Battlestar Galactica’s biggest mystery was intentionally crafted to torture fans, but there’s an answer

Author: Jonathan Klotz | Published
battlestar galactica is a fantastic series that helped reinvigorate science fiction. The first two seasons were filled with great character moments and tense cat-and-mouse chases between the Cylons and the colonial fleet. By season three, some felt the show was starting to go off the rails.
As a fan, I’m frustrated by the increasingly frequent moments that undermine years of character development, and that’s before the final five are revealed. But it turns out that showrunner Ronald D. Moore deliberately crafted the fate of one character, Starbuck, to be confusing and cause fans to forever debate it.
This is not a guess; In an interview with SyFy after the finale aired, Moore explained: “When I went into the finale, I felt like the more accurately I defined what she was, the less interesting she was. So I just chose to express it in a more vague way. , and let people debate it forever.
divine guidance

breakthrough figure battlestar galactica The Ronald D. Moore revival recast Starbuck as the female Kara Thracian and cast Katee Sackhoff as the popular pilot played by Dirk Benedict in the original series. Although the writers were praised for creating a strong, multi-dimensional character, Starbuck appeared to die in Season 3’s “Maelstrom” when her viper exploded in the atmosphere of a distant planet, Some good intentions were thrown out the window. She wasn’t gone long before reappearing without explanation in the season finale, “Crossroads, Part 2,” offering to guide the colonial fleet to Earth.
If this seems like a sudden shift from a Viper pilot to a Moses figure willing to lead the colonists out of exile, that’s because it is, Moore explains again, “She’s who you want her to be. It’s intentionally vague and vague.” of.

After her death in front of Apollo, Starbuck still looks the same and Katee Sackhoff still plays her, but as Moore imagines, fans are still debating whether the character is human. The show’s creator did offer his own controversial take: “I think she represents an entity that doesn’t like to be called God, but everyone else talks about it in God-like terms. If you want to call her an angel, You could say that.
There is evidence that a mysterious force was guiding her, even years before the events began battlestar galacticarepresented by the Eye of Jupiter symbol, appeared throughout her life, from childhood drawings to the strange dreams she had before her death. This symbol appeared earlier in the season on the walls of the Five Temples and inside the supernova guiding the fleet to its next destination. More directly, Starbuck had visions of her mother, her apartment, and what appeared to be Leoben (number two) before her death, but who turned out to be a spirit guide.
omen of death

Hanging over Starbuck’s resurrected appearance is the prophecy of the Cylons from World War I: “Karathrace will lead humanity to its destruction. She is the herald of the apocalypse, the harbinger of death. They must not follow her.”
How this went down in the final season battlestar galactica Kind of counterintuitive, since she literally led humanity to the end of the Earth. To humans she was a guide to the Promised Land, but to the Cylons she became Death, the destroyer of worlds.

While all of this is entirely speculation, and there is evidence to support almost every interpretation of the word “Omen,” I believe her destruction of the Cylon resurrection ship and ending their cycle of reincarnation brought about the Apocalypse. There are also theories that her choices led to the deaths of others, or as one of the deleted scenes from Battlestar Galactica on the DVD extras explains, Starbuck explains to Apollo that he found the destroyed The Earth makes this part of the prophecy come true.
As Ronald D. Moore had hoped, after Starbuck’s death, there was evidence for every interpretation of her nature, from fans who thought she was a Cylon to others who believed she was an angel, and even Some went a step further and believed she was God. By “going out in an ambiguous way,” she’s as likely connected to the founding of Cobo as she is to the Five, but while Moore’s goal is to keep it truly open-ended, That didn’t stop Sackhoff from chiming in.
There are no wrong answers

Katee Sackhoff posted a photo of herself relaxing in the sun, and buried in the comments was her response to a fan who took a photo of him and asked Starbuck if he was a spirit guide. Sackhoff actually responded: “She is a spirit who guides humanity to Earth and its salvation.”
After more than ten years you will understand why battlestar galactica Fans are still arguing over Starbucks even after it went off the air. Moore and Sackhoff have two different answers, neither of which is wrong based on the evidence presented by the series itself.

I believe she was an angel who led humanity out of exile in the mirror of the Moses story, but that’s also because I don’t think the Cylon evidence is particularly reliable. The vision of the Eye of Jupiter, combined with the prophecy, seemed to point to a divine spiritual force propelling humanity along a specific path. Number 7 is her father, so the theory that she is a Cylon depends on so many other factors, some of which are explained in the show, specifically the fact that Cylons cannot mate to produce offspring.
But that’s just my opinion, and thankfully Ronald D. Moore realized that unlike what happened in Star Wars, not everything needs a nice and concise explanation. when you go back and watch it again battlestar galactica On Amazon Prime, see what evidence you can find in support of Team Angel, Team Cylon, or the less popular but still valid Team She Was A Ghost.