The One Where The Show Ends With 38 Episodes Left On The Clock
I kid.
It's low-hanging fruit, but it's worth remembering that over on Deep Space Nine, we're still two weeks out from Gul Dukat throwing in with the Dominion (DS9 5x15 "By Inferno's Light"), and more than four months away from the beginning of the Dominion War (DS9 5x26 "Call to Arms"). I mention this because DS9 is very front-heavy, with the show taking five years to get to the Dominion War and then ending the same week the war ends. B5 has two seasons of "peace" bracketing three seasons of war, because, to paraphrase JMS's internet response to a fan complaining about the show apparently ending with 38 episodes left on the clock (or 16 episodes, if they didn't get renewed for a fifth season), it's not like Europe settled down after the War to End All Wars.
We start with Lorien pestering Ivanova to make sure they have all the First Ones. Because having every last one is necessary to beating the Shadows and the Vorlons? Well, no, not exactly, there's a pretty impressive bit of JMS sleight-of-hand going on here.
Sheridan learns that a Vorlon planet killer is headed to Centauri Prime, but because that planet only has a population of 3 billion (what) they're going ahead with their plan to protect Coriana 6.
Fortunately, Centauri Prime has its own defender in the form of Ambassad- I mean, Prime Minister Londo Mollari. He begins making arrangements for all of the Shadows to be removed and the planet to be purged of all Shadow influence so that the Vorlons won't have to nuke the place. One of the local spymasters comes in and informs him that oh, hey, it was actually Morden what killed Adira last year. This is clever - if the Centauri Intelligence Agency (oh, look what I did there) is that good, how come the rest of Centauri Prime was in the dark about Londo's "associates?" Oh, right, they weren't, because whenever Londo didn't want to cooperate with the Shadows, Morden could always bend the ear of Refa or Cartagia. The bastards knew all along.
Londo trashes the set in his rage and arranges for Morden to be brought to him. After shooting his bodyguards (rewatch 3x15 "Interludes and Examinations," and you can spot the moment Londo twigs that Morden has Shadow bodyguards following him everywhere), Londo tells Morden to get the Shadow ships off the planet. Morden declines. So Londo blows up the island that the ships were on.
What a clever plan, I'm sure no-one will ever use it against him. Certainly not the allies Morden warns Londo about as they take him away to be executed.
And executed he is. Morden, the Shadows' Voice of Sauron, is killed. (We're still more than two months away from Weyoun's reintroduction in DS9 5x19 "Ties of Blood and Water".) Vir flashes back to the time he told Morden he (Vir) wanted to see Morden's head on a spike. "I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?" Turns out, since Londo qualifies as one of Morden's associates, yes they can.
And of course, because Londo is one of Morden's associates, they haven't actually quite managed to remove the Shadow taint from Centauri Prime by the time the Vorlon planet-killer arrives. Vir spells it out for Londo, who asks Vir to kill him. Vir refuses, because, well, he's a good person. Although he could be a bit more pragmatic; Vir's options are "Kill Londo and save the planet, in which case Londo is dead" or "spare Londo and the Vorlons destroy the planet, in which case everyone including Londo is dead."
There are a whole lot of details in JMS's autobiography, Becoming Superman, that throw new light on a number of the details and storytelling choices in Babylon 5. The entire "we don't need you anymore" thing that goes on in this episode parallels his break from his extraordinarily dysfunctional family. And by "extraordinarily dysfunctional," I mean his father was at best an alcoholic, abusive Nazi sympathizer and at worse a war criminal. I think one of the reasons why B5 doesn't end when its wars do is because the scars of war remain (Straczynski senior was spooked by the death-by-pipe-bomb of a Nazi friend of his many years later). And... well, I don't know if I should read too much into the scene where the drunken, abusive, collaborator father figure (Londo) urges his son figure (Vir) to kill him. But after reading Becoming Superman, I betcha that must have been pretty cathartic to write.
Well, the Vorlons don't have time to destroy Centauri Prime because Sheridan just ambushed them and the Shadows at Coriana 6, and the Vorlons there called for reinforcements. So the Vorlons at Centauri Prime pull out before blowing up the planet. That's convenient.
The Vorlons and the Shadows (somehow) hijack Lyta and get her to put Sheridan in a black void with a Vorlon spokewoman and put Delenn in a black void with the Prophets from DS9, I mean the Shadows, who take the form of Delenn's friends and finally Delenn herself. Both the Vorlons and the Shadows try to get the younger races to do what they want... until Sheridan points out that the Vorlons and Shadows can't answer the two big questions that have been driving the series.
"Now get the hell out of our galaxy!"
And Lorien reveals that they gathered up all the First Ones to get them out of the galaxy too.
This is the metatextual, thematic, philosophical, what have you climax of the show, make no mistake. The campaign against Clark that takes up the rest of this season is akin to the Scouring of the Shire - because B5 is occasionally The Lord of the Rings in space.
On that score, I wrote almost nine years ago, comparing the Season One finales of Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica:
"Gleaming" ends with Adama being shot, whereas the presidential assassination takes place roughly two-thirds of the way through "Chrysalis." The writers on BSG were going for shock value, whereas JMS was more interested in how the assassination would affect the characters.
This is the difference in the JMS philosophy writ large; B5 has at least two fake finales: this one, and 4x21 "Rising Star." (You could argue that 5x21 "Objects at Rest" is a third, but it really is the end (as much as there is one) of the story; 5x22 "Sleeping in Light" is the epilogue.) Everybody else wants to put the big bow on their stories and call it a day.
But, as Morden asked G'Kar after G'Kar told him what he wanted: and then what?
Then, we stop being afraid of shadows.
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