Octavia Blake has one of the most intense character arcs in the show The 100 having started as the spunky young sister of Bellamy Blake before transforming into a fierce warrior. Though she is initially introduced as inexperienced and is often brash in her naivety, she rises to become a perfect antagonist for the main characters in The 100’s post-apocalyptical drama. This makes Octavia seem older than she actually is by the end of the series.
As a part of the original 100 juvenile delinquents sent to survey Earth, Octavia meets the territorial Grounders and learns to survive new conditions alongside her peers. She was the first of them to learn the Grounder language and quickly falls in love with a Grounder named Lincoln (Ricky Whittle). Octavia Blake is a minor in season 1 of The 100, as are the rest of the characters sent to the planet’s surface, aside from her 23-year-old brother Bellamy. Following Lincoln’s death, Octavia faces hardships that help her hone her skills as a warrior and liberator. Becoming more acquainted with her ancestry and Grounder culture sends her down a path that eventually pits her against Bellamy, Clarke, and other “Sky People” in a fight for territory and power.
The exact age of Octavia Blake is complicated, much like Clarke Griffin’s is due to the existence of mind drives. She is 16 in season 1 of The 100 as the script of the pilot and a flashback in season 1 episode 6 confirm. However, her experiences with the Temporal Anomaly in season 6 and season 7 make her true age questionable by the show’s conclusion. Chronologically, she ages differently from her peers. The timeline between seasons 1 and 4 lasts only half a year. Octavia is still very young when she seizes power over all 12 Grounders clans during “The Dark Year.” Her chronological age at this point, being either 16 or 17, may explain why she becomes consumed with power so fast. There is a time jump of 6 years between seasons 4 and 5 where Octavia is ruling the 12 clans as Wonkru. At this stage, she is 22 or 23. The 100 Season 5 takes place over the span of a few weeks before the coveted Shadow Valley is destroyed and she must join the older Bellamy, Clarke, and Madi Griffin in cryogenic chambers. 125 years pass in cryosleep before seasons 6 and 7 begin. After Octavia decides to stop her violent reign, she gets stuck living on Skyring in the Anomaly for over 10 years. By the end of The 100, she is either 33 or 34.
Octavia’s physical age by the end of the show is ultimately higher than Bellamy’s or Clarke’s. The decade she spent aging with Hope and Diyoza on Skyring makes her older than Bellamy who is around 29 or 30 years old in the last season of The 100. However, she’s not mentally older than Clarke who possesses the Flame in season 3. The Flame gives her the experience of several Commanders which suggests Clarke Griffin’s mental age is around 263. Octavia’s character arc, following Lincoln’s death and leading up to her reign as Blodriena, gave her wisdom more commonly found in old age. While she did not receive memories and experiences from past Commanders of The Flame to extend her mental age, Octavia matured the most by the end of the show since she was able to confront her own egregious flaws and mistakes. Her time on Skyring, Bardo, and Sanctum adds more years to her chronological age which can be estimated as 158 accounting for the 125 years of cryosleep.
Octavia Blake survives hardships and turmoil no 16-year-old should have to throughout 7 action-packed seasons of The 100. Her chronological age ending up older than her brother and friends’ reflects the wisdom Octavia’s accumulated by the time she holds herself accountable for all the chaos she instigated. Starting in season 1 as a 16-year-old, Octavia is physically around 33 by the last season of The 100, and chronologically 158 years old.
