burned alive, and Octavia left with Lincoln. And then the illustrious Mountain Men came and took Clarke and Monty to very white rooms with small circular windows, a.k.a. Mount Weather.
And the wait is over—season 2 picks up immediately where we left everyone in season 1. Clarke is still in her white room (which is quite nicely furnished—no hospital I've ever been to had "Starry Night" paintings, replica or otherwise). But instead of Monty, Clarke sees a blue man spraying down the empty room.
Clarke wastes no time in being her badass self: She takes apart the IV stand, knocks out the camera, breaks the glass, slices open her arm in the process (ew!), and rips off the blue man's mask. Rather than a creepy "Mountain Man," Clarke reveals a young, very pale girl who just wants to listen to her iPod. Taking the girl hostage with a shard of glass, Clarke demands to be taken to Monty.
They take the elevator to the fifth floor, where things get really weird. The elevator doors open to reveal the world's classiest underground dining hall: Everyone is dressed in their Sunday best, sitting at tables dotted with pancakes, carafes of orange juice, and fresh bouquets, listening to a woman serenade them from a piano. A woman spots Clarke, clutches her pearls (not really, but she should have), and screams "Containment Breach." And then Clarke says: "Where the hell am I?" Girl, we all want to know.
This isn't a great day for Clarke; she lands in yet another sterile, hospital-like room. This time she's greeted by President Dante Wallace and the blue man-girl, who is named Maya. There's a lot of exposition here on the president's part and we learn quite a few things about Mount Weather and the people we know as "The Mountain Men" (who I think should really be called the Undergrounders). These people have survived solely underground in Mount Weather. Their bodies did not go through natural selection like the Grounders' did, so they are forced to live there with their underground reservoir and hydroponic farms and cherry pie and fashionably '50s clothes. The only reason the 100 can survive on Earth is because they were exposed to solar radiation.
President Wallace also tells Clarke that his people "saved" 48 of her group. Never one to give up, Clarke insists on going out to find the others—but Wallace says it isn't safe. To clarify: She's not a "prisoner," she's just not allowed to leave. Take someone whose been confined to a space station her whole life and lock her underground—you're bound to get resistance. Clarke has too much fight in her to not try, and try she does. But as she's about to make it out, Jasper tells her the Undergrounders will die if she pulls the lever (through the cheesiest line of the night).
So instead, she settles in with her oil paints and beef stew and decides that maybe Mount Weather isn't too good to be true, that President Wallace is telling the truth.
NEXT: Don't believe them, Clarke.
