BSG Season 4 Discussion [Spoilers]

[Zeke]

Well, today's our last chance to speculate before the series ends. I have reasonably high hopes for the finale, but at this point it's just not possible for all the ongoing questions to be answered satisfactorily. The one I'm most afraid will fall by the wayside is the Six in Baltar's head. They've been dangling this one since the mini, and I've long suspected the writers have never had any idea what her deal is -- or cared. She's just a good source of weirdness and plot devices. Every so often they play with it (Six's inner Baltar, head-Six being able to move Baltar physically, and so on), but they never come close to giving an answer. The mysteries that were so intriguing in S1 -- her apparent manipulation of events in "33", the Shelley Godfrey mess -- are now irritating to even think about because they were simply ignored. I'll eat my words if proven wrong, but the best I'm expecting at this point is a mystical/metaphorical explanation that doesn't really explain anything. Answering all the questions about Baltar's Six would take half the finale.

I do think we'll get a good answer about Starbuck. They've built that up heavily. Looks like I was wrong about Ellen being involved in her return, but at the very least, Kara is surely in a Cylon body now. (Say, does Baltar still have his Cylon detector? By the end of S1 he had a working one that detected Boomer, but since he kept that to himself, the fleet thinks it didn't work.) I finally saw Razor the other day, and I think there's something important about the "on the wings of an angel" thing. We'll just have to see; I doubt the truth behind Kara's return will be something we've had enough clues to figure out.

A lot of people have been saying the finale will be depressing, everyone will die, and so on. Uh-uh. This will NOT be a downer ending -- you can take it to the bank. Ron Moore loves being dark, but even more than that, he loves being loved. A bleak show that ends bleak can be artsy, it can even be brilliant, but what it can't be is a rewarding experience for viewers. It leaves a bad taste. If Moore ends with a note of hope instead, he'll get the best of both worlds -- four years of critical acclaim for the show's gritty realism, then a happy fandom that'll follow him anywhere. (Also, the Hybrid telling Kara she would "lead the human race to its end" is all the guarantee we need that no such thing will happen. When a prophecy is a major plot point in sci-fi, you can be sure it'll turn out to mean something the characters don't expect.)

That said, there will definitely be some deaths. In fact, there's no character whose survival I'd put money on; nothing is "edgier" than an unexpected death. (Ask Joss.) I have a feeling about some characters, though. Here are my death picks:

• Roslin. Since the human race won't die, she will, to make it bittersweet. And frankly, she'd damn well better die at this point -- they've dragged it out beyond endurance.
• Helo. In an interview, the actor said he successfully argued for his character's ending to be changed. Of course, it could have been changed from death to survival, but I have a funny feeling it went the other way.
• Tyrol. He'll change his mind and come on the mission -- no matter how bitter he is now, he's just too good a man to abandon his friends. He'll die for his trouble, but heroically.
• Boomer or Athena, but not both. Probably Boomer; her arc has been destructive while Athena's has been redemptive.
• Ellen, for the Final Five's sins. Cavil won't find it as satisfying as he expects. Tigh will mourn, but he has Caprica-Six now (for some damn reason) and I'm not even totally convinced the baby really died.
• Anders. Hope I'm wrong, but he seems too far gone at this point, and it would clear the way for Lee and Kara to get together.
• Racetrack. That's how we'll know the show is really over.

I can go either way on Adama. When Galactica is destroyed, he may well go down with it. But it's too depressing if he and Roslin both die, and after all, Lee can only take over one of their jobs. Tigh and Kara will both live -- they've suffered enough. Lee is too Mary Sue to die. Baltar is too Baltar to die. I think Cavil will actually survive, but he'll lose the war, of course.

A few miscellaneous thoughts:

• One more reason it won't be a downer ending: absolutely nobody would watch Caprica. Why bother? It's all apocalypsed in 50 years anyway. No, they'll do a happy ending, and almost nobody will watch Caprica.
• I have a pet theory that Hera is evil and behind everything. If that happens, I officially called it.
• The "ship falling apart" plotline irritates me. If they were gonna do this, they should have planted the seeds earlier; instead, we've got everything on the ship breaking at once because Tyrol noticed. (Way to Chief there, Chief. You and Adama should've been talking about this from day one.) And the Cylon gunk turned out to be a shaggy dog story; it only bought a few more jumps. Ironically, Voyager was going to do something like this as a running theme in S7 and did lay the groundwork in episodes like "Nightingale", but wound up not coming back to it.
• On a related note, way to blow up the stupid Pegasus last year, Lee. A second battlestar in better shape might come in slightly handy right now. If he'd told his dad about the big heroic rescue he was considering, they could've switched battlestars first.
• I'm guessing the "end" of the human race that the prophecy refers to is the end of its independent existence, i.e. human and Cylon will have no choice but to come together. This fits a theme that's been prominent this season. Second guess: the humans will discover they're all Cylons (or die and come back as such). Oh, you laughed the first time I said it, but that was before Bob Dylan. No theory is too stupid now.
• They're leaving the civilian fleet and Cottle behind to go on this mission, and I would like to let it be known that if the Cylons take this opportunity to blow them all to hell, I will cheer. Lampkin has his moments, but the rest have always been a pack of petty whiners, lowlifes, rioters, and journalists. Humanity would've been better off with just the Galactica crew, several of whom are halfway likable.
• Know how they talked about the finale being extra-long and made it sound like the extra time might be divided up among the last few weeks? How they were considering various options? And it's turned out to be a completely normal two-hour finale? It's as if BSG decided to give me one last perfect example of how the show pretends to be original and revolutionary, then just isn't. (But still gets the credit, of course.)

Anyone else have some pre-finale thoughts?