Battlestar Galactica: Every Starbuck Episode Ranked Worst To Best

This was the episode that changed the game for the show. The discovery of Earth, so long believed to be a joyous moment, ended up as one of the most crushing defeats that the fleet (and Cylons) ever experienced. It is an horrific episode, one of the bleakest hours of television made in recent memory - and yet that is still nothing compared to the mystery that Starbuck finds herself a part of.

It was Starbuck's signal that led them to Earth and she explores the wasteland with Leoben. She finds the burnt remnants of a Viper, with a decayed body inside. Everything about it suggests that the Viper is her own, and the body is that of Kara Thrace.

Two things happen in this moment: Kara herself grows, though in spite of her fear, and she burns the body on her own funeral pyre. Then Leoben, who had been the staunchest believer in Starbuck's destiny, loses his faith, turning away and leaving her.

It is both an ending and a beginning for Starbuck, as she faces her own mortality head on, but is opened up to the wider ramifications of what her death means.