'Battlestar Galactica's Final Cylon Mystery

Who is Harold Saxon in Doctor Who, what is lurking down the hatch in Lost and when will Prison Break‘s Michael Scofield drown in his own sweat patch? These great television mysteries have caused eagle-eyed viewers to perch precariously on their sofas in anticipation of an answer. Now back for its last season, Battlestar Galactica comes equipped with its own tantalising poser - just who the frack is the Final Cylon? We run down a list of the main suspects…

Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace

Don’t dismiss the possibility of this feisty blonde lass being the culprit simply because she’s the most obvious candidate. Along with Lee ‘Apollo’ Adama, we saw Starbuck and her Viper clearly blown up towards the end of the third season. Then, out of the blue, she returns to the fleet in a pristine vessel proclaiming to have found Earth.

Could her revival have stemmed from emerging from the slime on a Cylon Resurrection Ship? This would certainly explain why she had such an affinity with the damaged Raider with which she once managed to navigate back to Galactica, plus her drawings of the Temple of Five.

Yet there’s plenty of evidence that suggests she is proper flesh and blood. Witness how the Cylons were so keen to experiment on her in the past. Maybe they somehow cloned her? The fact that Leoben tried to forge a relationship with his hostage suggests that the Cylons were after their own hybrid child, but would they even be aware of their own kind before they were activated? Sharon certainly didn’t seem to recognise her own species when she had an affair with Tyrol.

Admiral Adama

Remember Leoben’s final words before he was pushed out of the airlock to his death? "Adama is a Cylon". The veracity is his statement is certainly in doubt. Could it be a genuine revelation from a machine with nothing to lose, or a Macchiavellian attempt to throw a real spanner into the fleet and engineer hostility towards its leader? Most probably the latter, as only the D’Anna Cylon has seen the identity of the Final Cylon.

However, if Adama was a Cylon then why wouldn’t his position of power have been abused by activating him earlier? Also, as he’s Lee’s father that would mean that there’s exactly 1.5 Cylons left. Nonetheless, Saul Tigh’s unveiling as a Cylon demonstrated that the robots can get their kind into positions of high power.

Gaius Baltar

The devious Baltar has had close emotional and physical ties with the Cylons and also worships one God. Could his frequent visions of Number Six be a projection of the inner Cylon lurking within? His actions back on Caprica were undoubtedly the key to the success of the Cylon attack, as he allowed them to break through the planet’s security measures.

In 'Razor', the First Hybrid says the following: "The Fifth [Cylon] is still is in shadow, drawn toward the light, hungering for redemption, that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering". Who else could he be referring to apart from Baltar, who has recently been moping around yearning for his own death?

Laura Roslin

Suffering from cancer would appear to make her very human indeed, but could the Cylon hybrid blood transfusion have turned her into the Final Cylon, as if it were meant to happen all along? Crucially, she has shared the same prophetic Opera House visions as Sharon and Number Six - both Cylons themselves. However, as President she has certainly been quick to execute Cylon infiltrators.

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