The 100: The CW Boss Confirms Prequel Series Is Still in the Works

It’s been almost a year since The 100 came to an end on The CW and while an untitled prequel series from creator Jason Rothenberg has been in development, updates on that project have been few. In January, when the network officially announced that the Arrow spinoff, Green Arrow, and The Canaries would not be going forward they also mentioned that discussions regarding The 100 prequel continued. With the network’s announcement of its fall slate on Tuesday, a pickup of The 100 prequel was still not on the list, but according to network head Mark Pedowitz, the series is still in the works.

During The CW’s scheduling call on Tuesday, Pedowitz told reporters that discussions were still ongoing.

“I bet you’re gonna be shocked by this: There are still discussions going on,” Pedowitz said. “It is not done in any way shape or form, but there’s discussions still happening.”

The 100 prequel series has previously been described as taking place 97 years before the beginning of The 100, which began with a group of 100 young people being sent down to Earth as a punishment for crimes committed on the space station where everyone lived. It was believed that the planet might once again be inhabitable following an event that wiped out the majority of civilization. The prequel will show the original apocalypse that sent the human race fleeing earth for space. The series will follow a band of survivors on the ground as they learn how to deal with the dangerous new status quo while also fighting to create a new and better society. Iola Evans (Carnival Row), Adain Bradley (Riverdale), and Leo Howard (Why Women Kill) are attached to star.

A backdoor pilot for the prequel aired during The 100‘s seventh and final season as the season’s eighth episode, “Anaconda”. The episode showed the immediate lead up to the nuclear Armageddon that rendered the Earth seemingly uninhabitable and not only fills in man of the details of the show’s general history but answered a lot of questions about the Second Dawn cult that was such a huge part of the final season of The 100.

“They asked me to develop a prequel, and there were several different avenues that we could have gone down,” Rothenberg told ComicBook.com about the episode previously. “My initial thought was, ‘let’s do it in space where, as we know, the Ark is coming together at this time. All the ancestors of our protagonist in the original show from the original 100 are up in space.’ But then this became kind of … We keyed it into what the prequel should be because it made more sense for the story we were telling in season seven.”

Are you still hopeful for The 100 prequel? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.