Deus Ex Machina: The Divine, The Infernal, and The Mundane on the Series Finale of "Battlestar Galactica"

I went into the series finale of Battlestar Galactica with more than a little trepidation.

Would Ronald D. Moore and David Eick be able to wrap up all of the loose threads in this five-year-long tapestry of a narrative in roughly two hours? And, more importantly, would it be a satisfying swan song for the series itself, which has attracted millions of devoted followers who have theorized, discussed, and dissected every moment leading up to this ending?

I did expect Moore and Eick to deliberately leave some things open to interpretation and discussion with the series finale of Battlestar Galactica ("Daybreak, Part Two") but, while I enjoyed watching the final moments of this intelligent and provocative series, there were a few things that got under my skin.

So put on your Viper suit for the last time, unplug the toaster, prepare for some spoilers (if you haven't yet seen the series finale) and let's discuss the Battlestar Galactica series finale.

Most of all, I had feared that the series ender wouldn't tie up Kara Thrace's story neatly. After all, Katee Sackhoff herself has said publicly that she isn't sure she's happy with the way that Starbuck's journey ended. ("I don't know yet. I'm still wrestling with it. There's certain aspects of the character that had tremendous closure, and then there's certain aspects that are completely wide open. I'll leave it to the fans. I'll keep my opinion to myself right now.") And I have to agree with her: I wanted a more satisfying sense of closure for her character than to just disappear in a field after standing next to Lee. We're left with the notion that Kara was tied into something divine and ancient, that her purpose was fulfilled by bringing the survivors of the human race to the (new) Earth. And that having completed her mission, she vanished into the ether, which felt to me a little bit like a cop-out on the part of Ron Moore and the writers.

Was she a ghost, an angel, a messenger of God? I don't know and clearly it's meant to be left open for interpretation. (Though she clearly had a physical form, unlike Head Six and Baltar, and was able to interact with the world around her.) But it seems an odd ending given the fact that Kara was connected somehow to the ancient Cylon race via her piano-player father and was able to get the fleet to Earth by using the notes of "All Along the Watchtower," which she was able to recall thanks to little Hera's drawing. Turning the notes into numerical values, she's able to jump Galactica to our Earth... and brings humanity to its end. Or rather the end of its journey. (How she was also the "harbinger of death" that the Cylon hybrid prophesied remains unclear and unseen.) In that respect, I see it's why Kara was brought back to "life," as it were, to be able to lead her people to the Promised Land.

Except that I thought that's what Laura Roslin, the dying leader, was meant to do. With her role usurped by Kara Thrace, Laura was left in this two-parter with very little to do other than help Ishay oversee the emergency triage center on Galactica during the final battle, chase after Hera after experiencing a vision of the fabled Opera House.. and then lose her.

How Kara was brought back to life is meant to be a mystery, a divine miracle enacted by an unseen heavenly presence that's pulling everyone's strings. It's also this godlike presence that recreates Kara's exploded Viper and places the secret path to the (old) Earth in its nav system so the Final Five can unlock it and return to their desolate planet.

Daniel, the fabled seventh Cylon model, was a "rabbit hole" that many of us fell down, according to Moore. He was just a piece of the Cylon backstory, a convenient analogue for Cain and Abel's story of fratricide, and wasn't connected to Kara Thrace whatsoever. In fact, Moore is quoted as saying that Daniel was an "unintentional rabbit hole" and that he "had no idea" that anyone would draw any conclusions between Kara, Dreilide, and Daniel. ("It's one of those things where you're inside the show and doing it, you don't realize that people are going to seize on this detail and it gets a life of its own," he told Alan Sepinwall.)

Which is funny as, while it's only a small piece of the overarching mythos of Battlestar Galactica, it could have perhaps drawn these threads together. Why couldn't Kara have been the offspring of Cylon Daniel and her human mother? Wouldn't it perhaps have gone a long way to explaining just why she is tapped into this shared consciousness, vis-a-vis "All Along the Watchtower" and her paintings of the Eye of Jupiter? Or is that just me reaching?

Or is it enough to have had her return from the dead as a Christ figure, bring the humans to their salvation on Earth, and then return to the heavens once she's fulfilled her destiny?

Likewise, I felt that the use of the Opera House visions here didn't quite match up to what had been built up so successfully over the course of the last three seasons or so. The shared visions of the Opera House seemed so climactic and crucial to the plot. After all, these were haunting glimpses into an otherworldly place of power and were shared by Six, Roslin, Baltar, Athena, and Hera... as they chased after Hera, the salvation of both the human and Cylon races, and Six and Baltar brought her into the presence of the mythic Final Five.

But in the end, it all went down amid a firefight aboard Galactica as Laura and Athena chased after Hera (and poor Helo nearly died after rescuing his daughter) and Six and Baltar literally stumbled on to Hera... and then simply brought her into CIC. Was that really all that this was about? Walking the little girl into CIC? The clues that we had been teased with up until now pointed to a more momentous and significant moment. Why was it important that it was Six and Baltar who shielded Hera and moved her into place? And why was it so crucial that Hera be brought to that place, under the gaze of the Final Five, where she was once again placed in jeopardy by the arrival of Cavil, who held a gun to her in a rather cliched fashion? (Regarding Cavil enacting some sort of standoff by threatening to shoot Hera, did anyone really believe for a second that he would go through with it, seeing as she was vital to his people's survival?)

To me, the resolution of the Opera House vision was one element of the series finale that truly let me down. Does it get our characters all in place for one final showdown between the alliance and the evil Cavil? Yep. Does it enable Baltar to speak about the divine puppet master pulling their strings and how this being, whatever it is, isn't good or evil? You betcha. But it lacked that epic, mythical quality that this plot thread seemed to be building towards. It seemed to be about the notion of sacrifice and of redemption. In fact, what bothers me most was that it seemed to be about something entirely different the entire time we've been tracking this storyline.

Ultimately, Hera is the salvation of both the human and Cylon races and we learn via a flash-forward 150,000 years to the future (our present day) that Hera is in fact Mitochondrial Eve, the matrilineal ancestor of the human race. Her bones, discovered in the Cradle of Life in Africa, are incorrectly identified as the start of the human race, though she's actually the result of reproduction between an off-world human and a Cylon. (I did find it semi-amusing that it's Ron Moore himself who's reading the magazine article about the discovery of the bones while the angelic Six and Baltar look over his shoulder.)

So was it essential that Hera be protected and fulfill her own destiny? Definitely. We're told that, without her, we wouldn't be here today as the human race at that time were a handful of pre-linguistic tribal people with spears. It's because of Hera that we exist at all and because of the sacrifice of the Cylon rebels and the Colonial survivors that Earth's population evolves to what it is today. Rather than destroy, they opt to create. They find Eden on Earth and recreate Paradise. Hera herself grows up to be the matrilineal ancestor for us all... which means that each of us shares a piece of her original mitochondrial DNA. We truly are human and Cylon, gifted with the "best of us" that Lee wanted to share.

Of course, things in life are cyclical. Patterns repeat themselves. "This has happened before and will happen again." In the present day, the massive advances in technology are making things possible in a way they haven't been before. Man is once again looking to create artificial life, to steal the fire away from the gods, and embue their mechanical creations with thought and purpose. The scenes in present-day Times Square point towards humanity's drive to recreate the Cylon race: to enslave a population of artificially created beings to their own ends. Will the pattern repeat itself? Will this robotic race rise up to annihilate their creators? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. As the angelic Six says, even complex equations of probability point towards patterns changing.

The humans and Cylons DO form a lasting alliance, especially after the playing field is leveled with the destruction of resurrection technology. (And, make no mistake, it can't be recreated now that Tyrol enacts his vengeance for Callie's death upon Tory, who rather fittingly finally gets some Biblical justice rained down upon her.) The humans and Cylons make a new home on Earth together; their new relationship isn't based on old grudges but mutual survival. And they do both survive through Hera.

The series has been a journey for both races as they are finally forced to put aside their enmity and become one, unified nation of survivors. Which is a hopeful message about solidarity and equanimity, the choice of compassion over destruction. We're meant to be left with a feeling of hope, that these people settled into a quiet life of agriculture and lived out their days in peace in some very uninteresting times. (Unlike that ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times.")

Yet why did I feel deeply saddened by the ending then, one in which the people of the Colonies, bound together through genocide, war, and the fight for survival, all seemingly went their own separate ways? It didn't feel hopeful to me at all that these people, after being through so much together, would opt not to stay together but to disperse throughout an empty planet. What is it in their nature that would push them towards solitude now, after everything they've fought for?

When Lee realizes that Adama is leaving with Roslin, he knows that he'll never see his father again. But why? I had believed that Adama was going to kill himself once Roslin died. After giving her one last glimpse at life, at the innocence and diversity of the wildlife on the African plains, Laura Roslin finally dies. It's a fitting death for the former president of the Colonies and I'm glad that we do see her finally succumb to cancer on screen. It's an important death, given that she fought so hard for so long to keep her people together and find them a new home. (Even though, as mentioned above, it's really Starbuck who does so in the end.)

But I thought that Adama's decision to live out a life of solitude after her death, away from even his son Lee, wasn't how I pictured the Old Man going out: alone, having lost his true love, building a cabin for one on a lonely bluff high above the valley. It would have been one thing if we had seen other survivors down in the valley and had the feeling that Adama was somewhat removed from his fellow mankind but still watching over them in his own way, but it was saddening to me that he would just walk out on Lee forever. Poof, like Kara, he's gone.

And I thought it was rather strange that we never got to see any final scene between Adama and Saul Tigh. Throughout Battlestar Galactica, it's Adama and Tigh's relationship that comprises one of the backbones of the series. We've seen them drink together, fight together, and cry together. Yet after arriving on Earth, we never seen anything pass between them. To me, it was a missed opportunity to tie up their relationship in a satisfying way. We've seen them go through thick and thin together; why should now be any different?

(Meanwhile, Tyrol heads out for Scotland, telling Ellen and Tigh that he can't be around anyone, human or Cylon.)

As for Tigh and Ellen, they finally get the life that had been eluding them all along: the chance to see out their days together, reunited once more. And this is it for them: there's no resurrection, no rebirth. They have one life to live, together, and they intend to make it count. So too for the little family that manages to make it through the series more or less unscathed (at least mortally, anyway): Helo, Athena, and Hera. A literal post-nuclear family comprised of two races, pointing towards the future. (Even Boomer gets a chance to redeem herself and pay back the Old Man... before she's gunned down by Athena.)

Sam leads the ships into the cleansing fire of the sun, finally able to fulfill his own destiny: the chance to be a part of something that approaches perfection. To embrace the heat of the sun and its consuming fire. The sun destroys but it also creates and ultimately Sam becomes part of this neverending process too.

Baltar and Six get the opportunity to change their fates, to strive to build rather than tear down. The most emotional moment for me in the finale (besides for Laura's death) was Baltar tearfully admitting to Six that he knows how to farm. That Gaius would finally admit where he came from was truly touching and that Six told him that she knows. These two, responsible for the mass genocide of the human race, really do come full circle here. They know each other inside and out and they get the chance to grow their own Eden together, on equal footing.

One of the most beautifully crafted moments in the finale was Gaius standing aboard that Raptor, deciding whether he would stay and perhaps die fighting Cavil or if he would once again run. Baltar's been running for as long as we've known him, and even before: he obliterated his past as a farmer's son, erased his accent, and transformed himself into an intellectual. He's gone through more transformations than anyone else on the series: scientist, savior, president, pariah, prophet. And in that moment, standing on the brink of possible destruction, he chooses the path of sacrifice, placing himself in the path of the divine. That he does so with his own free will is the important part. Shaky, unsure, and absolutely terrified, he makes his decision... and comes face to face with Six, placed right next to him in the final firefight. Coincidence? Hardly. Once again, it's a sign of the divine. That these two, united in their complicity for the destruction of the Twelve Colonies, would end up side by side in the Final Battle is meant to be proof of their connection with the celestial mysteries and in their redemption.

Which leads us then to the revelation that Head Baltar and Six, pushing their fleshy counterparts to do both good and evil, are in fact in the employ of the unseen presence... or are in fact a part of said divinity itself. As Baltar says, they're not good or evil, they just are. They poke and prod, they pull strings, they conduct experiments to see just what will happen. And it's fitting that God's messengers should be these two: the creators and destroyers themselves. They are part of a pattern that never ends, of birth, death, and rebirth. The wheels keep on turning and they are once again watching and waiting.

That they would still be around 150,000 years later, still shadowing the human race, is fitting. Them, walking through Times Square while the ancient/modern "All Along the Watchtower" played was a nice coda to everything that had passed. Once again, they appear to be keeping a watch over the next "experiment," waiting to see whether things will once again play out: whether humanity will choose the path of destruction or enlightenment. And, they, like Hera, are a part of us all, whispering in the dark recesses of our collective consciousness.

Ultimately, I felt that Battlestar Galactica offered an ending that did answer some of the series' looming questions (though not always satisfyingly) and left some others painfully ambiguous. While some of the revelations pointed a little too much towards divine (or angelic) intervention, I did appreciate the full circle nature of the series' overarching plot and the fact that, for a series as dark as this, some of the character got their happy endings, standing in the cool, sunny plains at the birth of civilization.

What did you think of the series finale? Were you satisfied with the disappearance of Kara and the reveal about the Opera House? Are you glad that the crew of Galactica didn't all perish in a fiery end in the fantastic final showdown with the Cylon Colony or did you think that the ending was uncharacteristically sunny? Discuss.