[1] The episode has Big Jim (Dean Norris) deciding Barbie's (Mike Vogel) fate after having him arrested.
The episode was watched by 12.1 million American viewers, despite drawing mainly negative reviews from critics, who considered the finale underwhelming and lacking answers to certain questions.
The monarch hatches, and the butterfly starts flying around inside the mini dome violently and creating expanding black spots where it crashes against the surface.
Joe (Colin Ford) suggests the four touch the dome, but Linda (Natalie Martinez) cuts in, stating the egg is police property.
Junior (Alexander Koch), Angie (Britt Robertson), Joe, and Norrie (Mackenzie Lintz) then touch the dome together, and the mini-dome shatters, releasing both the egg and the butterfly.
Big Jim (Dean Norris) thinks that his family members are the chosen ones because his mentally ill and deceased wife had been painting pink stars and eggs in her last days, indicating she had some knowledge of things to come.
When Junior confronts him, he admits that he has actually killed the people he accused Barbie of murdering, but just to save the town.
She accepts the responsibility of the title Monarch and chooses the egg (and the lives of everybody in the dome) and protects it by throwing it in the lake.
Big Jim claims that "the Lord" is blessing the hanging, the pink stars continue to rise and remove the black "curtain," replacing it with a curtain of piercing bright light, which increases in intensity until things start to fade to white.
Natalie Martinez, who plays Linda in the series, talked to The Hollywood Reporter discussing details about the finale, saying "We don't know what's going to happen.
Things are constantly changing it and moving around and we're just as in the dark as everybody else is," and also said regarding her character "I don't think Linda is as naive; she's finally growing up and coming from that small-town cop to being someone who is learning to trust their own instincts after never being in those situations before.
Matt Fowler of IGN gave the episode a 6.9 out of 10, signalling mixed reviews, saying I bought Jim winning over the crowd last week by terrorizing them with the idea of a murderer on the loose.
Religion's hardly ever been brought up on this show and now just about everyone in Chester's Mill is dead set on believing that the apocalypse has arrived.
Also, I like the whole mystery of Jim's wife painting the pink stars and the black egg years ago.
[5]Andrea Reiher of Zap2it said "It's interesting how Big Jim had never heard anyone talk about the pink stars during one of their seizures, hence his first time of hearing that in tonight's episode.
Club gave the episode a D− rating, saying "So what were the odds that all of this stuff with the egg and the Monarch and the mini-dome was going to pay off in a satisfying way in this season finale?
"[8] Dawn Fallik writing for The Wall Street Journal also gave the episode a negative review, saying "The series started out so well and was so interesting.
We never really found out much of the back story for, well, anyone, least of all the dome," and then said "Because it’s been renewed for Season 2 and Stephen King is writing the first episode.