Because I am a) obsessive and b) dreading the mountain of papers I have to grade, I would like to lay out my theories for the fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica. I will probably be proven wrong—but sometimes it’s fun to be wrong.

Don’t read this if you haven’t seen the final episode of Season 3.

The Last Cylon

All the Cylon models have now been revealed, except one. So, who is it? The producer of the show, Ron Moore, has said in an interview that the Cylon is not Starbuck, Bill Adama, or Roslin. The fact that these characters are not options suggests that the writers aren’t interested in having the last Cylon be someone in a position of power. And, if you want the biggest dramatic impact (surely the writers do), you would make that last Cylon be someone who never seemed powerful, strong, or important.

I vote for Petty Officer Anastasia Dualla (Dee).

She’s easily overlooked, even by her own husband. Everyone likes her, but no one makes much of her. A perfect recipe for creating drama by giving her the key role. Also, notice how she has been attracted to people who are close to the leaders of the fleet—the now-dead Billy, aide to President Roslin, and Lee Adama, son of the Admiral. Coincidence, or a subliminal Cylon directive to maneuver herself into a strategic position?

BSG characters usually don’t talk about their parents. It’s just not something the writers have them do—except in some special circumstances. Boomer talked about her parents dying in a mining accident. Boomer? Cylon. Chief Tyrol spent at least two episodes thinking about his preacher father. Tyrol? Cylon. Starbuck also remembers her father and mother. Starbuck, while not a Cylon, is clearly very special—not your average human. So the BSG writers tend to have characters discuss parents only when they are a Cylon or special in some other way. Maybe this is done to throw the viewers off the Cylon track—if a character remembers parents, he or she shouldn’t be a constructed object. Or maybe the writers just have some kind of tic, a habit that they don’t even think about. The only other character I can remember who discusses her parents is Dualla, who tells reporter D’anna Biers about a fight she had with her father regarding the military, just before the Cylons attacked. Dualla clearly isn’t special like Starbuck is—Dualla doesn’t seem to have a “destiny.” But maybe she fits the pattern established by Boomer and Tyrol: talk about your parents, and you’re a Cylon.

Take a moment to consider the significance of her name: Anastasia Dualla. Not all characters on BSG have meaningful names, but some do. Karl Agathon’s last name is derived from the Greek word meaning “honorable, good,” and he certainly is. Adama=Adam, first man on earth. I won’t even get into the meaning of the Viper pilots’ call signs—their significance is obvious. How can a name like Anastasia Dualla not be significant, unless its clear cry for interpretation is a red herring? Dualla=dual, two-sided. Everyone sees the sweet, pretty, kind Dualla. But what about her other side? Her hidden nature? And what about Anastasia? It means “resurrected, born again.” In the world of BSG, when you think about resurrection, you think about one thing: the Resurrection Ship, owned by the Cylons. Maybe, if Dualla is revealed to be a Cylon, she will be “born again” in the sense that she will have a new identity, become a new person—maybe even a dangerous, powerful, and resentful one, the very opposite of how we’ve always known her. We would see her dual personality.