Thread:Janus100/@comment-25205238-20190109211411/@comment-27794543-20190109223941

Lexa and the previous Commanders are dead. What the Flame contains are digital representations of those people, similar to how A.L.I.E.'s followers could die in the real world but their digital representations would remain in the City of Light. Those digital representations aren't "alive" people, they're computer programs that can be edited or deleted.

That said, these digital representations are "real" in the same way A.L.I.E. was "real". They're not living humans, but they're real computer programs that can interact with living humans. As for Clarke in "Nevermore", there was sentimentality and grief in play – she wanted to believe the Grounder belief that Lexa was in there, even though logically she knew Lexa was dead.