The Babylon 5 Season 3 Finale Changed The Game Forever

Back when TV seasons were at least 22 episodes, it felt like more was riding on a season finale than on some of the 10-episode (or fewer) seasons we get today. And in that time, if your TV show was syndicated, like Babylon 5 was for its first four seasons, going for a massive cliffhanger was a classic way to leave viewers wanting more in a subsequent season. That said, Babylon 5 was somewhat unique insofar as J. Michael Straczynski had a basic plan for a five-year arc for the show, and as such, massive season cliffhangers weren’t necessarily created solely to get viewers excited, but because the story was supposed to play out that way. Because of the nature of TV — including the departure of a few actors — and the fact that Season 4 was almost the last season of B5, the series went through many deviations from JMS’ original plan. But the Season 3 finale, “Z’ha’dum,” remains a high point in terms of drama and suspense, taking the series into a place in which nothing could ever be the same again.

Thirty years after its first airing, “Z’ha’dum” remains a perfect example of what made B5 so great, not just as one of the best sci-fi shows of the 1990s, but as a pioneering series in the format of serialized TV storytelling in general. 1996 spoilers ahead.

One of the coolest things about Babylon 5, at least, in retrospect, was the way the series blended traditional Star Trek-style space opera character roles with a kind of fantasy feeling closer to the spirit of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. From the first season onward, and especially in Season 2, viewers are warned about the coming of the Shadows, a mysterious, ancient alien race bent on chaos and destruction.

The world-building of B5 contains a lot of great science fiction, from faster-than-light jumpgates to complex rules about telepaths, and even some extremely memorable and classic time travel stories. But right alongside that science fiction are prophecies, legends, and Joseph Campbell-esque mythological structures that give the space opera format of B5 a bit more heft. And the Season 3 finale, “Z’ha’dum,” leans into the larger-than-life mythological figures of the show, lurking in the background, and makes all of that extremely personal and very, very real.

The basic premise of “Z’ha’dum” is all about Captain John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner) being outright invited by his enemy, the Shadows, to go to their homeworld and meet for a kind of peace summit. The envoy of the Shadows is none other than Anna Sheridan (Melissa Gilbert), who was presumed deceased after her survey ship visited the planet Z’ha’dum before Sheridan joined the show in Season 2. Back in Season 2, Beth Toussaint played Anna in flashbacks and video messages, but in Season 3, Boxleitner’s then real-life wife, Melissa Gilbert, took over the role, and the black-and-white prologue of “Z’ha’dum” cleverly recut early scenes to make us feel like she’d been in the role all along. (Was James Gunn watching and taking notes, considering he pulled a similar retcon in Peacemaker Season 2?)

Gilbert is fantastic in the part because her amiable voice and soft, kind demeanor are a fantastic contrast to the fact that she’s basically been turned into the B5 version of a vampire or a Ringwraith. Boxleitner’s Sheridan is perhaps the most gee-shucks, straightforward sci-fi hero of the 1990s, making him, in retrospect, feel a little punk rock, because he’s so buttoned-up, full of good-dad energy that there’s something almost subversive about how the audience wonders, for a while, if he’s really going along with the Shadows, and if he’ll leave his new lover, Delenn (Mira Furlan).

In fact, although this episode is remembered for its action-packed final moments, most of “Z’ha’dum” is remarkable because the episode mostly consists of a series of conversations, in which people debate the safety of Sheridan going to the planet Z’ha’dum, the notion that it was foretold that he would perish if he goes there, whether or not the Minbari and the Vorlons have been honest with the humans, and whether or not the evil Shadows kinda, sorta have a point about the nature of the universe.

Directed by Adam Nimoy (yes, that Nimoy, son of Leonard), the weight and importance of “Z’ha’dum” is felt in almost every single frame. In 1998, Straczynski likened the structure of this finale, and its previous foreshadowing elements, to the Greek myth of Orpheus. “When any character appears before the oracle at Delphi and the character is told, ‘Don’t go to Hades,’ you know they’re going to go to Hades,” Straczynski said. He also pointed out that neither extreme viewpoint of the Vorlons (total control and palling) nor the Shadows (chaos and conflict) is the right way forward. “Neither side, the Vorlons or the Shadows, is actually correct,” he explained. “It’s in that dichotomy that the story of Babylon 5 takes place.”

In the end, the cliffhanger involves the Shadows sending a fleet of ships to take Babylon 5, while Sheridan rejects the offer to join the other side. But he’s gotten himself on their planet and, using a remote control, activates the White Star, sending it on a collision course and full of several nuclear explosives, which were deftly mentioned by G’Kar (Andreas Katsulas) earlier in the episode. So, Sheridan basically turns his own starship into a bomb and jumps to his doom into some kind of endless abyss. And that’s where the episode ends.

In some ways, it could have been an ending for the entire series: Sheridan makes the ultimate sacrifice, and the fate of the galaxy is left unclear, though, seemingly, tipping away from the power of the Shadows. Season 4 would follow up on the question of Sheridan’s mortality in a big way, but it would also retain the catastrophic events from this finale. There was never really a status quo on B5, especially not after the succession from the Earth Alliance earlier in Season 3 in “Severed Dreams.”

But after the Season 3 finale “Z’ha’dum,” Babylon 5 Season 4 was, essentially, a non-stop epic. Because after your main character leaps to his doom, and the greatest enemy in the universe is on your doorstep, there’s no time to slow down or play nice. Babylon 5 remains one of the greatest sci-fi TV shows ever, partly because it took chances. But also because big mythological swings like “Z’ha’dum” felt familiar and classic.

Babylon 5 Seasons 1 and 2 stream on YouTube. You can purchase individual episodes from Seasons 3-5, including “Z’Ha’Dum,” on Apple TV, Fandango, and elsewhere.