Murphy is a character you love to hate on THE 100, but you may start feeling sorry for him when season 3 begins, because he’s been trapped inside that bunker he found for months when we rejoin him. During a visit to the set of THE 100 in Vancouver, Richard Harmon (Murphy) spoke to journalists about where we’ll find his character in season 3.
Learning About the Past. Harmon refused to tell us what else we’ll be seeing on that video Murphy discovered, but he did say that “I can tell you that it’s pretty awesome. When you start watching the season you won’t have to wait long to find out kind of what else is going on down there. It’s very interesting. It’s very fun stuff. I’ll say this. If anyone could kind of find out a little more about the past it would be Murphy at this point…given where he is in the world and kind of the parts in the decimation of Earth that started where he is currently. So I think it would be tough for him not to clue into some things, I think….I’ll say that Murphy is a lot more kind of astute than people give him credit for and he’s a lot smarter than people realize. So if he gets a couple more pieces of information, I think he’ll be one of the few people to actually know almost the whole story, if the pieces fall properly, obviously.”
A Little Slice of Heaven? “You gotta be careful what you wish for,” Harmon warned us about where Murphy finds himself when the season begins. “Yeah, he has everything in front of him right now that he’s ever wanted. He’s by himself. He’s safe. He’s by himself. He’s got liquor. He’s got food. He’s got it all. But I’ll take it back to one of my favorite episodes of TWILIGHT ZONE, where a guy dies and then he ends up in a room with all the things he’s ever loved. He’s playing pool. He’s got women, he’s smoking, he’s drinking. And for the vast majority of the episode, he’s having a great time. And then eventually it just starts driving him crazy because it’s all he had. It was all the time. And he’s like, ‘you know, screw it, I don’t want to go to heaven anymore. Just throw me into the other place. Throw me into hell’. And the guy who’s there with him is like, ‘Oh you think this is heaven? This is the other place.’ And I think that’s such a cool idea. Like you get everything you’ve ever wanted in your life, but then you have to do it so much to the point where you hate it. And that would be hell. So, we’ll see what Murphy does down there. He’s got everything he wants for now…”
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A More Compassionate Murphy? Harmon doesn’t think Murphy is a complete bad guy. In fact, he thinks that “in Season 3 I can safely say that you will be see a little bit more of a compassionate side of Murphy. I hope you’ll see him that way.” Harmon also hinted that while Murphy continues to be crafty and doing what it takes to survive, “I think you’ll see this season Murphy will start to maybe put the well being of others not on the same level as himself, but bring it up a little bit. Because he couldn’t care what happened to other people before, but now, he’s getting lonely, honestly. I think he’s been lonely and he’s seeing that even with the tease of the friendship that he had with Jaha that’s kind of gone now, it was nice to have someone to talk to, it was nice to be with someone. So I think you’ll see Murphy kind of open up avenues to other people and take them in and look to protect people. ”
Murphy and Jaha’s Quest for the City of Light. What does Murphy think of Jaha’s mission to reached the city of Light? “Currently not too much. I mean, he left just left me. He left me there for dead pretty much. I wasn’t faring too well. I don’t know if Murphy ever really bought into the whole City of Light / destiny sort of talk that Jaha was getting into, that very kind of prophetic sort of storyline that he has going on. He was more of a means to an end for Murphy, I think. If there is a chance that there is something out there, Murphy wanted to get there, he wanted to get away because he had nothing left to live for where he was. No one was looking out for him so he thought that this was a guy who may offer another way. But I don’t think he ever really bought into the hype too much.”
Expanding the World. As the arkers will deal with new characters, so too will Murphy. “This season, we expand this world even further. And to do that a lot of characters got to be a lot of different places. So, I think Murphy’s going to be out there. He’ll be meeting new people. But not to say he won’t maybe run into some familiar faces. ”
Learning More About the Grounders. While it’s unclear how much interaction Murphy may be having with the grounders this season, Harmon did say that “We’re going further into the situations that we’ve kind of teased with like the capitol of the Grounders and stuff and going a little further into Grounder politics, which is actually my favorite part of the season. Not even for really myself that’s kind of a different world that what Murphy’s in. But just reading those parts of the scripts of the Grounder politics is very fascinating stuff. They’ve created a very cool world for that.”
Don’t miss the season premiere of THE 100 on Thursday, January 21 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.