"Lay Down Your Burdens": the Battlestar Galactica season 2 finale explained

"Lay Down Your Burdens" is the two-part finale of Battlestar Galactica season 2, the story of how the fleet stopped running and settled on New Caprica. Kara Thrace takes a rescue mission back to Caprica, a hidden planet turns the presidential election, and Gaius Baltar ends up president. Then the story leaps forward a year and the Cylons arrive. It's one of the biggest turns in the series. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I"; Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")

Plot#

Part I. Admiral William Adama finally let Kara Thrace go back for Samuel Anders and the resistance on Caprica. Her plan used 20 Raptors and the navigation system from a captured Heavy Raider, with Sharon Agathon wired into it to plot the jumps. That cut the trip to ten jumps, the last one into the atmosphere itself, under Cylon sensors. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I")

In the fleet, the presidential election was two weeks away. Laura Roslin led in the polls, and Baltar, with Tom Zarek running his campaign, attacked her for pandering to religious hardliners after her reversal on abortion. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I")

Galen Tyrol had been sleeping on the hangar deck. When Cally tried to wake him, he came out of a nightmare punching and beat her unconscious. Horrified, he went to a priest, Brother Cavil. He'd been dreaming of throwing himself off a catwalk, and he admitted he was afraid he might be a Cylon sleeper agent, like Boomer. Cavil told him he wasn't, because Cavil was a Cylon and had never seen Tyrol at any of the meetings. It sounded like a joke. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I")

On the first jump, the Raptor flown by Racetrack went off course into a gas cloud. Inside it was a planet. It was cold, with only a band around the equator fit to live on, but it could support people. Baltar and Zarek saw the issue they needed: stop running, and settle. The idea pulled people towards him, and Roslin's warning that the Cylons could find the planet as easily as they had didn't land. Baltar came out ahead in the last debate. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I")

The rescue team lost another Raptor when it jumped into a mountain. The rest landed, found Anders and his fighters, and learned that the Cylons were right behind them. The episode ended with the group pinned down under artillery fire. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I")

Part II. After an 18-hour standoff the Cylons had gone. A man appeared behind the rescue team: Cavil, saying the Cylons had left the Colonies. When the team got back to Galactica, Tyrol saw him come off a Raptor and called security. There were two Cavils. Both went to the brig, along with Sharon, who'd known and said nothing. Grieving for Hera, she told Helo nothing mattered to her any more. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")

The Caprica Cavil had a message. Two Cylon heroes had persuaded the others that the attack on the Colonies and the hunt for the fleet were mistakes, and the Cylons would go their own way and leave humanity alone. Roslin and Adama didn't believe a word, and Roslin threatened to put both Cavils out of an airlock. The Plan later shows it done. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Downloaded"; Battlestar Galactica: The Plan)

Roslin tried to get Baltar to shelve the planet until after the vote. He refused. She then asked him outright whether he'd been with a Number Six on Caprica before the attack. He dodged the question. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")

The election. On the night, Baltar led by about 5,000 votes with five ships still to report. Then the count swung and Roslin won. Felix Gaeta found the ballots didn't add up, saw how Saul Tigh reacted when he asked about them, and went to Adama. Tigh had rigged it with Tory Foster, Roslin's campaign aide, swapping in forged ballots for the real ones from the Zephyr, and Roslin had known. Adama wouldn't let it stand: the people's vote had to count. He kept the fraud quiet, gave Baltar the result and talked him out of an investigation. His first order was a course for New Caprica. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")

Gina Inviere, the Six from Pegasus whom Baltar had helped escape and had given a nuclear warhead, told him she wouldn't be going to the planet with him. Soon after he was sworn in, she set the warhead off. Cloud 9 and at least three other ships were destroyed. Adama warned that the Cylons might follow. Baltar pressed on with the settlement. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Resurrection Ship, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Epiphanies")

One year later. New Caprica City was a muddy tent town. Baltar was drinking and womanising aboard the grounded Colonial One, with Gaeta as his aide. Adama, now with a moustache, walked a near-empty Galactica, and Tigh had retired to the planet to live with Ellen. Lee Adama commanded Pegasus with Anastasia Dualla beside him. Tyrol led a workers' union, with a pregnant Cally beside him. Roslin taught the colony's children, helped by Maya, who was raising Hera as her own. Kara had married Anders, who was sick with pneumonia, and there were no antibiotics left on the ground. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")

Kara called Lee to ask for antibiotics from Pegasus. Before he could answer, Dualla saw the DRADIS fill up. A Cylon fleet had jumped in over the planet. The battlestars were short of crew and badly outnumbered, and Lee talked his father into jumping away and coming back later. A Leoben walked into Kara's tent and asked the sick Anders where to find her. On Colonial One, a delegation of Cylons explained that they'd been scouting a system just over a light year away when they saw the flash of the Cloud 9 nuke. There would be no harm if there was no resistance. Baltar surrendered. As Centurions marched through the settlement, Kara vowed to resist. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")

What it reveals#

The finale is about wanting to stop. After months of running, people vote for a muddy planet over a myth, and it's hard to blame them. Roslin is right about the danger and wrong about how to win, and she's willing to steal the election to stop Baltar. Adama, who'd backed her against everything else, won't back her on that. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")

It also shows the Cylons changing. The Cavil's message lines up with what Caprica Six and Boomer agreed in "Downloaded". The arrival over New Caprica isn't a bombing run. The Cylons come to occupy, promising no harm as long as nobody resists. (Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II"; Battlestar Galactica, "Downloaded")

Characters#

• Gaius Baltar: wins the presidency and surrenders the colony.
• Laura Roslin: loses the election after it's rigged in her favour.
• William Adama: forces Roslin to concede and leaves New Caprica undefended.
• Kara Thrace: leads the Caprica rescue and marries Anders.
• Samuel Anders: resistance leader, rescued from Caprica.
• Galen Tyrol: fears he's a Cylon, and later leads the union.
• Brother Cavil: the priest who's really a Cylon, and his Caprica twin.
• Tom Zarek: Baltar's running mate and strategist.
• Tory Foster and Saul Tigh: rig the vote.
• Felix Gaeta: exposes the fraud and becomes Baltar's aide.
• Gina Inviere: sets off the warhead on Cloud 9.
• Sharon Agathon: guides the Raptors and sits in the brig for keeping Cavil's secret.

(Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I"; Battlestar Galactica, "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II")

Continuity#

• The Plan shows what happened in the brig: the Caprica Cavil had turned against the plan, his brother hadn't, and they went out of the airlock together. (Battlestar Galactica: The Plan)
• Season 3 picks up four months into the occupation, with Tigh leading a resistance on the ground. (Battlestar Galactica, "Occupation")
• Adama keeps his promise to come back in "Exodus", and the Exodus from New Caprica ends the occupation. (Battlestar Galactica, "Exodus, Part II")
• Tyrol's fear wasn't baseless. He, Tigh, Tory and Anders are four of the Final Five, which makes Cavil's "joke" darker in hindsight. See "Crossroads". (Battlestar Galactica, "Crossroads, Part II")
• Razor's present-day story, with Lee in command of Pegasus, is set just before this finale. (Battlestar Galactica: Razor)