Daylight Parts One and Two, the final “three hour” (works out to much less minus the commercials) episode of Battlestar Galactica, is all over the map. I don’t think this is a bad thing, and I enthusiastically enjoyed it and simultaneously wished for some more specific answers. As finales go, I think it hit all the right notes, especially providing the audience with sufficient closure, which might sound weird, but when you’ve been following a show for so many years, you kind of want to know what happens to everyone.

The series finale begins with flashbacks to Caprica, before the Cylon attack, where we visit with our main characters: Laura Roslin, dealing with the deaths of her father and sisters in a car accident; Baltar and Six, at the start of their relationship; Kara Thrace and Lee Adama, discovering their mutual attraction while Kara’s boyfriend (Lee’s brother), is asleep in the next room; Bill Adama, being vetted for a civilian job he doesn’t want.

Back in the present, Bill Adama realizes he’s made a mistake in not pursuing Hera. He uses tape to mark a line down Galactica’s hanger and tells the crew they must make a choice: he’s going for the girl, anyone who wants to join him needs to step over the line. A lot do, a lot more don’t. The Cylon Colony is located in the accretion disk of a black hole, and mutineer Racetrack, released from her cell when she agrees to help, finds this out the hard way but jumps back after finding a way in: the only jump point is located right in front of the colony’s weapons.

At the last moment, Baltar stays on the ship. Caprica is proud of him, and they’re both part of the reserve force to prevent the ship from being swarmed. Galactica jumps in, takes a pounding, but Sam is able to do his hybrid thing and take the defenses off line. Galactica’s Vipers engage Cylon raiders, and Galactica rams the Colony. Departing from airlocks, Lee Adama leads a force of Marines and Cylons (painted red to distinguish them). Meanwhile, a force of Raptors makes their jumps from inside the Galactica’s museum flight pod, utterly destroying the structure, but positioning them unseen for a second entry. The Raptors are dealt heavy casualties: Helo and Starbuck’s get through, but others are smashed: Racetrack and Skulls are among those killed.

Boomer turns her coat, kills the Simon preparing to operate on Hera, and finds her way to Helo and Athena’s Marine group. Once Helo has Hera, Boomer tells Athena to pass a message on to Adama: she owed him one, and she paid him back. Athena guns her down, which is understandable, and leads to a flashback to a scene before the attack, when Boomer was dressed down for her performance by Adama and Tigh. With Hera recovered, Galactica’s forces retreat back to the ship, which has been assaulted by Cylons. They’ve found their way to CIC, with all but Cavil killed. Cavil manages to seize Hera, but remarkably, it’s Gaius Baltar who talks him into a truce, declaring that he sees Angels, and talks about God’s plan. It’s weird, but it’s enough for Cavil.

Sadly, the truce doesn’t go well: the Final Five have agreed to give Cavil resurrection technology, and Cavil has agreed to leave humanity alone. Unfortunately, once the Final Five all pool their knowledge, Tyrol strangles Tory for the murder of his wife. This doesn’t exactly please the Cylons led by Cavil, who open fire and are all killed — with the exception of Cavil, who blows his own brains out.

Meanwhile, in a total fluke of fate, Racetrack’s Raptor, armed with nukes, is just floating around, everyone in it dead. A rock hits the Raptor with enough force, that Racetrack’s arm hits the release button, and the Raptor fires all its nukes at the Colony. As the Colony begins to explode, Adama orders Thrace to jump the ship, but she doesn’t have the coordinates to rendezvous with the Fleet. “Doesn’t matter, just jump anywhere!”

On January 14th, in my post on “A Disquiet Follows My Soul”, I wrote:

Lastly: I went back and watched the final 4.0 episode’s end. That planet doesn’t necessarily look like our Earth, or at least, you can’t tell – it’s green ,it’s blue, there are clouds, but I couldn’t make out any continent that I would point to and say “Oh, that’s Asia!” or “That’s Africa!” I think there’s some misdirection going on here, and while the planet found may indeed be their Earth, there’s nothing to stop the Colonials from finding another habitable world nearby, one with recognizable continents, and christening it Earth: our Earth.

Looks like I guessed right.

So Kara enters the numbers she’d put to the “All Along The Watchtower” notes that Hera had written for her. The Galactica jumps, and it’s traumatic: the ship is buckling, the skin is ripping away, and it’s pretty clear that there’s really nothing much left holding the big old girl together.

“Where are we, Starbuck?” Adama asked. And the camera switches to an exterior view: Galactica is orbiting a pockmarked gray moon. In the distance, continents clearly visible: Earth. Our Earth.

I won’t go too much into the final scenes. In short, Lee thinks that the survivors of humanity should throw their ships into the sun and settle on this planet without anything but the clothes on their backs. And everyone pretty much does. Bill Adama is the last one off Galactica, launching a Viper and taking a last look at the Big G before Sam remotely pilots the fleet, himself included, into the sun.

There’s not a lot of happiness on Earth. Bill parts with his son, forever, taking Laura to see up close and personal this planet’s wildlife in a Raptor. She dies during the flight, and he chooses a site not only to bury her, but also to build the cabin they’ve so often spoken of.

Kara reveals to Lee that she’s an angel, sent by God. She doesn’t say it in quite so many words, but one moment she’s there, telling him she’s completed her mission, and the next, she’s just gone. This doesn’t quite seem to fit with all of the “Kara Thrace is the harbinger of doom” stuff the Cylon hybrids kept spouting, but they might just’ve been insane.

Karl Agathon is revealed to have (mostly) recovered from his injuries, but he’s walking with a cane, playfully arguing with his wife while Hera runs in front of them. Tyrol is tired of people, and settles by himself in what sounded like a description of Scotland. Saul Tigh and Ellen, of course, remain together.

And with that, we flash forward one hundred and fifty thousand years, to New York City, circa right the frak now, where the Angelic versions of Baltar and Six debate whether the cycle has been broken while a montage of modern development of robots plays on monitors.

It’s a pretty creepy ending, but not nearly as much of a mind fuck as the Sopranos finale.