It's a coincidence that tonight's The 100 episode features pandemic, protest and police brutality

Entertainment Weekly

Tonight's episode is meant to serve as a backdoor pilot for a potential prequel series, focusing on the immediate aftermath of the nuclear apocalypse that set in motion the events of the original series. Creator Jason Rothenberg says that the pandemic, protest and police storylines are just "weird coincidences." "It is much more timely now than it was when we were making it," he says. "We're talking about people who come from before the apocalypse; they all are from our world, essentially, so they're much more like us than the group of kids and adults that came down from the Ark and met the Grounders. And because of that, we're going to tackle issues in ways that we never really did with this show because those issues are relevant to them, whether it's issues of race or sexual orientation or whatever the case may be. It's much different than Clarke and the gang who came down from space, and that'll be very different." ALSO: Rothenberg: "Something I really wanted to do this season was to connect a lot of the dots, or fill in the blanks, whichever metaphor you want to use."