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The 100 Season 6 Episode 7 had some confusing parts that viewers are still trying to figure out. What did that memory of Josephine’s involving the baby and ablation mean? Here’s an explanation. This post has spoilers for the latest episode of The 100, called Nevermind.
We finally saw the background story about why Josephine killed that one family of Primes who had betrayed her and just what had happened to cause them to poison her. (If you need a review of who the Primes are, there’s a story here that explains it.) We learned in a previous episode that Kaylee was the one who killed Josephine’s last host but made it look like she fell out a window. That was why Kaylee’s family stole the shuttle and tried to escape to Skykru’s ship before Josephine was reborn.
So now we know the situation between Kaylee and Josephine, Kaylee wanted revenge for Isaac murder Isaac wanted the nulls to have the same right as the hosts #The100
Now we saw that Kaylee killed Josephine because she wanted revenge for Isaac’s murder. Josephine killed Isaac because Isaac wanted the nulls to have the same rights as the hosts. But Josephine thought the nulls were diluting the bloodline, leading to fewer nightbloods being born, and only nightbloods can resurrect Primes. So it appears that she was having some baby nulls delivered to the trees in the forest in order to stop some of that dilution.
Josephine definitely got to die. She’s feeding babies to trees?! To TREES?! #The100
What’s unclear is exactly what was happening with the babies or just what “ablation” means in this scenario. Some people think she was just feeding null babies to the forest in order to kill them quickly, so there are fewer nulls for people to procreate with, and thus fewer nulls to dilute the bloodline. It seems this is the case, but maybe there’s something more?
Remember last week we saw that the trees actually feed on people and slowly “absorb” them somehow. Since Josephine is a eugenics expert and we saw that the tree sap has healing properties, I’m going to guess that the tree sap was somehow used to increase the chances of nightbloods’ being born. And the trees had to consume human blood in order for the healing tree sap to be created. So she was not just feeding the trees babies to have fewer nulls, but also to help her eugenics project with the trees.
Perhaps the meaning of the word ablation itself will help us. Ablation is a medical term meaning a type of surgical removal. Cardiac ablation, for example, means destroying tissue in the heart that’s creating incorrect electrical signals that lead to an abnormal heart rhythm.
Oblation, meanwhile, refers to a sacrifice or offering to a god. Both words considered together paint a clear picture of what’s happening. They are medically “removing” nulls from the bloodline – so they’re less likely to breed – by sacrificing them to the tree “gods.” If you look at it that way, then it’s more likely that the baby sacrifice wasn’t for a greater medical purpose. Instead, it points to Josephine simply killing off some extra null babies by delivering them to the forest.
It’s a little clearer when you consider that Josephine wasn’t likely just killing non-nightbloods. As a scientist, she was likely testing every baby’s blood and probably killing babies that didn’t have any nightblood gene and thus had zero chance of giving birth to a nightblood or passing the gene along.
I still think there’s more to the trees though.