| “ | The end is coming. Hear me as I say it this time. The end is coming, and it's coming soon. The world is dark and getting darker all the time. Everything we once trusted has turned on us... Government, religion, even technology has become a weapon in their hands used to poison our minds. I know you're in pain. I know you're afraid, but it doesn't have to be like this. There is a way out of the darkness. I can show it to you. You can be saved. Join me. Join us, and together when the horsemen come, from the ashes, we will rise. | „ |
| ~ Cadogan's speech to his cult two weeks before the world is destroyed. |
William "Bill" Cadogan, also known as The Shepherd, was the leader of the Second Dawn doomsday cult and later of the Disciples in The 100. Alongside Sheidheda, he is one of the two primary antagonists of the seventh and final season.
Biography[]
Past[]
It is mentioned that Cadogan came from an abusive background and is known to have an ex-wife named Grace and two children, Callie and Reese. Believing of the end of the world, Cadogan founded the Second Dawn doomsday cult and built a massive hidden bunker for his people to survive by selling off all of the organization's real estate holdings, generating tens of millions of dollars. When the world was destroyed in a nuclear war, Cadogan and most of his cult survived in the bunker. Having located Earth's Anomaly Stone in Machu Picchu a decade before, Cadogan became obsessed with leading his people to another world.
When scientist Becca Franko arrived on Earth two years later with the alternative of Nightblood which gives people immunity to radiation, Cadogan refused as he was convinced that the only option was to leave the planet. Becca's use of the Flame AI allowed her to help Cadogan open the Anomaly wormhole to another planet, but Becca discovered what she called the Final Code leading to "Judgment Day." When Becca refused to help Cadogan get it, he had Becca burned at the stake to get the AI instead. Rebelling against her father, Callie stole the Flame and led a group of people injected with Nightblood to resettle the planet's surface. Cadogan sent Reese after Callie, threw Grace out of the bunker for helping their daughter to escape, and led his people through the Anomaly to another planet called Bardo. Cadogan would later state that he never saw either of his children again and eventually came to the conclusion that Callie killed Reese.
On Bardo, Cadogan, and his people, who renamed themselves the Disciples, discovered logs left behind by the extinct native race the Bardoans describing what had occurred when Becca entered the Final Code. Translating the logs, Cadogan and his Disciples learned of a species' ability to reach Transcendence and believed that the logs spoke of a Last War that they needed to win in order to reach it with the alternative being annihilation. Cadogan and his people trained for this Last War using the advanced technology left behind by the Bardoans to control the Anomaly portal system. At some point, Cadogan went on a pilgrimage to the planet Etherea and discovered the remains of a civilization that succeeded in Transcending. Cadogan, now known as the Shepherd to his people, eventually entered cryo-stasis so as to be around when the Last War eventually began.
Season Four[]
With a second nuclear disaster coming, Thelonious Jaha begins searching for Cadogan's long-abandoned bunker as a means of survival. During the search, Jaha shows Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake a video of a speech that Cadogan gave to his followers two weeks before the bombs dropped, talking about the disasters rocking the world and how the end is imminent. The trio locates a decoy bunker beneath Cadogan's childhood home, but discover it filled with corpses, having not been properly sealed against radiation. Its later determined that Cadogan sent the lower-level members of the cult to that bunker while hiding the real bunker to prevent overcrowding. Jaha eventually locates the real Second Dawn bunker beneath the Grounder capital city of Polis and it becomes home to 1,200 survivors, saving them from the Earth's second nuclear destruction.
Season Five[]
After Madi Griffin takes the Flame, she receives flashes of the memories of past Commanders. One memory she receives is of Becca Franko being burnt at the stake by the Second Dawn. In the memory, Becca tries in vain to convince the cultists that Cadogan is killing them, not saving them with his actions. After Madi awakens, Clarke explains who Cadgoan was.
Season Seven[]
Cadogan is mentioned several times as the Disciples' mysterious Shepherd. Due to a mistaken belief that the Disciples originated on the Eligius III colony ship, the Shepherd is wrongly suspected to be an Eligius colonist.
After Clarke Griffin arrives on Bardo, First Disciple Anders awakens Cadogan from stasis as the Disciples believe that Clarke has the Flame in her head, and thus the Last War is upon them. Clarke recognizes Cadogan and realizes the connection between the Disciples and the Second Dawn. Clarke lies to Cadogan that his daughter Callie's consciousness is inside of her head, which he thinks is the source of her knowledge of him, when in reality, the Flame has been destroyed. Clarke manipulates Cadogan's need for help in an effort to rescue her friends while Cadogan explains to Gabriel Santiago, Niylah, and Jordan Green about Transcendence. Looking through the logs left behind by the native Bardoans, Jordan comes to the conclusion that Cadogan and the Disciples mistranslated them, and instead of a Last War, Jordan believes that they discuss a test, one person standing in judgment to represent their entire species. The three decide to keep this discovery a secret, knowing that Bill Cadogan is the wrong man to take such a test if it is in fact true.
Relations between the two groups deteriorate when Echo attempts to commit genocide upon the Disciples and Hope Diyoza murders Anders. Things worsen when Bellamy Blake, who was believed to have been killed, returns from Etherea loyal to the Disciple cause and reveals the Flame's destruction to Cadogan, negating Clarke's leverage over him. After Bellamy convinces Cadogan that the Flame could possibly be repaired, Clarke makes a deal with Cadogan where he releases her friends in exchange for her help in finding the Flame. Cadogan sends the group to a location that only he knows and accompanies Clarke back to Sanctum. However, Gabriel chooses to destroy the Flame for good instead of fixing it, and Clarke forces Cadogan to lead her to her friends. After Cadogan leaves, Sheidheda reveals Madi Griffin's sketchbook containing drawings depicting the memories of the Commanders still in her head. Clarke kills Bellamy to keep him from giving it to Cadogan, but is forced to flee without the sketchbook.
Cadogan leads Clarke's group back to the Second Dawn bunker on Earth where he had sent the others. Using a nano-tracking device, Cadogan escapes to Bardo, leaving Clarke's group stranded on Earth and unable to stop him. Cadogan learns from Sheidheda that Madi has the memories of the Commanders and forges an alliance with the Dark Commander to kidnap Madi. Though the Dark Commander fails, Madi chooses to come on her own to save her friends. However, Cadogan immediately has a bomb sent to the bunker and though the blast is contained, everyone is left trapped inside and Emori is mortally wounded by debris. Cadogan uses the Disciples' Memory Capture (M-Cap) device to dig through Madi's head for the needed information. By the time Clarke and Octavia Blake arrive, Cadogan is gone and Madi has suffered a massive and irreversible stroke from his actions that has destroyed the voluntary movement centers of her brain, completely paralyzing Madi. Worse, Cadogan is discovered to have gotten the Final Code from Madi's mind.
Using the code, Cadogan enters the Anomaly Stone and finds himself on a pier he once took Callie to as a child in the middle of a starscape. The Judge, a Transcended being taking on the form of Callie, appears to Cadogan and reveals that Jordan was right about it being a test to reach Transcendence and not a Last War. As Cadogan begins the test, he is shot through the back of the head by a vengeful Clarke who then unloads several more shots into Cadogan's back, killing him.
Despite Cadogan's death, the test to determine humanity's fate has already begun and can not be stopped. Thanks to the efforts of Raven Reyes and Octavia Blake, the Judge is convinced that humanity is worthy of Transcendence, achieving Cadogan's ultimate goal. Only Clarke is not Transcended which the Judge explains is a consequence of her murdering Cadogan in the middle of the test.
Trivia[]
- Cadogan is the rare example of a villain whose ultimate goals were all achieved.
- Cadogan's goals were all relatively benign but his methods were not.
- The bunker that Cadogan built is a major location in the fourth and fifth seasons and a minor location in the sixth and seventh seasons.
- Bellamy Blake refers to Cadogan as a con man although Cadogan turned out to be correct in the end about both the coming destruction of the world and Transcendence. In addition, after first learning about Cadogan, Bellamy calls him a religious fanatic.
- On two separate occasions, Cadogan insists that the Second Dawn was not a cult like everyone else thought despite the organization meeting all of the criteria for it. Cadogan instead states that the Second Dawn was "a collective of great minds dedicated to the continuation of our species."
- Before the seventh season, Cadogan was presumed to be long-dead because he had lived nearly a hundred years before the show's present time.
- Despite being responsible for a number of deaths, Cadogan never actually killed anyone directly himself, at least not on-screen. Instead, the killings were committed on his orders.
- Two of Cadogan's victims, Madi Griffin and Emori, survive because humanity achieves Transcendence. Otherwise, Madi would've been left permanently paralyzed from Cadogan's efforts to extract information from her mind and Emori would've remained physically dead from injuries sustained due to a bomb that Cadgoan had sent.
- Before the seventh season, Cadogan himself was believed to be the one who burned Becca Franko at the stake since she was yelling at the Second Dawn and calling out his name. Flashbacks in the seventh season revealed that Cadogan did not take part in the burning himself but instead had his son Reese Cadogan do it.
- The only time that Cadogan's full name is seen is on the outside of his cryopod which identifies him as William Cadogan. Elsewhere he is always called Bill Cadogan by other characters or the Shepherd by his followers though a couple of times he's told people to call him Bill when they call him the Shepherd or My Shepherd.
- Cadogan's saying "From the Ashes, We Will Rise" is shown to have made its way into Grounder culture. It is also the tagline of the fourth season.
- According to the 100's showrunner Jason Rothenberg, Cadogan was originally going to be brought back in the fourth season as he was supposed to appear in more episodes, but the story "took a different turn" and it took years to finally bring him back in the seventh season.[1]
References[]
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 Villains
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