The dress code in the City of Light is "business casual," apparently.

The 100 Season 3 Episode 14 saw a confrontation between Luna and ALIE's chipped soldiers. Though Luna technically won in the end, she still refused to take the flame – which spells trouble for Clarke and the gang. And all of humanity, really.

The 100 Photos from "Red Sky at Morning"

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This was a very strong and action-packed installment that propelled the storyline of the season forward, putting our heroes in dire straits going into the penultimate The 100 Season 3 Episode 15.

"Red Sky at Morning" picked up soon after The 100 Season 3 Episode 13 left off, with Clarke and the others having finally arrived on Luna's oil rig, while Raven and Monty remained behind at Arkadia and various other Sky People and Grounders were imprisoned in ALIE-controlled Polis.

One of the most successful aspects of "Red Sky at Morning" is how fully we get a sense of Luna as a character.

She's only just been introduced, and I already feel as though I understand her mentality fully. She's sort of the direct opposite of Pike, in terms of the writers' success with characterization this season and in terms of her actually mentality regarding violence.

Whereas I've failed to connect with Pike on any level until very recently, I connected with Luna and her motivations immediately. She makes sense, even if I don't necessarily agree with her choice to sit out this fight.

The narrative is a near-even split four ways – Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia, and Jasper with Luna and her people on the oil rig; Monty and Raven working on ALIE's code at Arkadia; Jaha and ALIE in the City of Light/Polis; and Pike, Indra, and Murphy in Polis.

In a nutshell: everybody epically failed at their task. Except for ALIE. Which, in its own way, is essentially the summary of this entire season.

Let's start with what's arguably the biggest failure of all: Clarke and the crew on Luna's oil rig.

Why, you may ask, was this the biggest failure of all? Because people died, for no reason, thanks to Clarke and the other delinquents (or at least, that's how poor Luna saw it). On top of that, Luna didn't even accept the flame, in the end.

People I loved died today. Needlessly. At my hand. I can't let that happen again. As we prepare to give our brothers and sister to the sea, we honor their lives. From water we are born, to water we return.
Luna

Permalink: People I loved died today. Needlessly. At my hand. I can't let that happen again. As we...

Luna was unflinching in denying the flame and resisting the post of Commander. Unlike Titus' opinion of her, Luna was not at all afraid of the conclave because she wanted to escape death.

On the contrary, Luna is a total badass and an incredibly skilled warrior – she knew she would easily win the conclave and become the Commander. She simply didn't want to.

This information was revealed when, after repeated attempts to talk Luna into accepting the flame failed, Clarke defaulted to plan B – she activated the AI and tried to force it into Luna.

Clarke's plan was half-baked at best (how was she going to manage to non-fatally slice a fully conscious Luna and gently slide that AI into her neck, all on her own?), and she certainly wasn't counting on Luna busting out some serious defensive moves on her.

The scene was a serious one, yet I couldn't help but laugh at Clarke's startled, "What the heck is going on here?" face when Luna all too easily flipped her over.

Unfortunately for Luna, things were about to take a sharp, downhill turn, once it was revealed that ALIE had infiltrated her group, thanks to Clarke and the gang inadvertently leading ALIE's drone right to the oil rig (after it had tracked them to Niylah's).

Clarke, Octavia, and Bellamy were stuffed into a shipping container while Luna was brutally tortured, with her boyfriend Derrick and Jasper strung up and forced to watch.

That waterboarding scene was painful to watch. It was so incredibly, unexpectedly violent, and I'm a bit shocked that the writers would specifically choose that highly contentious form of torture. Horrific.

Anyway, torture didn't even work on Luna (see above: Luna is a badass). And unlike nearly everyone else thus far, threatening a loved one (ALIE's piece de resistance, apparently) didn't work on Luna either.

She escaped her torturer (Derrick, who had given in and taken the chip, to end Luna's torture – ironically), saved the young girl who was being threatened by one of ALIE's soldiers, and was forced to kill Derrick to stop him. Luna sobbing over the body of her love was heart-breaking.

Equally heartbreaking was Clarke's horrified and guilt-ridden face as she watched. There's no doubt in my mind that that scene triggered a form of PTSD in Clarke, given that she herself was in Luna's position over Lexa's body only days earlier.

ALIE having tracked the group to the oil rig wasn't itself shocking. It was pretty clear that Luna wouldn't accept the AI unless she was directly confronted with the magnitude of ALIE's threat, face to face.

Brilliantly subverting our expectations, Luna still refused to take the flame, even after seeing what ALIE was capable of. Instead, she secretly drugged Clarke and the others, abandoning them on shore and leaving the flame with them.

You believe that to defeat an enemy who will stop at nothing, you must stop at nothing. How's that different than "blood must have blood"?
Luna

Permalink: You believe that to defeat an enemy who will stop at nothing, you must stop at nothing. How's...

As Bellamy so succinctly put it – now what? I have no idea how the series will have our heroes defeat ALIE, given that this installment methodically removed every single potential weapon against her.

The other two "missions" to defeat ALIE were equally unsuccessful.

Murphy, Indra, and Pike were forced to team up for the greater good. After escaping their prison courtesy of Indra (seriously, Indra was single-handedly responsible for breaking everyone out because she is AMAZING), the three took off to locate Jaha's ALIE backpack while the rest of the prisoners fled as a distraction.

Unfortunately for those distraction-prisoners, that didn't work out so well. Mere moments after escaping, several of the re-captured prisoners started popping up in the City of Light, wearing casual clothes clearly from our present-day era.

Which leads me back to my opening comment – what's with all the clean, business-casual clothing in the City of Light?

Clearly, this has something to do with the way ALIE was programmed – as far as we know, none of the Grounders (or even the Arkers) would dress this way, or even know that this was a way that people once dressed.

Therefore, none of them would ever imagine themselves that way. It's definitely ALIE, and I can't figure out why this would be part of her programming?

Guessing it's simply because that's the way people dressed at the time she was created by Becca. Still, it's kind of hilarious to see these Grounders is casual-wear. Like Emori in her cute peacoat.

While the unlikely trio were attempting to dismantle the backpack, Raven was launching her own attack against ALIE, by accessing ALIE's code at Arkadia and attempting to find some sort of weakness built into it.

Monty was (rightly) against Raven acting of her own accord, pointing out that if ALIE were to realize what was happening and pull herself off the mainframe, they'd have no way of using the kill code that Clarke and the others were hoping to retrieve from the second AI (via Luna).

And that's precisely what happened.

Poor Raven desperately wanted to defeat ALIE on her own. As the one member of the main group who was once closest to ALIE, she was visibly frantic at the idea of ALIE prevailing. In that sleep-deprived, panicked state, it makes sense that she'd make a poor choice.

Monty really proved himself this week. He killed his mother for a second time by having Raven draft a delete code for him. He didn't even hesitate; he knew immediately what was going on (ALIE was distracting him), and he knew what he had to do. So he did it.

Christopher Larkin was definitely the MVP this week. Between his amazing performance across Lindsey Morgan's Raven in that Arkadia computer room and his sweet hook-up with Harper, Monty was really on a roll.

Speaking of that Harper and Monty (Harpty?) hook-up: I'm now terrified that one of the two will die. This is a show where happiness equals death, and Harper uttered those magic, disastrous words –

Harper: I haven't felt this way in so long.
Monty: Happy?
Harper: Yeah. And safe.

Permalink: Yeah. And safe.

Harper, noooooo. She's definitely going to get killed, isn't she? I'm already sad about it.

The Murphy-led and Raven-led attacks on ALIE both failed simultaneously. ALIE pulled herself off of the Ark mainframe, as Monty suspected, disabling Raven's ability to activate the killswitch that ALIE apparently had hidden away behind the doors of her "Citadel" in the City of Light.

In Polis, ALIE and Jaha demonstrated their signature ruthless emotional warfare by sending in Emori to distract Murphy from destroying the backpack.

Was what Emori said actually true? Would destroying that backpack (and ALIE) have also destroyed the minds of everyone who had taken the chip? Here's hoping not, or else saving everyone just got a lot more difficult.

Regardless of whether Emori was making things up to stop Murphy, it worked – in the extra few seconds between Murphy finding himself unable to destroy the backpack for love of Emori and Pike making the ruthless call to destroy the backpack anyway, ALIE was able to finalize her migration, making the destruction of the power source in the backpack inconsequential.

ALIE is now apparently housed safely up on the Ark. I have so many questions about this that I'm not even going to begin to hypothesize. I wouldn't know where to begin.

I'll just leave off with this: Will the group now need to somehow physically get back up into space in order to defeat ALIE?! If so... yikes.

Other thoughts:

I thought it was interesting that Bellamy, along with Octavia, initially resisted Clarke's idea to implant the AI in Luna involuntarily. After all of Bellamy's terrible decisions this season, that's where he drew the line? On the bright side, it probably means that he's coming around and thinking more like a good person again.
What was the point of introducing Shay and giving her a name and a personality only to "fridge" her? For the uninitiated, "fridging" is an unfortunately common trope in which a character (typically female) is introduced into a story for no other reason than to die horribly, inducing serious anguish in some other, major character (typically a male). See also: what happened to Gina on The 100 Season 3 Episode 3. Shay's only reason for existing was for Jasper to experience another loss.
The score is always immaculate but this installment's score was on another level. Amazing, evocative instrumentals by the show's composer, Tree Adams – particularly in that closing shot of Clarke and the others.
Clarke discussing Lexa with Luna broke my heart. "Lexa was special." Aghhh. The pain was all over Clarke's face. Eliza Taylor has been turning in amazing performances over the last few installments.

What did you think of "Red Sky at Morning"? Let us know your thoughts by leaving us a comment below and watch The 100 online right here at TV Fanatic to catch up on any missed episodes!