The hunt for the first ones comes to an end, Londo and the Shadows come to blows, and it turns out the galaxy was really just the source of a custody battle in a very messy divorce. Welcome my friends. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2261. The place: Babylon 5.
Spoilers ahead.
1. Twenty-Twenty-Twenty-Twenty-Four Hours to Goooo. I Wanna Meet the First Ones
For some reason, I assumed that Ivanova’s mission to find the First Ones was gonna happen off-screen. Babylon 5 didn’t give any hints as to whether or not that would be the case but it felt like the kind of thing you do before a big climactic battle. Oh how wrong I was. “Into the Fire” opens on Ivanova being antsy about remaining in one place too long and telling Lorien they’ll be on their way soon. She wants to get back to the battle and has never really had the kind of patience a mission like this requires. Lorien, being so old he has patience for the both of them, continues to be cryptic about why he wants more time.
Or, well, not cryptic as he says there’s one more to find but he doesn’t say why he wanted to find the final First Ones before the battle. We find out later why but before then, Ivanova and Lorien get to have a heart to heart where we get the best understanding of Lorien thus far. He is immortal and old, yes, and that gives him wisdom, yes, but he is also totally alien to those who came after him, both the Vorlons & the Shadows and the many many alien species that are of the humans’ cohort.
There are a ton of great quotes and conversations in season four in general, and in “Into the Fire” specifically, but Lorien describing why the transitory nature of life is so beautiful might be one of my favorites. It’s such a great bit of cosmological worldbuilding! It’s rather biblical, too, wherein the closer to “present” time you get, the shorter the life-spans of the characters: Eternal Adam & Eve pre-Tree of Knowledge, 1,000 year old Methuselah (Noah’s granddad,) 120 year old Moses, etc.
He is eternal but those that came after him are not, both in order to support more life and so that this life would change, so it would grow. So that it would better appreciate the time it had and the concepts that lose meaning when one knows they might live to see their final moments at the far end of eternity.
2. Lies Cannot Stand the Light of Day
I had totally forgotten that Londo didn’t know who killed Adira and had blamed Lord Refa for it. Because of Londo’s rejection of Morden and the Shadows, I had assumed his choice to kill him was motivated by that rather than by him wanting personal revenge. Well, it seems like the cat is out of the bag thanks to the Minister of Information. What a way to find out you killed someone for no good reason AND removed another barrier keeping Morden and his associates from the throne. Sure, Refa had it coming but now Londo has to live through that pain again with a brand new object for his fury.
Thankfully, he was already moving to take Morden and his associates out and remove them from Centauri Prime. This likely just catalyzed his decision to watch Morden’s face as he took them out by blowing up an entire island. Yeah. And in order to hide the plan from the Shadows people had to stay behind. Because Babylon 5 is very good about only pulling bait and switches with new characters, letting us know when a major character is bullshitting to hide something unscrupulous, I believe Londo when he says that the people who remained on the island were volunteers.
Londo has shown that he can be ruthless, and we have seen him sell his soul before. Now, for the first time in a long time, his ruthlessness was used to protect his planet and the people on it. The assassination of Cartagia may have been politics as usual in the royal court but this is where we see the true character of Londo. It is not pretty, it is still compromised, but it is trying to do better and to do well by others. Let’s hope that remains.
Continued belowBack in season two, Vir said this to Morden:
I’d like to live long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next 10 generations that some favors come with too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this: Can you and your associates arrange that for me?
Morden’s associates may not have been able to arrange for it but Londo certainly did! What a moment. It was both supremely satisfying to see and also a little unsettling. Vir clearly was taken aback by his statement becoming a reality but once he got over the violence and brutality Londo showed towards him, Vir finally got to give that wave.
What I like about the scenes that follow is how Vir has not forgotten Londo’s own complicity in the Shadows’ war. While Londo is celebrating, Vir remains conflicted and so when the Vorlon ship appears still and Londo, baffled and afraid, wonders why it is still coming, Vir points at him and reminds him that he too has been touched by the Shadows. Much as he might like to forget that period, Vir cannot and neither would the Vorlons.
Londo’s reaction is heartbreaking though. “They wouldn’t. Not for me.” He both cannot believe that they would still destroy Centauri Prime just to get him and also that, if they do, he would have no one left to blame but himself. It’s the great tragedy of his heroic push this season. Had he never taken Morden up on his offer, had he never thrown in with the Shadows, Centauri Prime would never have been threatened in the first place. Londo remains touched by the Shadows and while that reckoning does not happen now, that doesn’t mean he is free.
And if Londo doesn’t retain that knowledge, we know that Vir certainly will.
4. I See The Vorlons Every Other Weekend and Mon-Wed
The big climactic battle we’ve been building to for weeks is finally here. It’s big and bold and it’s full of some really rad looking CGI spaceships going PEW PEW. It’s also, in grand Babylon 5 tradition, backdrop for the more important battle occurring: the battle of the minds. The Vorlons try to convince Sheridan to back their side while the Shadows try to convince Delenn to join theirs. It’s a fun set of scenes, especially when Lorien thrusts his hands into the frame and it’s pretty clear they’re not on the same plane. They each make their arguments, trying to divide the two, but neither budge and instead throw the questions they’ve always asked back at them.
Babylon 5 has always been about diplomacy and finding ways to avoid fights like these as much as possible because the only people who lose are the civilians on the ground. In a more literal sense than any of the other wars thus far, the fight between the Vorlons and the Shadows is like two empires fighting and trampling on anyone else who gets in their way.
It’s also like a parental feud over what to do about “the children,” only both parents kinda suck and the kids just want to be free to play video games, pursue non-profit work, or become a theater actor. Neither parent really wants what’s good for their kids, they just want to prove that their way is the right way. The only way. It’s a framing I like far more than any political framing because, well, it fits better.
Sure, it’s an ideological battle, one which can be applied elsewhere, but the ideologies are about whether a rigid set of rules or a constant state of conflict is healthiest for personal growth. It’s an argument that fits best in the context of parents and children because the ultimate lesson is that, at some point, a parent has to step aside to let their kids grow and make decisions without them. At some point they have to learn when their kids see things that they do not and cannot.
Continued belowThe Vorlons & the Shadows could not let go and thus their actions became toxic and destructive. As Lorien said to Ivanova, the purpose of these successive generations was to grow and change. To take the lessons of the past and apply them with fresh eyes to the future. All it took was a stern rebuke from their kids…and their own parents.
5. End of War
One of the things I felt more acutely here than in previous seasons was how fast we seemed to be moving with regards to this confrontation and, more specifically, its conclusion. The Vorlons’ heel turn hasn’t been fully explored and it’s weird having it wrap up in the first six episodes of the season rather than much later. This isn’t to say it isn’t handled well nor that, once the Vorlons did do their heel turn, things wouldn’t have to escalate dramatically and quickly. It’s just that the singular focus on this plot over juggling multiple long-burn narratives across the season acts as both a boon and a curse.
A boon because it meant the arcs were focused and tight and a lot happens but a curse because it truncated some arcs that would’ve been great to see extended, like Londo finding out about Morden’s role in Adira’s death, and because it leaves me with a feeling of…where do we go from here? I understand JMS’ desire not to stretch this leg of the war out too much, as it would get repetitive and feel bloated, and I get the reasons why he felt he had to structure things they way he did, but I still wish things had been allowed to play out so that this would have been wrapped up at the end of the season, or at the very least the mid-way point, rather than here in the first quarter. However, that would have meant a guaranteed fifth season, which was very much not the reality at this point in the season.
An important bit of context to have about season four is that there was a very real danger of the show ending prematurely not because it wasn’t getting good ratings – it was the best rated PTEN show according to JMS’ autobiography “Becoming Superman” – but because PTEN was in very real danger of shuttering its doors not long after the conclusion of season 4. A danger which turned out to become a reality. While Babylon 5 did end up getting a fifth season thanks to TNT, JMS had already written and paced most of this season with the assumption of this premature end.
It’s a real shame because while the writing remains top notch, the faster pace oscillates between feeling like the natural escalation of the story and feeling like we’re watching a supercut. It’s weird to be lamenting the loss of a slower show, one with far more digressions and one-off arcs, but here I am. The Shadow War is over, faster than one would’ve expected, and all we’re left with is one question: where do we go from here?
It is a question I cannot wait to see answered.
That about does it for now. Join me again in a week on the station where everything changed in the year of destruction and rebirth.
This is Elias. Signing out.
Best Line of the Night:
Lorien: “We’ve lived too long, seen too much. To live on as we have is to leave behind…joy and love and companionship…because we know it to be transitory, of the moment.
We know it will turn to ash.
Only those whose lives are brief can imagine that love…is eternal. You should embrace that remarkable illusion. It may be the greatest gift…your race has ever received.”
