The thing about maelstroms is that their currents circle ever closer to a central eye
BSG 3.17 - "Maelstrom"
This was the first episode in a long time that I felt was emotionally true, pulling together threads that have been there since the beginning, even if it wasn't perfect in all aspects. If I actually thought Kara was dead, I would probably be upset at the irony, but as it is, I think it's interesting, because I think a lot of the episode's elements were deliberately cyclical, wheels revolving back before swinging forward again.
There was Starbuck, Kara Thrace, personal mess and hotshot pilot, and all the boundaries between those two parts of her persona melting away. Lee told Adama that he felt like Starbuck was the only thing holding Kara together, but in the end, she flew, consciously and deliberately, toward her death. There were some interesting echoes to "You Can't Go Home Again," making peace with deaths in the past, her getting lost in flight--and, though this is entirely unspoiled speculation, I think there might be another echo, her coming out alive, one way or another, through the intervention of a Cylon ship. I don't think she was seeing the Raider; I think Leoben, or whatever was calling itself Leoben in her visions, was coming for her just as he'd promised.
There was Kara's intensely private religiosity, tied up with her relationship with her mother and also her time in Leoben's captivity. It felt wrong, off, when the writers used her spirituality as a plot point for keeping her married to Sam, as much as I can see it as an excuse she herself manufactured to keep from having to take the plunge with Lee; her consultation with the oracle, the way her eyes and mind turned inward around the figurine of Aurora, the hints at a deep connection with this mythology feel much more right for her, of a piece with her private prayers over her idols.
There was the scene in the hall with Adama, the callback to the miniseries, and the stark difference between then and now. The Starbuck in the past had jogged through those halls, greeting Adama with familiarity and affection, surrounded by friends, in the place where she belonged; now she's haunted, alone in her head, maybe seeing things, her relationship with Adama strained, and in his grief, he smashes the wooden ship he once worked so painstakingly to put together. There was the hallway shrine, and all of the names and faces that have been added to it since the beginning. She told Lee that they were back where they started, the hotshot pilot and the CAG; that seemed to make Lee sad, and he seemed not to completely agree with the sentiment, and I don't think he's wrong to be bothered by it. They are finally back to a place where they can be friends, where they can care about each other on that level without all of the intervening mess getting in the way, but they really aren't back where they started.
I like the way this episode tied Kara's relationship with her mother and Leoben--who was able to chart that relationship out for her and use it against her so successfully--and her uneasy acceptance that maybe they were both right, maybe she did have a destiny. (And no matter how many times I tell myself that Kara/Leoben is baddirtywrong, it was also HOT.) Having her make her peace with her mother's death felt pat, and not deserved--some people are just lousy, and you shouldn't have to make concessions even if they're dying, unless it will actually help you, which I'm not convinced was the case here. Even if the person guiding her through the process wasn't Leoben (and if it wasn't, what was it?), it's interesting that she sees it as Leoben, that as much as she hated and disbelieved him, he was able to tap into that part of her beliefs about who she is that her mother had nurtured so long ago; that she fantasizes about parts of the relationship he wanted from her, all tied to that cycle; and that all of those things are rooted, for both of them, in spirituality.
I don't know if she's a Cylon (and there's a point where I would have hated that idea, but now I'm not so sure), one of the Final Five, or if there was a raider waiting to pull her out of the sky after she ejected off camera, but I am 98% sure she's not dead. I don't think she was seeing things; I think there were Cylons in the area.
Also, Katee Sackhoff was amazing in this episode.
