Like looking in a mirror? Syfy’s The Ark tells a story of humans trying to survive in space in an attempt to rebuild their planet — a concept many fans believe sounds eerily similar to that of The CW’s The 100.
The Ark, which premiered in February 2023, focused on a group of people who were on a mission to find an inhabitable planet. Unfortunately, their space trip took a turn when an unexplained disaster woke them up early and forced them to try and live long enough to make it to the ground.
Ahead of The Ark‘s premiere, showrunner Jonathan Glassner opened up about the vision for the series.
“It’s set only probably 100 years from now. So, it’s old technology that has been pushed to the limit to make these ships try to rescue people off of Earth which is collapsing. And we go with one of the ships and have all kinds of fun adventures,” he told The Companion in September 2022. “It’s really a survival show. It could almost be set on an island somewhere and be just the same.”
At the time, eagle-eyed fans noticed the possible connections between The Ark and The 100. The post-apocalyptic show, which ran from 2014 until 2020 on The CW, explored survival through the lens of teen delinquents being sent to find out if Earth is a safe environment a century after a nuclear disaster forced humanity into space.
After seven seasons of death and destruction, creator Jason Rothenberg discussed how he attempted to end The 100 on a positive note.
“We wanted the moral of the story to be, simply stated, ‘Until we stop fighting, we’re doomed.’ Until we stop killing each other in the name of country or tribe or even family, we’re doomed to keep repeating that cycle of violence,” he told Entertainment Weekly in September 2020. “And once we do and we link arms and we realize we’re all in this together, then we can get to whatever comes next.”
Rothenberg continued: “As dark as the show has been at times, I feel like the ending — and I always say I was not trying to make people feel good most of the time and the show is not a show that was supposed to bring you joy, it’s supposed to move you and make you feel sad or angry even — but here we were definitely aiming for people walking away feeling uplifted.”
In response to the show’s controversial storytelling choices, the screenwriter said he didn’t approach the finale with fans in mind.
“First of all, the whole show is written, season after season, long before it airs, so there’s nothing we could do once people start reacting to episodes as they air, certainly within a season,” he shared with KSite TV that same month. “The show obviously is hard to watch sometimes. It’s not designed to be a pleasant, enjoyable, happy ride. If you can’t sign up for a ride like that, knowing that you’re going to lose characters that you love, for instance, then you shouldn’t. Don’t watch the show if you cannot handle losing characters that you love.”
Scroll down to see all the similarities between The 100 and The Ark: