While Charlie Jane isn't convinced by SyFy Portal's claim of spoilage, at least three of the five contenders seem particularly believable (Especially when you consider the WTF-age of Tigh, Anders, Tory and Tyrol's reveals at the end of last season). But at what point does the revelation that "[character X] isn't who you thought they were at all!" cease to be shocking - or even interesting - and start to be annoying? Isn't there a chance that the mystery of the identity of the Final Cylon has been ruined by being built up so much, and that no solution will end up being satisfying enough to fans? Here are SyFy Portal's five choices for Final Cylon, and why we'd rather that none were true:

Lee Adama
Why It Sucks: Short of the Final Cylon being Bill Adama himself, isn't this the second most obvious - and boring - choice? The son of the man who led the fleet back to Earth, and the one who's been presented to be some kind of voice of a greater morality (See his defense of Baltar and new political career), being revealed to be a Cylon would feel to be a cynical "gotcha" moment on behalf of the writers... but, on the other hand, it may finally manage to make the character interesting.

Felix Gaeta
Why It Sucks: While it'd give him an excuse for that terrible singing episode - He was clearly trying to drive humanity insane with his maudlin wailing - there would be a strange feeling of Deja Vu if Gaeta turned out to be the Final Cylon. Haven't we already seen the mid-level administrative Cylon reveal with Torry? And, more worryingly - and this is actually enough to make me convinced that Gaeta is going to be revealed to be the Final Cylon - considering Tigh, Anders and Tyrol have already been revealed to be Cylons, wouldn't this make all of the main players in the New Caprica resistance Cylons? If that's the case, then that's not retcon irony, that's just a bucketload of fail.

Laura Roslin
Why It Sucks: It's too clean a wrap-up for all of Roslin's storylines, for one. The visions? She's a Cylon who was predestined to be The One. Being cured of cancer by Cylon genes? Because she's a Cylon! Pushing suspected Cylons out of airlocks? Because her subconscious was overcompensating for her secret! Falling in love with Bill Adama? Because she had to get close to the leader of humanity! And so on, and so on. It's too neat that I don't really believe that it could be true - and, also, I can't see Mary McDonnell going for the idea, either.

Ellen Tigh and Cally Tyrol
Why Both Suck: The last two suggestions on the list are disappointing for exactly the same reasons - Because they're dead, and because they were married to another member of the Final Five, without any of them knowing. Sure, both have a "They were killed by a member of the Final Five" thing going for them for those who like the gritty irony thing, but it feels like lazy melodrama for the long-awaited reveal to be about someone who's already dead at the unknowing hands of one of their own (Although, were it Cally, then Torry's cruelty would come to light - and she'd arguably see her the wrongness of her actions). Worse yet would be if it did turn out to be one of these two characters, and they then came back from the dead; this isn't Heroes, thank you very much, even if BSG's Mark Verheiden has jumped ship to NBC's superhero soap.

Assuming that SyFY Portal's list is real - and that the Final Cylon is amongst these five characters - there are some things to be thankful for. That Starbuck isn't in there, for one thing, and neither is Admiral Adama himself. But otherwise, it's a worrying look at what may be to come... partially because it gives the feeling that no-one will be good enough to be the Final Cylon, and that there's no "good" way to finish the series.

Battlestar Galactica returns to SciFi on January 16th.

The Final Five On The Final Cylon [SyFyPortal]

Wondering how to last the next six months (at least) until Battlestar Galactica returns to our screens? You could do worse that spend some time over at Battlestar Revealed, a site that attempts to piece together various sources to work out the remaining mysteries created by Ron Moore and crew.

While the site may be guilty of being perhaps too literal in dealing with the show - Does anyone else really think that the scenes in the Opera House are meant to be flashbacks to when the actual Opera House existed, rather than metaphorical dreams or visions? - there's a lot of food for thought in the arguments that it constructs around the identity of the Final Cylon, the importance of the Lords of Kobol and, maybe most interestingly, the way that the show's been constructed by the writers:

Now when you analyse the scene in which D’Anna gets off the Raptor and requests the four from the fleet, it makes perfect sense that this is a scene in which the writers have had to “dig themselves out of a hole”. At first glance it appears as though D’Anna does indeed recognize the Final Five but its clear that it was filmed in such a way as to continue the charade that the Final Five humans are the same five that the cylons call the Final Five.

It’s never conclusive that she recognizes any of the other four. She did recognize Baltar, he was the only one connected via his head character at that time. He was already on the baseship which is why she only requested the four from the fleet. She simply used a mind trick to fool the colonials into thinking she knew the other four. When she starts speaking, both Tory and Tigh are looking extremely worried which is why she appears to focus her attention on them - leading you to think she already knows who they are. Tory then effectively gives herself up and in a scene that we don’t see, she tells D’Anna who the other three are. This is how she appears to know the identity of the other three when Lee tells her that he has them in the launch tube.

Another piece of clever production, designed to dig themselves out of a hole and at the same time maintain the illusion that the Opera House figures and the Final Five humans are one and the same!

[Battlestar Revealed]