Welcome Back Starbuck! Every Leak, Hint, Rumor or Spoiler There Is to Know About Battlestar Season 4

Starbuck and Boomer clown around on a recent episode of Canadian scifi show Hypaspace — and show a bit of new footage from the next season of Battlestar Galactica, airing April 4. With two weeks still to go, a surprising amount of information and footage from the new season has already leaked out or been officially released. We covered this information in bits and pieces as it broke, but now we've got a complete mega-digest of everything that's come out so far. Mega-spoilers ahead!

Here's a complete list of episode titles and writers for the first half of the season.

Starbuck: The first few episodes of season four are "all about Starbuck," says Jamie Bamber. She believes she's only been gone a few hours, but it's been seven months for everyone else. She's not the same as she was before, and may actually be dead. And not only does she claim to have been to Earth, but she has photos which she took from Earth orbit showing the pattern of the stars — matching the pattern they found in the Temple of Athena. She insists she's not a Cylon, and Ron Moore has pretty much confirmed it. But the President suspects her. It doesn't help her case that her Viper is in pristine condition.

And at one point, Starbuck gets locked up in the brig and has to break out. She may take the president hostage. There are lots of clips of her freaking out and shouting that the fleet is heading the wrong way, and they're going to have to kill her to shut her up. She worries she's been brainwashed or turned into a infiltrator..

At some point, Starbuck gets enough trust back to be put in charge of a Das Boot-esque ship called the Demetrius. She finds out about the prophecy that she's the herald of the apocalypse. Oh, and a leaked call sheet says later in the season, she finds a crashed Viper with her own dead body in it, and she puts fake dog tags on the body and lights it on fire, and Leoben is with her.

(Side note: Bamber mentions in the above clip that even Ron Moore and the other writers had no clue what was going on with Starbuck coming back from the dead, until they started working on season four. What the frak?)

Col. Tigh: We know, from preview footage, that he's incredibly paranoid about being found out as a Cylon — and he's scared that Starbuck knows. He insists in one clip that he's not going to let those bastards program him to go against his principles. But we've also seen preview footage of him pointing a gun at Admiral Adama in the CIC, and one source suggests he may actually shoot the Admiral non-fatally. He gets some scenes with his dead wife Ellen, which may just be dream sequences, and also screams for her in a pool of water. And at one point, the Cylon Six and Ellen sort of blend together. He did not pick this frakking life. Oh, and he's not hearing that frakking song any more. Thank the gods.

Baltar gets his own cult of worshippers. And maybe takes a non-Cylon lover. But even though he becomes a religious leader, he also preaches that the gods don't exist. (See clip.) (Maybe he preaches mono-theism?) And at one point, he gets captured by some fanatics who threaten to slit his throat, so he can give his life so God will save an innocent child. He chooses to give his life to spare the child's, and it gets as far as his throat actually getting cut. At some point, he meets up with the Caprica Six, and somehow he can see the Gaius Baltar that she sees in her head. The two of them even interact.

Anders has similar issues with being a Cylon. And when he's out flying in battle, he runs into a Cylon fighter, which scans him with its "eye" and refuses to attack him in the clip we featured a while back. (And we're guessing he's the hidden Cylon who "jumps ship" in the first few episodes.) Anders tries to come out to Starbuck as a Cylon, sort of, by telling her that he would still love her if she was a Cylon. But she doesn't react in the yay-Cylons the way he was hoping. And this causes a split between the two of them.

President Roslin is Starbuck's biggest doubter, judging from the clips. She seems to be asking Bill Adama at one point whether he's willing to risk his own death just to avoid losing her again. And Lee Adama seems to be accusing her of being power-mad and ruthless in another clip. She questions Cylon Six about the final five, and Six says they're in the fleet. Six can feel they're near. Meanwhile, her cancer comes back, and in episode six, "Faith," she's stuck in a sick bed next to Emily, played by Deep Space Nine's Nana Visitor, who annoys her by listening to all of Baltar's radio broadcasts religiously. But the two bond eventually.

The Cylons decide not to attack the human fleet any more, because the final five Cylons are on board and may not be able to resurrect. This supposedly leads to friction between Six and the other human-looking Cylons.

Six, meanwhile, gets a new incarnation this season, called Natalie, who wants to lead a Cylon revolution. Six opposes Brother Cavill because she decides his treatment of the Cylon raiders is unethical, and encourages the robotic Centurions to kill the other skin jobs. We've featured clips of her leading some of the robotic Centurions into a room full of other skin-jobs. There's a rumor that the Centurions are going to rise up against the human-looking Cylons in episode four, "Escape Velocity," because the skin jobs tried to restrict the Centurions' free will. The "skin jobs" debate what to do about the Centurions, and Brother Cavill says they're tools, not pets. Cavill gets a new love interest, whom he makes out with.

The second episode of the new season is called "Six Of One," and includes the Caprica Six and her mental version of Baltar.

Meanwhile, the Boomer version of Sharon is back in a big way, and does something to shock the other Cylons in one of the clips we've seen. Also, at some point the Cylons un-box the Lucy Lawless Cylon to find out what she knows. But two Cylon models may get wiped out altogether by Six's coup. At the same time, someone (Six?) wants to unite all the Cylon models.

Admiral Adama has a crisis of faith, maybe revolving around Starbuck's return. He's tired of turning away from the things he wants to believe in.

Lee Adama didn't take this job to help someone undermine the president. And he's made a decision that he can't explain, but which he knows he has to do. He does not return to active flight duty this season.

Does Lee Adama's new life path have something to do with the spoiler we reported this morning, that Tom Zarek leaks classified information to "a new colleague" for nefarious purposes?

Romo Lampkin comes back at least once during the first 10 episodes, and again during the last 10. And it sounds like his voice in that one promo clip telling someone they're a beacon of hope, and hope should be extinguished.

Cally is rumored to die in the third episode, "The Ties That Bind," probably by suicide. And the Cylonitude of her husband may be what drives her to it. (And it may not be coincidence that we reported this morning a leak that "someone" finds out the identity of three of the secret Cylons in that same episode.)

Misc.: There are all sorts of rumors about what happens when the fleet finds Earth. It's in ruins. It's in our 22nd century. There will be some kind of snakey plot twist. "Everybody's dying in season four, and I wouldn't be surprised if the ship was blown apart," says Edward James Olmos. There's a rumor the name of the thirteenth colony in the scriptures is "Cylon." Oh, and we totally predicted back in November that the final Cylon wouldn't be one of the big characters. (And that poll's still open!)

Send an email to Charlie Jane Anders, the author of this post, at charliejane@io9.com.

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