“This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.” It was one of the earliest things a Cylon ever said in the current incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, and somehow it was meant to have bearing on what the Cylons considered to be God’s plan for everyone, a plan in which the Cylons believe they are playing a critical role. What follows from here should be considered spoilers, as I’m about to speculate in the aftermath of Sunday’s finale.
After the finale of the show’s third season, it would seem that, perhaps, they’ve given us just enough to be able to see what the line means. It’s a glimpse of the possible endgame, especially since it’s already been stated that we just entered the third act of a three-act story.
So here’s what we now know: Four series regulars, presumptive humans all along, in fact are four of the so-called Final Five. That fact helps explain the mystery of how the Five could be both Cylons and mysterious, almost mythological, figures from humanity’s religious past.
Imagine: The ultimate secret of Battlestar Galactica is that the entire story is cyclical. Its history is cyclical. It would go something like this.
Humanity develops on Caprica. It builds machines which then rebel against it, evolve, and return to destroy their makers. Humanity’s survivors escape and begin following the ancient myth of a human colony which made its way to a place called Earth. Eventually finding Earth, humanity settles in. Eons later, for whatever reason, humanity must flee Earth and sets out to colonize other worlds, elsewhere in the galaxy, including one they name Caprica.
Humanity develops on Caprica. It builds machines which then rebel against it, evolve, and return to destroy their makers. Humanity’s survivors escape and begin following the ancient myth of a human colony which made its way to a place called — well, you get the idea.
Cylons believe they are an important part of God’s plan because it is necessary for humanity to be decimated in order that its survivors embark on a quest for Earth. And, in fact, the myth of a human colony which made its way to a place called Earth in reality is a myth about the previous rag-tag fugitive fleet of the prior cycle.
This is sort of where the Final Five come in. Suppose they are not Cylons like the current Cylons, but instead are the lines descended from the previous cycle’s hybrids? The reason that there can be a current Final Five and mysterious figures from the past of humanity’s religion is because those religious figures are from the previous cycle.
Perhaps, once humanity has to flee Earth, that cycle’s Final Five are the ones responsible for making sure that the proper clues are all in place for the next cycle’s humans to find as they flee the decimated Caprica.
If you like, you can push this to incorporate the disconcerting use of a Bob Dylan song in the finale, a song which at least two of the characters describe as being like something out of childhood. Maybe it’s buried in ancestral or genetic memory from the prior cycle — a cycle which included our actual present day Earth and its music.
(Yes, I’m aware that the show’s composer says “that the idea was not that Bob Dylan necessarily exists in the characters’ universe, but that an artist on one of the colonies may have recorded a song with the exact same melody and lyrics”. But that easily could simply be what the show’s creator told him, in order to keep part of the endgame a secret from as many people as possible. The composer would not need to know the cyclical key to things in order to use this piece of music in the finale, so why tell him?)
So, they are Cylons. But they are not like the Cylons we’ve known to be Cylons. The entire reason their identities are hidden from the current Cylons is because no one is supposed to really understand or know “God’s plan”. No one is supposed to actually know that their history is a cyclical one — they’re all just supposed to play their parts in pushing the cycle forward each time.
“This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.” The unspoken joke of it, of course, is that it has happened before. On our televisions back in the 1970s.
Question: scifi.com said all FIVE would be revealed..and weren’t they? Couldn’t one assume that Starbuck, mysteriously back from the dead is also one??? If not, then the teaser online lied.
Also…if the other 4 are cylons, then there is a cylon/human baby from the Chief. So why is Hera so important as a cylon/human hybrid? There’s more than one of them then, so why is she so special?
(just throwing out questions the arose for me while watching)
And why is it not returning until 2008???????
Well, Hera is a hybrid of a modern Cylon and a modern human. If the Four are simply the descended line from the hybrids of the prior cycle, their own children might not be the same sort of being as Hera.
1) Twelve gods, twelve cylons, twelve colonies. But wait! If there are actually thirteen colonies, with one hidden, I’m guessing there’s also a hidden cylon, and also a hidden god. Thirteen of each.
2) One of the final five is old enough to clearly predate the first cylon war. Something odd must have happened: a memory transfer from a now-dead human, or humanoid cylons in general predate the first cylon war. Or, perhaps, something that predates the cylon rebellion bent the cylons to their own ends, and caused the humanoid cylons to arise.
Might the Lords of Kobol - aka the gods - have taken hold of the cylons and caused them to rebel? Or more precisely, might a faction of the gods have done so with the goal of destroying humanity? Creating humanoid cylons in the process, and perhaps in their image?
Might another faction of the gods have acted to protect humanity, creating their own humanoid cylons to be guardians and guides, hidden from the warlike faction?
This would pick up a theme from the original series, heretofore missing, where the Fleet was a pawn in the contest between beings of light and dark.
3) Possibilities for known characters to be cylons include, IMHO, Roslin, Baltar, and Starbuck. I’d say the likeliest is Roslin.
Actually, Roslin was one of my first guesses. She had, while on the bridge, that wave of what appeared to be nausea that we’d chalk up to cancer, but then we saw her assistant, hearing the music and rushing into the bathroom, also apparently sick. So I agree…
Taking b!x’s lead… I haven’t fleshed this out yet, but what if the remaining four aren’t part of the final 5, but are some sort of protection for the final five? In other words, Col Tigh ‘protects’ Adama (making the “I’m here for you” speech at the end even more interesting). The gal protects Roslin. Starbuck’s husband was supposed to protect her. And the Chief, well, could he actually be protecting the soon-to-be-reinstated CAG???