Review on the Finale - Spoilers Included

[WilCap]

Credit to http://www.nowplayingmag.com for Review

Sydney Bristow's entire extended family - Jack, Irina Derevko, Nadia, and her fiancé-to-be Vaughan - must parachute into Russia to disable the Rambaldi device that her aunt Elena has activated with the help of Sloane, who has reverted to type. Nearly everyone in the city is dead, and those that aren't have been altered by the device and by the tainted water supply into mindless, homicidal animals. This is the way the entire world will end if Sydney's team can't disable the device before the Russians try to destroy it with an air strike, which will spread the contagion across the planet.

There are only two real flaws in the fourth season finale of Alias. Firstly, while it's creepy as hell, it's only truly effective if you haven't seen the British horror film 28 Days Later, which did the whole "humans-become-rage-filled-zombies" thing far better than an episode of a broadcast television series can. And secondly, the promised "final battle" between the Chosen One and the Passenger - Sydney and Nadia, respectively - isn't. Not that we'd want it to be, of course, but when the moment comes in which Sydney must choose whether to save the world or kill her sister, the choice is rather taken out of her hands. At least the person who chooses for her is someone we'd least expect...

Other than all that, this season finale is deeply satisfying - it puts the capstone on several different storylines at once, including a few we didn't even know were storylines until this last month. For instance, while we all hoped that Jack Bristow's claim that he had killed his former wife Irina Derevko at the top of the season was somehow a mistake, the revelation that he in fact had not killed her, allowing a daring rescue and an all-too-brief return by the amazing Lena Olin, was one of the season's best surprises. Another was that, despite the bulk of the season having relatively little to do with our old friend Rambaldi, the devices were still out there, the prophecies were still out there, and the all-too-fanatical followers (like Elena herself) were still out there. (At the end of this episode, though, you'd be foolish not to wonder if all that is over for good.) And finally, the entire "is he or isn't he still evil" story arc with Sloane has culminated beautifully, allowing for a bizarre but interesting subplot with a "Sloane clone" (played eerily well by Joel Grey) and a fantastic scene near the end of this episode in which Sydney comes to a difficult realization about the man she felt she could not trust.

And yet all of that pales compared to the literally last-minute revelation from the man she felt she could trust - a revelation cut off by a hideous car accident. I have a feeling the last ten seconds of the episode will get as much scrutiny as the Zapruder film until the new season premieres. I mean, really - there's no way they could bring something like that up and then kill off the only character who could answer our questions, can they? Can they?

B+