How Did Starbuck Come Back to Life in Battlestar Galactica?

Battlestar Galactica never explains how Kara Thrace came back to life, and that's deliberate. Kara really did die when her Viper exploded in "Maelstrom". The Kara who returned two months later, in a brand-new Viper, was something else, apparently sent to lead the fleet to Earth. Once she had done it, she vanished in front of Lee Adama. That disappearance answers the other common question too: what happened to Starbuck at the end. (Battlestar Galactica, "Maelstrom"; Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion"; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

How she died#

Kara spent "Maelstrom" haunted by a swirling mandala she'd painted as a child. Flying patrol over a gas giant, she chased a Heavy Raider nobody else could see into the storm. She blacked out and had a long vision, guided by a figure who looked like Leoben Conoy but said he wasn't, in which she sat with her dying mother. She came round unafraid, told Lee she'd see him on the other side, and her Viper exploded in front of him. The episode page, "Maelstrom", covers it in full. (Battlestar Galactica, "Maelstrom")

How she came back#

She came back in the last minutes of season 3. During a Cylon attack at the Ionian Nebula, Lee found her flying next to him. She told him she'd been to Earth and would take them there. (Battlestar Galactica, "Crossroads, Part II")

Season 4 picks up straight after. Her Viper landed covered in Raider blood but otherwise spotless. Galen Tyrol found its tail numbers matched her old ship but it wasn't the one he'd spent years repairing. It looked brand new, and its navigation computer was empty. Kara believed she'd been gone a few hours. The fleet had spent about two months without her. (Battlestar Galactica, "He That Believeth in Me")

Nobody had an explanation, Kara included. Laura Roslin assumed it was a Cylon trick and wanted her in the brig. Kara insisted she could feel the way to Earth, and spent the first half of season 4 trying to prove it. (Battlestar Galactica, "He That Believeth in Me")

Proof she really died#

The fleet's arrival at the first Earth settled one thing. It was a dead, radioactive world, and Kara followed a Colonial beacon signal to a crashed Viper with her own tail number on it. Inside was a burned body with her blonde hair, her dog tags and her wedding ring. Whatever had come back from the storm, Kara Thrace had died. She burned the body on a pyre. (Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion")

Later she gave the dog tags to Gaius Baltar, who tested the blood on them and found it came from a body that was already dead. He told the fleet she was an angel. She slapped him. (Battlestar Galactica, "Islanded in a Stream of Stars")

What she was for#

The show gives clues rather than answers:

• The first Cylon Hybrid called her the harbinger of death who would lead humanity to its end. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)
• She wasn't a Cylon. When the last of the Final Five was revealed, it was Ellen Tigh. (Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion")
• A piano player in Joe's Bar helped her remember a song her father taught her, the same music that had woken four of the Final Five. He vanished as soon as they finished playing, and the notes matched a drawing by Hera Agathon. (Battlestar Galactica, "Someone to Watch Over Me")
• In the finale, with Galactica breaking apart, Kara turned the notes of that song into jump coordinates. They brought the fleet to our Earth. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

Put together, the pattern is clear even if the mechanism isn't. Kara died and was sent back with one job, getting humanity to its new home, and the "end" the Hybrid promised was the end of the search and of the old Colonial way of life. Many viewers take the piano player to be her father, or a vision of him. The show doesn't say so, and that reading is interpretation. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor; Battlestar Galactica, "Someone to Watch Over Me"; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

What happened to Starbuck at the end#

Once the fleet had landed, Kara and Lee talked about what came next. Lee wanted to explore the new world. Kara told him her work was done. When he looked back at her, she was gone. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

That's all the show gives. It never calls her an angel. But the finale ends with the figures who had appeared to Baltar and Caprica Six through the series, standing in present-day New York and treated as messengers of God. Kara's death, her return and her disappearance put her in the same company. The series leaves the label to the viewer, and the Daybreak ending explained page goes through the rest of the finale. (Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")

Read more in the full Kara Thrace biography and the episode guide. (Battlestar Galactica, "Maelstrom"; Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Part II")