This is the problem with getting busy and not posting for two weeks. What was an insightful and debatable claim is now fairly obvious.
Still, I felt I had to write this post, given all the excitement two weeks ago about someone “cracking” the Entertainment Weekly “Last Supper” photo from earlier in the year. You can read about the detailed analysis here (which would actually make Dan Brown proud ala “The Da Vinci Code”), but at the end of the day, the conclusion is wrong.
Starbuck is not the final Cylon.
True, she’s the “Harbinger of Doom” and she will lead the humans “to their end”, but she’s not a cylon. Sorry, not dice. Fact is, she doesn’t fit any of the known clues left about the fifth cylon, and Moore has basically gone on record stating that she is not a cylon, but something else.
Since, I’m on the topic, let’s cover what I’ve been pondering lately: the comments from the “First Hybrid” in the Razor movie, and the recent episode from Friday, “Faith”:
- From the episode “Faith” that aired on Friday:
It’s at this moment that the Hybrid grabs Kara and communicates a semi-vague, yet straightforward message:
– The dying leader will discover the truth about the Opera House.
– The missing 3 will be used to find the Final 5.
– The final 5 come from the home of the 13th tribe.
– Starbuck is the harbinger of death that will take them all to their end. - From the movie, “Razor”:
At last, they’ve come for me. I feel their lives, their destinies spilling out before me. The denial of the one true path, played out on a world not their own, will end soon enough. Soon there will be four, glorious in awakening, struggling with the knowledge of their true selves, the pain of revelation bringing new clarity, and in the midst of confusion, he will find her. Enemies brought together by impossible longing, enemies now joined as one. The way forward at once unthinkable, yet inevitable. And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering. I can see them all. The seven, now six, self-described machines who believe themselves without sin, but in time, it is sin that will consume them. They will know enmity, bitterness, the wrenching agony of the one splintering into the many, and then they will join the promised-land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.
So this brings me to my current thinking – everything the First Hybrid said is coming true, so there are likely more clues there. Note the reference to “the wings of an angel”, which Kara Thrace was described as in this last episode.
The hardest part for me to rationalize in the current “four cylons” is Colonel Tigh. Adama has known him for 40 years, since his youth. That means Tigh got old… I didn’t know cylons could age. But humanoid cylons didn’t come into being until well after the first Cylon war, so he can’t actually be a cylon… unless he either pre-dates the Cylons. The quote from the hybrid suggests he is not a cylon per se, but from Earth. Thats confirmation that cylons were not invented by the colonies recently, but may have existed long before.
That ties in with the them that “all of this has happened before, and all this will happen again”.
My favorite comment on my blog posts has been the ones that theorize that this is all some sort of elaborate simulation… somewhat like in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Cylons killed their human masters long ago, and they repeatedly seed and build the colonies to repeat history and try to learn from it.
I doubt that will be the answer, but there is definitely a strong theme here that says that the Cylon/human issue has dated back well before cylons were “theoretically created” by the colonies.
The only non-linear hint here is that “Adama is a Cylon”. Given the recently leaked backstory for the new series “Caprica”, it seems that a humanoid Cylon was made for the Adama family to replace Bill Adama’s lost sister… if his sister was Cylon, is it possible he is also? Or that he had a model made to replace Zak?
We’ll see.
Psychohistory 
Well, if the Final Five are from Earth, that explains how they had “All Along the Watchtower” stored in their collective subconscious. This also puts the show definitely in our future.
My money is on either Gaeta or Zarek as the fifth.
I’m with you on Tigh as a cylon being hard to swallow. In order for that to be true, the skinjobs would have to pre-date the old-school toasters, which just doesn’t make sense. Especially not if they only have 14 episodes left to completely rewrite the history.
The theory of repeated re-colonization seeding is interesting. But they would have to have control over the whole physics of the universe (a la Hume/Matrix) in order to coordinate the supernova, etc.
A couple of thoughts:
1) When the hybrid tells Starbuck that she is the harbinger of death and will lead them to the end, it’s unclear who will be dying, and what constitutes “the end.”
It might be that the prophecy is that she’ll lead humanity to death. Or the Cylons. Or both. And what does “the end” mean?
In my books, there’s waaaaay too much wiggle room to draw a firm conclusion.
2) I think that it is a very real possibility that there is a seemingly inevitable cycle by which mechanical intelligences evolve into biological ones, which in turn create new mechanical intelligences. The humans are former Cylons who forgot their origins and created a new breed of Cylons.
Wondering – do we have any evidence that any of the ‘final 4/5’ are not adopted? If they were placed at an early enough age that would explain many of the questions about how Bill & Saul met, etc.
That would also mean there’s a skinjob factory on Earth. Maybe the earthlings use them as domestic servants with thought regulators like the centurions, and something (someone) purchased them and brought them to the other 12 colonies. When the fleet and baseships arrive in orbit the guys at the Electrolux plant are going to have a ‘holy sh*t’ moment! 🙂
I think my earlier idea about Gaeta being Iblis is completely shot with the amputation scene.
Do you have a non-BSG feed? I am not caught up, and I’m always worried that you’re going to spoil something, like you did when you first started this site. 😉
anyone here notice one sole constant; the future was plainly told through a scripture or whatever you wanna call it. Perhaps there is a larger enemy to humans and cylon in this. If they dont do a clear ending which personally so far i am not too pleased this end could be a bit to fast for my taste; hopefuly they will do a movie to explain some of the unanswered questions if they leave any.
I she not the fifth As in of the five but she is Cylon of some kind of a third group apparently. Maybe one of the gods?
Who knows but one thing for certain humans do not keep back ups of them selfs . And she found her own dead body. Kind Proves she a skin job.