Aaaaaand, the award goes to...

Oh, he's so beautiful, isn't he?


A BRIEF DISCLAIMER
The chinchilla didn't sleep very much last night. This recap will probably reflect that.

PREVIOUSLY ON ALIAS
Sloane: I'm eeeeeeevil!
Peyton: I'm eeeeeviler!
Sloane: Yes, but not as smart!
Sark: Clandestine secret contact protocol yada yada
Sydney: I kill you dead, Anna!
Anna: [dies]
Sydney: I'm really Anna! Sydney Bristow is deeeeeaaaaad like Abe Lincoln!
Jack: salt... in... wounds...
Nadia's Ghost: Not dead like Rambaaaaaldiiiiii!
NotScott: Dude, who killed my wife? Send message to pretty birdies!
Korman: Crazy bastard...
Rachel: I wuuuuuuuv you, even though you're not Scott!
Vaughn: I'm alive!
Dixon: Nobody... cares...
Isabelle: Excuse me! I care that my daddy's alive!
Dixon: The baby's talking to me...
Sloane: Yeah, well...
Peyton: Here. Take the special pink pill at noon and the special orange pill at four-thirty.
Sloane: I hate my life.
Sydney: I hate mine more.
Nadia's Ghost: At least you have lives to hate... Thanks, dad!
Isabelle: I hear you, girlfriend.

THIS WEEK ON ALIAS
Evil Fred and NotSydspinosa (or, Sydney pretending to be Anna pretending to be Sydney), are riding around in that nice shiny car that Evil Fred had last week. Only thing is… it was so totally blue last week. Now it’s more like… indigo. Or something. Anyway, they’re driving around and drinking champagne because… well… why not?
Meanwhile, Vaughn calls Jack, who puts him on speakerphone so Marshall can hear too. Jack also mentions to Dixon how silly he thinks this whole Syd-pretending-to-be-Anna-pretending-to-be-Sydney plot is, and sends Dixon off to Germany to help Vaughn, because he knows that Vaughn can’t be trusted to do anything right. Marshall confesses to Vaughn that he cried at his funeral, and when Vaughn apologizes, like you should you horrible man!, Marshall insists that it’s okay – he needs a good cry every once and a while. Anyway, Marshall keeps Vaughn updated on where Syd and Evil Fred are – remember how Syd embedded a tracking device inside the chip last week? Which was stupid then and is stupid now – she should have put it somewhere on her own body rather than handing it over to Evil Fred. Who, as her name might suggest, is evil.
At any rate, Vaughn grabs a car and starts screeching after them, and if he gets into a car accident and dies, you have no idea how hard I’m going to laugh. There will be tears. There might even be fainting from lack of oxygen.
And then the chip stops transmitting, because Evil Fred threw it in her champagne. Why she went to all that trouble to get it… I have no idea. Maybe she just likes the taste of melting electronics. But it’s okay, because Super Marshall is still able to track them via the traffic control cameras, and Vaughn screeches into the airport moments after Syd and Fred, nearly killing a harmless little old lady and her pet Pomeranian on the sidewalk. Stupid man can’t even drive.
He runs into the airport, and while Evil Fred is getting frisked by the guards (what? does her profile scream “Frisk Me!” because I didn’t hear the metal detector go off), and thus has her back to him, he runs up, deposits a cell phone in Sydney’s hand, and runs away.
Did he just want to hold hands or something? Sydney already has her own cell phone… Stupid Vaughn.
But I should mention how he has a really weird look on his face when he spots the back of Evil Fred’s head. Like “Heeeeeey… is that Kelly?” They are so absolutely siblings.

Sarah’s Words of Wisdom: “Oh, I love Jack! Jack radiates masculinity and death!”

EVIL ZURICH CASTLE OF EVILNESS (formerly Destination Unknown)
Sloane and some guy who we’ve never seen before, but who we can assume is evil ‘cause hey, he’s talking to Sloane, are hanging out and going over Page 47. What happened to Greasy McEhrmann? Was he permanently demoted because of the major put-down he got in episode ten? Or did the Twelve finally decide that nobody with bad hair could be involved with Prophet Five (hence Evil Fred’s upgrade from ponytail to permanent Herbal Essence commercial)? Who knows.
Sloane translates Page 47 for this complete stranger, who actually has pretty bad hair himself. In fact, the only person with good hair that works for Prophet Five is Evil Fred. Seriously, the Twelve need to make up their mind!
“The entire purpose of the experiment is hair!” cries Wesley excitedly. Ah, Angel, how we miss you.
But enough about hair. Except for a quick mention of the fact that Sloane’s is good again and Dixon’s gets worse by the minute. Maybe there’s a Bad Hair Disease going around. Or something.
Anyway. Sloane tells the stranger that Rambaldi says that “the circle will be complete when the Chosen One finds the Rose at San Cielo.” So if he was just going to tell them, why hide it for so long? Or was ghost!Nadia just talking out of her ass? What? Huh? I don’t know. I’m just going to pretend that last week didn’t happen. That will make it all better.
Sloane voices his concern that Sydspinosa may not be able to go to San Cielo and get the Rose, what with Sydney being the Chosen One and not Anna. Lucky for him, NotSydspinosa can come to the rescue, what with her not being Anna and therefore being the Chosen One. Wow, the confusion increases even more rapidly than the badness of Dixon’s hair!
Speaking of which, Evil Fred and Syd arrive at the Evil Castle of Evilness, and Evil Fred and her really awesome hair show Syd into Sloane’s study. Sydney’s all surprised to see Sloane, since… oh yeah, she’s not really Anna and therefore didn’t know that he was there.
“Sloane’s here?” she asks.
“You didn’t think we’d dispose of him yet?” snits Evil Fred, shooting a look of pure evil at Sloane. Seriously, she was so channeling Illyria for a moment there. Might as well shout, “You are but dust beneath my feet and I could crush you with a glance at any moment I so chose, puny minion scum!” Or maybe that would be too Illyria. I really miss Angel, if you couldn’t tell.
Sloane ignores Evil Fred and her eviler alter-ego, Evil Illyria, and speaks to NotSydspinosa, aka Sydney. “Did you encounter any complications?” he inquires, as though he actually cared. She assures him that there was only one complication – but she’s been dealt with once and for all.
“We should celebrate Arvin,” she says, sweating to pull off a decent Sydspinosa impersonation. “Sydney Bristow is dead.” Dun dun duuuuuuuun!
And I must give a little shout-out to JG, because she was a really convincing villain last week, and this week she’s definitely sweating. Good at playing the evil alter-egos. So congrats to her.

Sarah’s Words of Wisdom: “Seriously, Sydney is so bad at being Anna! If you want to be evil on this show, you have to wear all black and look really pissed all the time. Look at Fred! Look how pissed-off she looks! And she’s wearing black! Seriously! God! Sydney is so useless!”

CREDITS/COMMERCIALS
Die, Cingular, die! And may I say that Victor Garber looks positively ravishable in those glasses?

EVIL CASTLE OF EVILNESS – STUDY OF RAMABLDI FREAKS
Sydney is looking over Page 47 and not batting an eye over the fact that it’s still covered in her dead sister’s blood. Poor Nadia. Nobody loves her. Anyway, she astutely observed that Prophet Five needed Syd/Anna/Sydspinosa/NotSydspinosa/somebody to fulfill the prophecy, and thus was Sydspinosa born. She snarks that Sloane’s kind of stupid to actually believe that some five-hundred-year-old dead guy could predict the future, and Sloane remarks in turn that, last he checked, Anna had the special Rambaldi tattoo and was quite the believer herself. Sydney bites back that she only believes in Rambaldi when it benefits her checking account.
Then Sydney asks what Rambaldi wants her to do, and Sloane tells her that she must go to San Cielo, a monastery outside of Rome. Syd snits that maybe she should wear a habit. She also makes note of Sloane’s stupid sense of “faith.” And thus does Sloane get an “aha!” look on his face, meaning he’s probably figured out that it’s really Sydney, aka NotSydspinosa, not Sydspinosa, aka Anna.
And with that, Sydney is sent off to her room to Think About What She’s Done. And change her clothes, for reasons not shared. With a “Yes, Daddy Sloane and Mommy Fred,” Sydney slinks away, leaving the real evildoers to plot at the grown-up table while she sits at the kiddie table.

APO
NotScott is badly attempting to flirt with Rachel. And looking back at previous recaps of mine, I recall saying something to the effect that they deserved each other. I take that back. He is not good enough for her! Bastard. Marshall comes along and makes a bad excuse to talk to Rachel privately, saying that he thinks his math might be bad on some comm encryption software or something.
Pfffft. Like Marshall’s math could ever be wrong. He’s smart like (not evil) Fred. Only not with the schizophrenia.
At any rate, once he gets Rachel away he confesses that the real reason he wanted to talk with her was that after Sloane’s physically impossible passive surveillance tap on the network, he installed something that monitored all the communications that went in and out of the office. Which is probably illegal, but he’s Marshall so we can forgive him. He tells Rachel that NotScott received a message from Korman, the guy who killed his wife. Rachel finds this really odd, and convinces Marshall not to take it to Jack. Because if Jack found out, he would probably go on a quest of revenge, causing NotScott to spontaneously turn into a small pile of goo. She tells him that she’ll figure it out, and if she can’t and he’s still really sketchy in twenty-four hours, they can go to Jack together. For some reason, Marshall agrees to this. Which is also probably illegal.

EVIL CASTLE OF EVILNESS – BEDROOM OF COOL SPYGEAR
Sydney and that cell phone Vaughn gave her are apparently looking for bugs. So maybe that phone did have a purpose. Or maybe not. It’s probably standard protocol for spies to install bug-hunting devices in their phones. God, Vaughn is useless. Syd finds a bug in the lampshade and puts it next to the blaring radio before calling Jack.

BRISTOW/SANTOS PAD
Jack is standing in front of the counter, looking down at the Vaughnspawn in her carrier thing. Agent Raines is standing around in the background, looking cool like the MIB do. Syd brings Jack up to speed on San Cielo and they ponder what this could mean. Then, the Vaughnspawn giggles, which has Syd in a fit of motherly guilt for not being there to see her daughter’s first giggle. Jack assures her that there will be many giggles, but only until she’s old enough to be indoctrinated into the spy biz, and then the giggling will stop. Forever.
“Apparently,” he notes, “she thinks I’m funny.” And the subtext here is, “I’m am not funny. Who’s laughing me? I will kill them dead with my eyeball!”

Sarah’s Words of Wisdom: “Oh, Jack is the cutest!”

BEAUTIFULLY MINDED BUNKER
Dixon arrives in the Beautifully Minded Bunker and he and Vaughn have a nice little reunion, basically consisting of Dixon going, “Dude! You totally blew off my birthday party just to go into hiding from some evil organization! What your problem?” and Vaughn going, “Dude! What happened to your hair?”
We all wonder, Vaughn. We all wonder.
Anyway, Dixon forks over a picture of the Vaughnspawn, which has Vaughn getting all gooey over his itty bitty baby. It’s kind of cute. Or it would be, if it wasn’t Vaughn. God, Vaughn is do useless. He proceeds to tell Dixon how Jack and Syd put sodium morphate in his drink (you know, that thing that Sloane gave to Emily at the end of S1?) and then shipped him off to Bhutanepalsomeplacewithyurts. He says that for the first time ever, he felt like Jack accepted him. But Dixon hits on the truth when he suggests that it was really an elaborate scheme to postpone Vaughn's wedding to Sydney. Oh, Dixon's so smart.

Sarah's Words of Wisdom: "Oh, that's right! Dixon's right! Jack will never except you, Vaughn!"

PLANE OF CGI EVILNESS
Sloane parks himself in front of NotSydspinosa, aka Sydney pretending to be Anna pretending to be Sydney. I’m currently baffled. Wow. Anyway, Sloane seems kind of pissy that Sydney murdered Sydney… er… Anna pretending to be Sydney murdered the real Sydney, which didn’t really happen, because this is the real Sydney pretending to be Anna pretending to be Sydney pretending that she killed the real Sydney.
Where’s my Motrin?
To cut the bafflement short, Sydney basically tells Sloane that she shot Sydney in the back and Sydney died like everybody else dies and it wasn’t any harder to kill the Chosen One than it was to kill Sydney. Wait! Anna! Wait… Sydney! Wait… Vaughn! Wait… What?
I give up.
Sloane gets his mean look on and slithers over to Peyton and says, “I want to the be the one to kill her.” So I guess Sloane was right about the dispensable part? Poor Anna. She deserved a better exiting fight.

STREET IN ROME
Vaughn and his nifty sunglasses are reading a magazine at a magazine stand when Sydney dressed all pink flounces over and starts reading a magazine, too. Why, it’s just like Season One!

Sarah’s Words of Wisdom: “She’s wearing pink? What the hell kind of villain wears pink? Sydney is so stupid!”

Sydney tells Vaughn that she’ll be meeting a mysterious contact of Sloane’s (read: Sark) in the OTB across the street. She doesn’t know who it is, but apparently she’ll “know him when she sees him.” Vaughn goes to sit on a bench next to Dixon, who is inconspicuously, reading a newspaper. Thankfully, he’s got a bucket hat over his hair. Vaughn probably made him put it on because the hair was too scary for poor ickle Vaughnie-poo.

OTB
NotSydspinosa, aka Sydney, sits down at the counter and orders something alcoholic, when none other than Sex In Khakis himself plops down next to her and starts just… being sexy. Sydney, obviously overpowered by the sexiness that is Sark, starts beating him up. Because with Sark, you either have to beat him up or have sex with him. If you’re Lauren, you can get away with both. Anyway, all the Italians look up to watch the show, but after only two punches, Sydney stops, telling everyone, “I’ll let you know if I’m gonna hit him again.” Oh, Sydney. Vaughn really doesn’t deserve you. Anyway, Sark deters her from drinking any more alcohol, reminding her that they’re “on the clock.” Whatever that means.

PLACE OF SKETCHY MEETINGS
NotScott is chilling with Korman, while Rachel tries to act inconspicuous in her really expensive car just a few feet away. NotScott demands to know if Korman got in touch with the Cardinal, and he said he did, but he wants NotScott to hold up his end of the deal before he talks. He drives away, and in order to hide her presence from him, Rachel ducks her head beneath the dashboard. At least she has the excuse of being a trainee. When NotScott tries to drive away, too, Rachel jumps out of the car and plants herself firmly in front of his oncoming vehicle.
Well, at least she has the excuse of being a trainee.
He tells her to hop in, warning, “Not here. Someone might be watching.” Who? Irina? Well, actually… I wouldn’t be surprised. And it would certainly make this subplot more interesting if Irina suddenly jumped out of nowhere shrieking that Rambaldi’s Greatest Achievement was hidden inside the left rear tire of Rachel’s car, hacked up Rachel’s car with a chainsaw, and then ran to the top of the nearest tall building simply to rappel off the side and into a helicopter, which Peyton could then blow up, causing Irina to try to hack Peyton up with a chainsaw, causing Katya to spontaneously teleport from prison and for another Massive Derevko Showdown to happen, in the middle of which NotScott accidentally fell over and hit his head on the hood of his car, killing him.
Hey, it could be fun.

UNDERNEATH A BRIDGE
NotScott explains that four years ago, his wife was murdered by this guy named Korman. For some reason, he contacted Witsec and was shipped off to Wisconsin, a state now populated entirely by those in Witness Protection. Normally, they just arrest murderers, but obviously not in this case. Anyway, Korman was under orders to kill Amanda (read: Kelly) Grace by someone who NotScott has discovered is called The Cardinal. He was apparently working on some case at the time, and yada yada nobody cares. To cut a remarkably long and indescribably boring story short, Korman wants his car back in return for intel on The Cardinal. ‘cause if I had the choice between lots of money and an old beat-up car, I’d totally choose the car. Yup. Uh-huh. Rachel offers to hack into some database or other to find out where the car is.

STREET/OTB
Sark explains to Sydney that there’s no such place as San Cielo. Not anymore, at least. These day’s it’s known as La Fossa Maximum Security Prison. Rambaldi was held in an isolation cell there in the days leading up to his execution. After expositioning for a while, Sark calls the local police to tell them that there’s been an explosion at the local OTB and they should hurry right over. Oh, and Sark speaking Italian is really Hottt. With a capital letter and all three ts. Of course, Sark doing pretty much anything is really Hottt. And then Sark pulls Sydney beneath the counter and sets off a bomb before running over to the register and demanding all the money. Then they run outside and surrender to the police.
Is it just me, or would they go to some sort of holding facility before heading off to a maximum security prison? In the US, at least, you go to jail before you’re tried, and then if you’re sentenced to more than a year you go to prison, but not necessarily a maximum security prison. Oh, CLS, you may have actually taught me something.
Or maybe we’re to believe that the Prophet 5 asset inside the Italian government got them in there? Who knows. Really, who knows? I want to ask them.

LA FOSSA/APO
Sydney and Sark are led into La Fossa, past some very scary old man with a bad makeup job. Sark is put in a cell with an unattractive fat man, while Sydney is led off to an isolation cell. Meanwhile, Jack and Marshall coordinate Vaughn and Dixon running around underground. Dixon hacks into La Fossa’s security system while Vaughn sets up a computer, and they send the feed from the cameras over to APO.
In his cell, Sark goes over to the mirror and pulls his tooth out. No worries, it’s a fake tooth. One of those plastic things where you hide things like… poison. Sark’s cellmate notes that Sark is really hot, and he’ll be a big hit in prison, and there’s much talk of prison sex before Sark swallows his little plastic tooth and begins choking. The cellmate runs over to the bars and starts shouting that “the beautiful man is dying.” Damn right, Sark’s beautiful.

GARAGE OF USELESS SUBPLOTS
NotScott and Rachel sneak into the garage where they keep all the cars of murderers that they’re hiding in the Witsec program. Seriously, this plotline is not only boring, but it’s fast becoming nonsensical. At any rate, they sneak around and find the car, and NotScott tells Rachel to watch for the guard while he hotwires the car. Scott wouldn’t be such a condescending prick! Or complete incompetent at hotwiring cars. When Rachel notes that he’s connecting Part A to Part C instead of Part B, NotScott realizes that he doesn’t even know what Part A, B, or C are. Rachel tells him to watch for the guard while she does his dirty work for him.
I honestly don’t understand. Why did they make him so stupid? Weiss was kind of stupid, but Weiss was the comic relief. As far as I’m seeing, we’re actually supposed to feel bad for this guy, not laugh at him. So… why? Do they think it’s charming? Maybe if they’d cast Scott, it could have worked out. But… I don’t know. I really just don’t know.

APO/MEDICAL BAY
Jack and Marshall watch the feed from the security cameras, and Jack is concerned that Sydney’s in an isolation cell, but concludes that it must be some sort of plan.
Meanwhile, a choking and dying Sark (is it wrong to think that he’s really sexy when he’s dying?) is wheeled into the medical bay, where a bunch of guards and a solitary nurse swarm around him. Of course he’s Sark, the Master of Deceit, and thus the whole choking/dying thing was fake. He leaps up from the gurney and starts laying about with his fists. Once all the guards and the nice innocent nurse are down, he hacks into the computer and opens the doors that Sydney needs opened in order to escape from her cell and run to the Room of Rambaldi. This, however, causes useless!Vaughn to loose the feed, which makes Marshall upset and Jack angry. And you won’t like Jack when he’s angry…

ROOM OF RAMBALDI
Sydney runs into a mysterious room, on the walls of which are writings in an unfamiliar language. Then, the scary old man with the bad makeup job totters along and tells her that he knows who she is, Rambaldi told him all about her, he’s the Rose, he has a nifty Rose tattoo on his arm, and he has what she’s looking for. Sydney dumbly follows him around.

OFFICE OF RATHER SILLY PRISON OFFICIALS
Sloane enters the Warden’s Office posing as an American official who wants Sark and NotSydspinosa extradited because they’ve committed crimes on U.S. soil and he wants to beat them up himself goddamnit! The Warden, however, is not entirely amenable to this deal. Fortunately, in the age-old tradition of Plot Devices Stronger Than Common Sense, the General Prosecutor happens to a be a woman with a really high voice, so Sloane tells the Warden to call her up, allowing Evil Fred to intercept the call and pretend to be said General Prosecutor. Of course, I suppose, if the GP had been a man, they would have just done it the other way around. But still. Ah well. PDSTCS, people. PDSTCS.

PARKING GARAGE OF USELESS SUBPLOTS
Rachel is working on hotwiring the car while NotScott is sitting around being useless. She smiles and says, “This is the closest thing I’ve had to a night out since I joined APO.” Poor Rachel. That’s really sad. Especially since she’s spending said night out in the not terribly engaging company of NotScott. I really feel bad for her. In fact, I feel worse for her because she’s spending the night with him than for him because his wife got murdered. And that’s not the way it’s supposed to be, I’m guessing.
Anyway, she hotwires the car and tells him to get in and give her some gas. As soon as he presses the pedal down, the guard (obviously) hears them, and Rachel hops into the car and they skid out of there, breaking through the gate on their way out. Stupid NotScott.

ROOM OF RAMBALDI
The creepy old man with his bad makeup leads Sydney into another part of his Rambaldi Room, where she sees a rather large drawing of… Sydney of course. When she asks who did the drawing, the man’s all like, “You don’t need me to tell you. He told me you’d be coming. All I had to do was wait.” Because it was Rambaaaaaaldiiiiii! The man pulls out a box. Inside the box is a strange vial of unidentifiable liquid, which he hands to her. When Sydney asks what the vial of unidentifiable liquid is, the man tells her that, “His greatest gift, and also his greatest curse.” Like Monk’s OCD? Heh. “What you hold in your hand is simply defiance of the natural order,” the man goes on to say. “The end of nature itself.” Sydney explains that some “very bad people” want the unidentifiable liquid, and if he won’t identify it for her, she won’t be able to stop them. Because… she can’t simply beat them up and run away. Or something. But the man assures her that it doesn’t matter, because she can’t stop them anyway, her response to which is, “You don’t know me very well.” Of course he knows you! He was best friends with Rambaldi, who completely wrote your entire life story five hundred years before you were born, woman!
“You’re more charming than I could have imagined,” the man tells her. Which is kind of funny, ‘cause Sydney’s not exactly putting on Face #14: Charm Enemies Into Bowing Down Before Me And Licking My Feet. “I used to believe as you do,” he tells her. “That there were decisions to be made. But in the end it’s just… fate.” Oh, there’s that word again. Sydney doesn’t like that word. “It’s out of our hands, and now it’s just a matter of time until the stars fall from the sky. Until the end of light.” And Sydney’s face basically says, “Oh. That’s not a good thing, right?” He tells her to get out before the guards make their next round, and she runs away, vial of unidentifiable liquid securely in her pocket.

ELSEWHERE IN PRISON
The guards lead out a very beat-up Sark, who, despite the bloodiness and bruised-ness, is still really hot. Peyton, in full General Prosecutor costume (basically, a matronly hairdo that actually serves only to make her look younger and a business suit that’s a little too big) greets them and takes Sark away. When he asks where Anna is, she tells him that Anna won’t be joining them. Except she wouldn’t be anyway, because she died in the last episode. It’s really Sydney pretending to be Anna, who was pretending to be Sydney. But nobody knows it. They all think it’s just Anna pretending to be Sydney, except APO, who knows it’s really Sydney pretending to be Anna pretending to be Sydney.
On another note… Sark/Peyton. Tune in next week for totally hot spy sex. You know it’s coming.

SYD’S CELL
Sydney arrives back at her cell… because… she… can’t… go to the extraction point? What? Why? Oh, it doesn’t matter. Because Sloane’s there, and he not only wants his vial of unidentifiable liquid, but he wants to get revenge on Anna for killing Sydney. Except that it’s really Sydney, who really killed Anna, who was pretending to be Sydney.
Pass the Motrin again, please.
She insists that there was nothing Rose-like in the Room of Rambaldi, but Sloane doesn’t believe her and thusly he doth taser her until she falls down and takes the vial of unidentifiable liquid out of her pocket. Then he wraps his hands around her throat and starts to squeeze…
Fortunately for Sydney, Dixon managed to get the feed back online, so APO can see what’s going on, and Vaughn runs to stop Sloane. He’s not very good at it though, and ends up shooting a perfectly innocent prison guard instead. Oh, Vaughn. But Sloane, Syd, and Vaughn all get away. So it’s all good. Except Sydney totally lost the vial of unidentifiable liquid. Silly Sydney, tricks are for kids!

SKETCHY MEETING PLACE OF USELESS SUBPLOTS
NotScott is meeting with Korman, who, it turns out, wanted his car because he’d hidden a buttload of diamonds in the seat. That actually kind of makes sense. Except… they wouldn’t let him get stuff out of his car before shipping him off to Wisconsin? Or whatever? What? Huh? I hate this subplot. Anyway, Korman pulls a gun on NotScott, who tells him that he doesn’t care if he shoots him, he just wants to know why The Cardinal killed his wife. Except… I thought he wanted to know who The Cardinal was. What? I really hate this subplot.
So Korman tells him that he was supposed to kill him, not his wife. Which… was that supposed to be some kind of twist? That’s… so old. And so useless. And guess what, kiddies, we’re not even going to get to find out who The Cardinal is, because Korman ain’t gonna make it out of this scene alive! He hops into his car and drives off. But it turns out that NotScott may be stupid and weak, but he does think ahead. Sort of. Because he presses a button and Korman’s car is blown all to hell. Which was actually… kind of cool. In fact, really cool. If only it had been Jack doing it, it would have been amazing. If it had been Sark, it would have been sexy. As it was, it was just a nifty explosion. Burn! Literally, Korman. Burn.

BRISTOW/SANTOS PAD
It’s not the Bristow/Vaughn pad. Especially now we know that Nadia’s hanging around in a non-corporeal fashion. She could totally haunt Sydney. Anyway, Syd and Vaughn are lying in bed with baby Isabelle, and Vaughn’s sort of poking the baby. It’s actually kind of cute. Even though it is Vaughn. He says that she’s going to grow up and be just like her mommy, but Syd immediately responds with, “I hope she’s a doctor… or a teacher, or anything that does not involve wearing a wig.” Vaughn, however, thinks she would look cute in a pink wig.
People who wear pink are scary.
But Sloane’s scarier, because he calls Syd up and tells her that of course he should have known all along it was her and how he saw the first time they met that she was like him – a survivor. “And thanks to you,” he says, “I now have everything I need.” To achieve immortality!

NEXT WEEK ON ALIAS
People get shot. Things blow up. If god and the writers are good, Irina will come and kick ass before saving the day and running off into the sunset. Because she’s that cool. Oh, and bye-bye, Alias!

MY TAKE
This was pretty awesome. I really don’t know why Sloane was being all secretive about contacting Sark last week if he was just going to turn around and tell Evil Fred that Sark could get them into the prison. Oh well. If we pretend last week didn’t happen, it’s all good. But overall, it was pretty awesome. Although I do think Sloane would have known from the beginning that it really was Sydney, not Anna. Sydney could probably fool Evil Fred, and probably even Sark, but I don’t think she could have fooled Sloane.
Oh well.

THEORIES AND SPECULATION
The Death Toll:

on the good side:
Sydney, Isabelle, and Rachel need to live. Sydney is obviously the main character and needs to run off into the sunset and have a little happiness and joy in her miserable, horrible life. Her daughter obviously needs to be involved. Rachel needs to take the reins.
Jack, Marshall, Dixon, and Carrie will hopefully live. I don’t want them to die, but there’s no traditional plot device saying they must live. In fact, it would be a hell of a twist if any of them (except Dixon, being so underused) actually died. But very sad.
NotScott should definitely die. He adds nothing to anything.
Vaughn I don’t care about one way or another. If the writers just totally forgot about him for the next three episodes, I wouldn’t mind.
Nadia is dead. I wish she weren’t, but there it is. Her ghost should stick around, though. She can be like Dennis. Only… without the loofah.

the badguys:
Sark and Peyton must live. They can crawl away to lick their wounds in a yurt in Bhutan, but they need to live. Sark’s too slippery to die – it would destroy his entire character if he couldn’t worm his way out of the toughest situation. And Peyton needs to take over Anna’s job as Never-Really-Dead Arch-Nemesis. It’s just…. thematical.
Sloane should live. Forever. Literally. I think it would be more appropriate if he didn’t die in a towering inferno of Sydney’s hate, but instead was forced to get immortality and then spend it being haunted by the ghosts of Nadia and Emily. The writers may decide that he needs to pay in blood for all the people he’s killed, though. Hopefully not, but you never know.
Ehrmann and the Twelve… like I even know who these people are.

playing for the morally ambiguous team:
Irina. Absolutely. Cannot. Die. She. Is. Immortal.
Katya can live or die. I don’t really care, as long as we get some closure for her.
Renée, unfortunately, is already six feet under.

Last-Minute Family Reunions

Derevko/Bristow:
Jack and Irina need to spend some time together. Don’t really care if they get to move to an island in the middle of nowhere, as long as they get to be together for a little while. I’m thinking their ending will be bittersweet.

Bristow/Vaughn:
Syd and Vaughn. Ugh. Just get it over with.

Vaughn/Vaughn:
Despite allegations that Petyon’s “hair straight out of an Herbal Essence commercial” makes her a Derevko… I think she's a Vaughn. And she and her brother can have a reunion, try to kill each other, and then she can go off to lick her wounds in a yurt in Bhutan with Sark.

Gibson/Gibson:
Rachel should get her family back. It would be sweet.

Bristow/Tippin/Calfo:
Will and Francie should come back and live happily ever after with their bestest friend, Sydney.

Most of this is too sentimental and far-fetched to actually happen, but one can hope.