Season 3 of Babylon 5 feels like what everything from the first two seasons have been building up to, a massive war between Babylon 5 and the Shadows, and bringing all of the lingering tensions to a head. Needless to say, it's pretty outstanding.
Season 3 has two major storylines, one about Babylon 5 trying to battle the Shadows, and one about Earth's fascist government and the rise of the Nightwatch. The premiere brings these two storylines together by revealing Earth is working with the Shadows, but each of them have their own strengths. The Earth storyline is tense and incredibly compelling from start to finish. The Nightwatch creates this great sense of paranoia, but the show never falls into the pit of making it impossible for the heroes to achieve victory. Things get insane at the end of Messages From Earth when Clark declares martial law, resulting in a series of events that felt... uncomfortably relevant in 2021, but it shows just how realistic the politics in this show are. And I adore the way this storyline is resolved by having Babylon 5 establish itself as an independent state, though I was a bit disappointed with how the show seemed to pretty much forget about Earth halfway through the season.
However, the Shadows arc might be even better. It's really fascinating to watch Sheridan and the Rangers slowly try to come up with battle strategies as the season builds towards a massive battle in the finale. It forces the cast to try and mend the tense relations between most of the speeches, from winning over the Vorlons to convincing the Centauri and Narn to somewhat coexist. My favorite aspect of this storyline, however, is that it forces the main characters to leave Babylon 5 frequently using a Minbari ship called the White Star. It's a nice change of pace and allows for a ton of fun and adventurous episodes. But despite the large scale conflicts, Season 3 still manages to have a lot of compelling individual character arcs. Ivanova slowly starts to take a larger role, Sheridan and Delenn's romantic subplot becomes genuinely compelling, Franklin is dealing with a stim addiction, Londo's relationship with Vir is becoming strained, and Kosh starts getting called out on his secretive nature. All of these storylines are really strong and interweave throughout the season. Once again, it really does feel like everything is coming to a head in Season 3, and it helps that there are hardly any standalones this time around. Babylon 5 has pretty much become fully serialized, outside of the rare standalones like Exogenesis and Grey 17 Is Missing, which stick out even more because of it.
There are a lot of great episodes this time around, but these are the highlights:
Matters Of Honor: What an eventful premiere! This first episode sets up the new status quo for most of the season by introducing the White Star and letting the cast go on their first big adventure to destroy a Shadow ship. There are a ton of great moments here, from Marcus's debut, to Ivanova revealing she knew about the Rangers from the very beginning, to that aforementioned reveal of Earth's alliance with the Shadows.
Point Of No Return: Coming after the insane martial law cliffhanger of Messages From Earth, this episode feels like the big final battle with the Nightwatch. The first half of the episode is insanely stressful and left me genuinely worried that Babylon 5 would be taken over by the Nightwatch, but then Zack finally picks his side and helps Sheridan win an excellent victory.
Severed Dreams: Easily the show's best episode to date, Severed Dreams ends off the Earth storyline on a massive and climactic note. In particularly, once Sheridan declares Babylon 5 an independent state in an amazing scene, we get this epic and sweeping battle, easily the biggest in the show. It's tense, it's overwhelming, and once Delenn comes in with the Minbari Fleet, it becomes triumphant and satisfying.
Interludes And Examinations: This episode was a massive gut punch for me, easily the most heartrending in the whole show. I've felt sad by character deaths before but this felt different, Kosh was my favorite character in Babylon 5. I hate that he had to die, but I'll admit that his departure was phenomenally executed. But that wasn't even it for this episode, Adira dies, Londo (seemingly) goes back on his development, and Franklin leaves the job. It was a good thing that the Vorlons are fighting now and the ship has a bit more hope, but at what cost?
War Without End: The defacto sequel to Babylon Squared, War Without End brings Sinclair back one last time for a massive two-part sendoff. It was excellent to see him again and to see the show fully address and resolve the mysteries of what happened with Babylon 4. I will say that the presence of time travel made this one a bit of a convoluted mess, but I still liked this one, and the twist about Sinclair's true identity being a great surprise.
Shadow Dancing: So earlier on, I wrote that Severed Dreams had the show's largest and best battle and while that's still true, Shadow Dancing comes pretty darn close. The climactic war between the Rangers and the Shadows is pretty insane and over-the-top, feeling like something straight out of a finale, which is why the fact that this was the second-to-last episode was such a genuine surprise to me. With Franklin's subplot resolved as well, I was left wondering what else there could be, and then Sheridan's wife appeared...
Z'ha'dum: Babylon 5 continues to blow me away with its season finales. I always love it when the final conflict of a season is personal, so having the finale focus solely on Sheridan's journey to Z'ha'dum was just perfect. This finale felt big, paying off three years of buildup to this big moment of Sheridan's presumed self-sacrifice. And what a sacrifice it was, blowing up the titular planet with a goddamn nuke! The ending wasn't all neat and tidy, though, with Londo heading home, Garibaldi captured, and the ship forced to reel from Sheridan's death, but it feels like a perfect ending to Season 3's big Shadow War.
Overall, Season 3 is easily the show's best season yet. It's big and ambitious, juggling these massive large-scale storylines with compelling character driven subplots. It has its weak moments, but it mostly consists of tons of excellent and climactic episodes scattered throughout the season, all building towards a great finale.
4/5 Stars
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