A few days ago, I was asked to write about the final season of BSG, which continues tonight with the fourth of the final ten episodes, so here are a few thoughts on the season and where I think it may be going. Numerous spoilers follow. Don’t keep reading if you haven’t seen any of the new episodes.

Based on what I have seen so far this season and what I have heard and read in various interviews with cast and crew, the remaining episodes are going to be progressively bleak, violent and unpleasant. If the last three episodes have been unusually grim and depressing even by Ron Moore’s standards, the coming episodes are going to make these seem dull and peaceful by comparison. Those who have watched “The Oath” know that there is a full-scale mutiny going on. There is good reason to think that many more well-known characters are going to be killed off in fairly short order. Racetrack and Seelix are not long for this world. Assuming that Adama et al. eventually prevail, as I think they will, the mutineers are going to be executed in large numbers. Gaeta and Zarek will have to die, which will probably lead to an insurgency against Adama and Roslin by many of the ships that sympathized with the coup.

My guess is that at least one of the final Cylons is killed during the mutiny (bye, Anders!), which will provoke the rebel Cylons either to seek revenge and/or to abandon the fleet, and the death of one of the Five will provide the writers another excuse to create some hokey addition to their Cylon mythology. Maybe the Five survive through some process of metempsychosis, which might help to make sense of how they ended up being born on the colonies, so even if they kill off one or more of them they may not be gone from the show. Shortly after the mutiny, Cavil and the other models that did not rebel will reappear to harrass the divided, self-destructing fleet, perhaps with Ellen Tigh in tow. It seems to me that Moore will have no trouble coming up with a scenario in which the entire fleet and most, if not all, of the Cylons are annihilated in a final battle. I don’t see how he will settle for a pat happy ending at this point.