"Daybreak": the Battlestar Galactica finale and ending explained

"Daybreak" is the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, in two parts that first aired on 13 and 20 March 2009. William Adama takes a worn-out Galactica on a one-way mission to rescue Hera Agathon from the Cylon Colony, then Kara Thrace jumps the ship to a new planet, the survivors settle it, and a coda reveals it's our Earth. It's the end of the episode guide and the last point on the timeline apart from the epilogue. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part I"; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

Plot#

Part I. The story was split between the fleet and flashbacks to the days before the Fall. On Caprica, Adama was being sounded out for a job outside the service that he didn't want, Laura Roslin lost her father and two sisters to a drunk driver and turned down a place on Richard Adar's campaign, Gaius Baltar struggled with his ageing father, Lee Adama met Kara as his brother Zak's fiancée, and Samuel Anders talked about the perfect game. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part I")

In the present, Galactica was falling apart and Sharon Valerii had taken Hera to Cavil at the Colony. Anders, wired into Galactica as a Hybrid, gave up its location. Adama marked a line across the hangar deck and asked for volunteers. Anyone who crossed it went with him. Roslin crossed, barely able to walk. Baltar, torn, didn't. The rest of the crew and the civilian ships stayed behind. (Battlestar Galactica, "Islanded in a Stream of Stars"; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part I")

Part II. Baltar got as far as boarding the Raptor taking his followers off the ship, then told them he was staying. Lee handed him a gun. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

The Colony sat next to a black hole, ringed by debris. Galactica jumped in beside it, took a pounding and rammed it, in the fight that became the Battle of the Colony. Marines and rebel Centurions fought their way in. Boomer, having changed sides one last time, took Hera from Cavil and handed her to Sharon Agathon, who shot Boomer dead. In the chaos Hera ran off, and Baltar and Caprica Six found her in a corridor that matched the Opera House vision several of them had shared for years. They carried her to the CIC. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Crossroads, Part I")

Cavil boarded and took Hera at gunpoint. Baltar talked him down with a speech about God that he seemed, for once, to mean. Saul Tigh offered the Final Five's knowledge of resurrection in exchange for peace, and Cavil agreed. To pass the knowledge on, the Five had to share their memories. In that link Galen Tyrol saw that Tory Foster had killed his wife Cally. He strangled Tory, the truce collapsed, and Cavil shot himself. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "The Ties That Bind")

Outside, a rock struck a Raptor whose pilot was already dead, and her hand fell on the launch key. Its nukes hit the Colony and pushed it into the black hole. With Galactica breaking up, Kara keyed into the jump drive a set of numbers taken from the notes of her father's song, which Hera had also drawn. Galactica jumped. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Someone to Watch Over Me")

It came out above a blue planet with a moon, and people on the ground. They called it Earth. The fleet's leaders agreed not to build cities. They would split up, live alongside the locals and leave their technology behind. Anders flew the ships into the sun, and the Centurions were given a basestar of their own. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

Roslin, close to death from cancer, flew over the plains with Adama in a Raptor and died on the way. Adama buried her and settled beside the grave. Kara told Lee she was done and was gone the moment he looked away. Tyrol went off to live alone on an island in the north. Baltar told Six he knew about farming, and broke down. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

The ending explained#

The planet is our Earth. The first "Earth" the fleet found, in season 4, was a radioactive ruin left by the Thirteenth Tribe, which turned out to be Cylon. This one is the real thing, around 150,000 years before our time, which is why the people there have no language or tools the Colonials recognise. (Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion"; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

The epilogue jumps to present-day New York. A news story explains that the remains of a young woman found in Tanzania belong to the common ancestor of everyone alive. That's Hera, and the show's "mitochondrial Eve" idea is that every human today descends from a Colonial and a Cylon. The settlers' genes mixed with the locals', and their own civilisation was lost. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

Kara's fate is left open on purpose. She died when her Viper exploded in season 3 and came back, and the fleet later found her body and wrecked Viper on the first Earth. The First Hybrid had called her the harbinger of death who would lead humanity to its end. The finale reads that "end" as the end of the long search for a home and the end of the Colonial way of life. Once she's delivered the fleet, she vanishes. The show never says she was an angel, but it lines her up with the figures who appeared as Head Six and Head Baltar. (Battlestar Galactica, "Maelstrom"; Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion"; Battlestar Galactica: Razor; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

Those figures, the versions of Six and Baltar only Baltar and Caprica Six could see, close the series in Times Square. They watch a run of real robot footage and argue over whether the cycle has to repeat. Baltar's figure asks whether all of it has to happen again. Six's figure bets that this time it won't, putting it down to the law of averages. When she calls it all part of God's plan, he reminds her that "it" doesn't like that name. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

The Opera House vision, shared by Roslin, Sharon Agathon and Caprica Six, turns out to be about Hera's rescue in the CIC. And the music that woke up four of the Final Five at the end of season 3 becomes the key to the last jump. (Battlestar Galactica, "Crossroads, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

Characters#

• William Adama: leads the volunteer mission and ends the series alone by Roslin's grave.
• Laura Roslin: crosses the line, lives to see Earth and dies on a last flight with Adama.
• Kara Thrace: makes the final jump, then vanishes.
• Lee Adama: argues for leaving technology behind and plans to explore the new world.
• Gaius Baltar: talks Cavil down and settles to farm with Six.
• Number Six: Caprica Six helps rescue Hera; Head Six appears in the epilogue.
• Hera Agathon: the child everyone fights over, and humanity's common ancestor.
• Sharon Agathon and Karl Agathon: Hera's parents, part of the strike team.
• Sharon Valerii: Boomer, who hands Hera back and is shot.
• Number One: Cavil, who agrees to a truce and then kills himself.
• Galen Tyrol and Tory Foster: Tyrol kills Tory when he learns what she did.
• Saul Tigh and Ellen Tigh: two of the Five who offer Cavil resurrection.
• Samuel Anders: the Hybrid at Galactica's heart, who flies the fleet into the sun.

(Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part I"; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

Continuity#

• The fleet found the first Earth, a dead world, and learned the Thirteenth Tribe were Cylons. Ellen Tigh was revealed as the last of the Five, and Kara found her own body. (Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion")
• Tory killed Cally by blowing her out of an airlock, which is the memory that breaks the truce. (Battlestar Galactica, "The Ties That Bind")
• Kara worked out her father's song with a piano player in the bar, and Hera's drawing of the notes connected the two. (Battlestar Galactica, "Someone to Watch Over Me")
• The Hybrid's prophecy about Kara came in Razor, which aired before season 4. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)
• The TV film The Plan, released later in 2009, goes back to the first two seasons and shows what Cavil was doing in the fleet all along. (Battlestar Galactica: The Plan)