The episodes portray the Galactica launching a rescue mission to retrieve Hera Agathon from the "colony", a heavily armed and defended Cylon base located near a black hole.

William Adama (Edward James Olmos) is reluctant to undergo a lie detector test in preparation for a civilian desk job.

Lee Adama (Jamie Bamber) meets Kara Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) for the first time while she is seeing his brother, Zak (Tobias Mehler).

Lastly, the flashbacks focus on Anders (Michael Trucco), who is interviewed during his sporting career, where he admits to playing for the joy of the pursuit of perfection rather than the winning.

Admiral Adama later decides to give amnesty to those who took part in the attempted coup d'état,[1] as well as to Tyrol (Aaron Douglas), who is in the brig for helping Boomer (Grace Park) escape.

Doc Cottle (Donnelly Rhodes) attempts to join in, but is ordered back by Adama as the fleet cannot afford to lose a doctor.

Back in the present of the series, Baltar decides to join the mission with Caprica Six at the last minute; she later admits to being proud of him for the first time.

Romo Lampkin (Mark Sheppard) is installed as president, and Hoshi (Brad Dryborough) is given command of the fleet while Adama and Galactica set off to rescue Hera.

A battalion of the self-aware Cylon Centurions who are aligned with the fleet march down the flight deck – red stripes painted diagonally on their chests to distinguish them from the others.

Some of the Raptors, which are armed with nuclear weapons, make a short jump into the debris field and fly toward the back of the Colony; in the process, Racetrack (Leah Cairns) and Skulls (Collin Lawrence) are killed by an asteroid.

As Starbuck, Apollo, Athena and Helo return to the battlestar and make their way to CIC, they encounter a boarding party composed of Cavil's modern Centurions and original Cylon War models.

[3] The chase ends in the CIC, where Cavil (Dean Stockwell) takes her hostage and demands to leave with Hera so she can be dissected and establish a method for Cylons to reproduce.

Roslin and Adama look on as the Final Five begin the download of the technology for resurrection, with Saul and Ellen Tigh (Kate Vernon), Tory Foster (Rekha Sharma) and Galen Tyrol (Aaron Douglas) dipping their hands into Samuel Anders' (Michael Trucco) tank to transfer the data to the Colony.

In a flash of inspiration, Starbuck mutters "there must be some kind of way out of here" and enters coordinates into the computer as if she were playing the mysterious music notes which Hera had written.

Galactica arrives at Kara's mysterious coordinates, its final destination as the damage caused in the battle has rendered the ship incapable of surviving any further jumps.

Lee makes the unorthodox suggestion that they abandon their technology and start afresh, while Adama and others discover primitive humans already occupying the planet.

Anders takes control of their abandoned fleet and pilots it into the Sun, so that the new arrivals "can give them the best part of ourselves ... not the baggage ... not the weapons ... our hearts (rather than) our science."

While Lee expresses his desire to venture off and explore the planet, Starbuck, her destiny as an Angel fulfilled, literally vanishes without a trace.

The episode and series end with a montage juxtaposing how we mistreat fellow humans alongside the progress of robotics in modern society, as the Jimi Hendrix song "All Along The Watchtower" plays.

Before entering coordinates on the FTL-drive control console, Starbuck says "[There] must be some kind of way out of here", which is the opening line of Bob Dylan's song "All Along the Watchtower".

[12] Show creator Ronald D. Moore appears in a short cameo in the epilogue, as the long-haired man reading the fictional edition of National Geographic magazine in which the archaeological story is featured.

[14] The numbers do not take into account timeshifting via digital video recorders, which typically adds another 700,000 Battlestar Galactica viewers per episode.

Alan Sepinwall of The Star Ledger wrote "so the amazing four-year journey of Battlestar Galactica comes to an end, and I feel very, very good about it – even as I suspect others may not.

"[8] Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times praised Moore and the writing team for "not copping out" and commented that it was "hard to imagine a more visually and thematically satisfying finale".

[15] Richard Vine of The Guardian opined that "somehow, out of all the doom and gloom, death, destruction and nihilism we've had, Battlestar Galactica finished with something approaching a happy ending."

"[18] Salon.com contrasted the finale with the rest of the series noting that the episode finished with "40 minutes of speeches about lessons learned and the need to 'break the cycle', the naiveté of which did indeed feel like a break— from the knowing, worldly stoicism that made Battlestar Galactica so refreshing to begin with.

"[21] Josh Tyler of CinemaBlend concluded that the final resolution lacked credibility, but that the simple drama of the episode was one reason to view it positively.