And so the killing begins.

30 Seconds



The folks behind Alias warned us that the bodies were going to pile up as the show wound down, and they weren't kidding!

Alright, so, APO is trying to track Anna Espinosa, who when last they saw her had made away with Page 47. When last we saw her, she got the ultimate extreme makeover and was genetically altered to be an exact clone of Sydney.

We open on a mission somewhere in India, I think, and Syd's alias is hilarious - sort of a southern-fried Ivana Trump, but without the class. APO has learned that Anna is piggy-backing her phone calls on a router at an outsourcing company and Syd and Renee have been tasked with bugging her calls. Something goes wrong and Renee gets all badass and saves the day and they successfully retrieve the part they need from the router. Syd tells Renee she's awesome and she should work for APO, but Renee says no way.

Barcelona. Sloane meets with Prophet 5's frontman Joseph and tells him that he read the instructions for administering Nadia's cure (it came with instructions!) and he's not too jazzed about the part where Nadia's heart has to be stopped for 30 seconds for the cure to work. He tells Joseph he will not do it. Joseph tells him it is a Rambaldi cure for a Rambaldi disease and Sloane will have to have faith that it will work.

Meanwhile, the gang at APO have intercepted a call on Anna's line, from Barcelona to Switzerland, but it's not Anna doing the talking. It's Peyton. What does Peyton have to do with Anna and why is she using her phone? And why Barcelona? Has Prophet 5 set up a new HQ there? We know it's because Anna now looks and talks like Sydney, and that she's now working for P5, but they don't have time to worry about that. They discover during the call that the guy on the other end of the line is in possession of Page 47. His name is Koller. He's a document expert and he's been hired by Anna to find a secret message that's supposed to be encoded in its text. There will be a meet in Paris in a few days between Koller and Anna and APO sends Renee and Tom to intercept. Turns out Renee knows Koller and is confident that she can get close to him.

At the hospital, in Nadia's room, we see Sloane preparing to administer "the cure". He slowly turns off the electronic monitoring machines. He takes out a small sheet of rubber (sort of like a dental dam, I guess) and stretches it over Nadia's nose and mouth. Sloane apologizes through tears as Nadia slowly dies. It goes without saying, of course, that Ron Rifkin is amazing in this scene, as usual. Once Nadia's heart has stopped Sloane starts the timer on his watch. Like he needs to be reminded that he needs to move FAST. Anyway, he removes a hypodermic needle from the box he brought in and is about to inject Nadia when Jack walks into the room and, thinking that Sloane is trying to kill Nadia, stops him. Sloane manages to break away from Jack and plunges the needle into Nadia's chest. Ow. Nadia slowly awakens and Jack is impressed, He's also a little suspicious about where Sloane got this cure. Jack and Sloane talk about that and Sloane tells him he's been secretly doing illegal tests and experiments to come up with a cure himself. Jack isn't at all convinced, especially after Sloane says the cure ultimately came from Barcelona. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Syd shows up at the hospital and has a nice sisterly reunion with Nadia. Back at APO, Dixon and Jack are investigating Sloane's activities since Nadia fell ill last year; they don't trust him as far as they can throw him. Which is probably pretty far considering how tiny Rifkin is. They will track his movements and bug his phone calls. Jack tells Syd that he suspects that Sloane is in cahoots with Prophet 5, he just needs to find the proof. Syd says that until he does, she's going to hang out with her sister.

Nadia still isn't all that comfortable around her father, what with the way he was responsible for her turning into a zombie last year, so she's going to live with Sydney for now, and they can catch up on things and play with the baby. At APO, Jack tells Sloane about the supposed secret message on Page 47, hoping it will force Sloane to show his hand.

In Paris, Renee contacts Koller, and implies she wants to make a booty call at his place later on and Koller is all "hell yeah, see you later"; at APO, Sloane can't take it anymore and places a call to a mysterious someone who he tells he has to meet later that night, for what I hope is not a booty call; Jack intercepts Sloane's call and is all "I knew it!" as he calls Syd to tell her that he's going to follow Sloane to see what he's up to; Sydney tells Nadia, who shows up at Jack's car and tells him she's going along with him. She needs to know once and for all if she can trust her father.

What follows is the most blatant case of product placement I have ever seen when we get what amounts to a commerical for the Ford Hybrid SUV, starring Jack and Nadia. I couldn't believe it. Anyway, they follow Sloane to a self-storage unit; Nadia hides in plain sight (literally, that was the worst hiding job I have ever seen!) and watches as her father talks to a man, retrieves a case from the unit and then drives away. She and Jack get inside and look around, only to find Nadia's old things and what appears to be proof that Sloane has indeed been working on a cure for Nadia all this time, just like he said. Jack says that it appears he has misjudged Sloane. Oh Jack, don't you know by now that it isn't possible to misjudge Sloane?

In Paris, Renee and Tom have kidnapped Koller. After only a little bit of threatening Koller reveals that he has discovered that the Page 47 that Anna gave him is a fake.

Cut to Sloane Manor, where Arvin removes the real Page 47 from the case he took from storage. Sloane has been holding onto this little piece of Rambaldi all along, his obsession as healthy (or unhealthy) as ever. He pulls out a magnifying glass and begins looking for the secret message. He's interrupted by a knock on the door and he does a piss poor job of stashing Page 47 under his desk blotter. It's Nadia at the door, and she's come to stay with Dad. Sloane is very pleased, and they sit and have a nice little talk. While Sloane goes to check on dinner, Nadia heads to his office in search of a pair of scissors to cut off her hospital wristband (wouldn't that be the first thing you do when you get home?). She finds Page 47 and confronts her father. She tells him it's either her or Rambaldi. He begs her not to make him choose; Nadia says fine, then you can have neither of us and she tosses Page 47 into the fire! It begins to burn, and as it does, the eye of Rambaldi symbol glows on the page. Cool. Remember crazy Sloane from last year? Well, he's back! He pushes Nadia out of the way and grabs the page from the fire. Nadia falls onto a glass table and her throat is cut. Sloane watches as Nadia bleeds out on the floor. Poor, poor Nadia. I can't say I'm all that sad about her death, but her life was pretty shitty.

Koller and Anna are meeting in a market in Ghana and APO send a team - Syd, Renee, Dixon, Tom and Rachel - to try to capture Anna. Everyone takes their places, and before heading out to roam the market, Syd asks Renee again if she would like to join APO. Renee says no, because she doesn't trust anyone, only Syd. Oh no, she didn't just say that, did she?

Anna's car shows up in the market as scheduled, and they think they've got her, but then something's wrong; the car turns around and starts back the way it came. It crashes and Syd looks inside to see that no one is there. We cut to Renee, just as Sydney walks up to her. But that's not Sydney, is it? Renee barely has time to say "Syd?" when Anna whips out a knife and slashes Renee's throat! They killed Renee! This death actually had more impact for me because poor Renee died believing that Sydney had killed her.

The APO team figures out that someone must have tipped off Anna (hmm, Sloane, perhaps?) and Syd runs to check on Renee, only to find she has been killed. Jack goes to Sloane Manor and discovers poor Nadia, still on the study floor, surrounded by broken glass and blood. Does Jack feel responsible in part for her death? Sloane had better hope not.

As the bodies are discovered, we get a voiceover by the crazy man himself, who has finally (and to my great pleasure) gone over to the bad side. He believes that Nadia's death is a part of Rambaldi's plan. He is joining up with Prophet 5 in pursuit of the realization of Rambaldi's greatest achievement.

One of the things about these final episodes that I have liked so much is the way they have gone back to the roots of the show and pared it down to its simplest components - Syd, Jack, Sloane and Rambaldi. That's where it all began and that's where I hope it will all end. With Sydney finally exacting the revenge against Sloane that she sought after he killed her fiance way back in the pilot episode.

Next new episode: this Wednesday at 8:00. Can't wait!