S3 E22 – Resurrection

With this episode being the last of Season three, just by seeing the previous season finale’s on this blog, you can expect me to not keep it short, however I will do my best to only include the portions that personally affect Sydney or Vaughn, as well as their relationship as a whole. 

As the episode opens we see Sydney entering the Rotunda through various security checkpoints.  As she goes through these check points we see her drop things in certain places and adjust herself to go through them.  Including what looks like adding contacts and spraying something in her mouth immediately before checkpoints, one that require an eye scan, then another with a  breath scan that is actually checking DNA.  It becomes clear that with her lack of smiling and communicating with those that say greet her that something is off.  Especially once inside the Rotunda, with how many cell phones she has laid around as she goes through.  Then to only responding with a slight smile when Marshall greets her; this is not Sydney!  The Sydney impersonator makes her way into Marshall’s office and we soon find out that it is Lauren.  She is talking with Sark who is set up watching her in a parking garage.  Marshall walks in on Lauren and talks to her while she continues to download the needed Intel.  She never responds to his ramblings, but she does pull out her gun.  When Marshall is about to leave again, he finally questions what she is doing and why she is doing it, her response was to shot him.   As she left his office, leaving him for dead, Marshall managed to hit an alarm switch which alerting the building to an intruder.  Unfortunately she had a backup plan in place for this. All those cell phones as well as other random objects dropped throughout her entrance are miniature bombs.  Sark advises Lauren to keep her head down as he begins setting off the charges.

After the first explosion hits, Vaughn sees Lauren disguised as Sydney and yells out her name.  You can see that this is in extreme concern for her after seeing the charge send others flying through the room.  But her reaction took him by surprise when she didn’t stop when he yelled for her and her obvious lack of concern for what was going on around them.  So he didn’t immediately go after her.  Sark then activates the cell phone that was placed on his desk.  He is far enough away from it, that he is unscathed afterward, but barely.   He gets up and watches as she leaves the Rotunda.  Knowing that something is wrong, he runs after her with his gun drawn.   Lauren is only a few feet ahead of Vaughn as he chases her down a hallway.  You can tell that he knows there is something off with the situation, but still calls out, “Syd, wait!”   While this is going on Weiss informs Jack that he found the signal of where the intruder was broadcasting to, and gave him the address of where Sark was watching from.  Sark also let Lauren know that Vaughn was closing in on her; with that info she was able to hide, and surprise him by hitting him with a large bar. Knocking him unconscious, even after he was knocked out, she kicked him a few times as well before removing her mask and showing herself.  Back in the parking garage, the CIA team apprehends Sark.  Lauren plays the victim once outside, getting a car to stop for her, unfortunately for the Good Samaritan; she shoots him execution style and takes off in his car. Vaughn has regained consciousness and made it to street level, but not in time to see Lauren driving away.

Later on, the real Sydney is being held in a room, looking irritated and wondering what she is doing there.   She is questioned about the security breach at the Rotunda.  The man questioning her (Foster) also shows her the video of her shooting Marshall, then explosions going off.  She immediately wants to know if he is okay or if anyone was killed.  But only tells her that her having a solid alibi would be good.

Back at the Rotunda, we see people trying to recover after the bombs and attempt to clean up the Rotunda.  Vaughn walks back in and looks around in concern.  He passes by Jack and the next thing we see id them off in a corner of the Rotunda speaking in private.  Vaughn tells Jack, “I used the key you gave me. I took the suitcase.  I’m prepared to use it.”  If Vaughn had any doubts over what he was feeling towards whether or not he should kill Lauren, her latest stunt of being a double for Sydney solidified any of those doubts.  If she had learned anything about Vaughn during her marriage and with Sydney returning, she should have learned, not to mess with Sydney.  Because that is one area where Vaughn does not respond well, which is okay in my book.  If she doesn’t want to learn from her mistakes it’s good with me.  Hearing that Vaughn is ready to take action on Lauren makes Jack almost seem happy.  Jack responds to Vaughn’s statement with advice, saying, “When the agency concludes, as they will, that Lauren was responsible, the pressure to capture her will rise exponentially. The disposal project we discussed must be anonymous. Once her status changes, that will be more difficult.”  While Jack is talking, Vaughn listens intently and nods along.  

Before they can continue their conversation, Dixon approaches them, and lets them know that Sark isn’t talking, and that he isn’t asking for anything including a lawyer or even water.  Jack thinks about this, then looks at Vaughn, and tells Dixon, “May I suggest you have Vaughn talk with him?”  Vaughn isn’t sure he likes this idea, but it does grow on him. Dixon tells Jack that he isn’t sure it’s advisable with Vaughn and Sark’s personal history.  But Jack being the ultimate strategist tells Dixon, “Sark undoubtedly will be more afraid to face a man he so recently tortured. Given his pattern for caving out of fear, I believe that Vaughn’s presence will more likely yield the results we’re looking for.”  While Jack is speaking Vaughn is considering this more and more, and he and Jack share a look where it is almost like Jack is telling Vaughn now is your chance to take your revenge on him, as well as find out where Lauren is.  When Jack finishes, Vaughn is looking at Dixon for his permission.  Vaughn is now looking forward to being in the same room with Sark.  Dixon nods his approval and Vaughn starts walking off to interrogate Sark.  Dixon turns and tells him, “As the director, I can’t sanction the beating of someone in our custody.”  Even though he says this, it is clear that he is saying that as a person I wholeheartedly think that it is fine for you to take out some revenge after what Sark did to him (days or weeks) earlier.  Vaughn looks back and tells him, “Understood. I’ll apprise you of any Intel that comes from his interrogation.”  Vaughn is well aware of what Dixon meant rather than what he said, and leaves to go work Sark over.

In the interrogation room, Sark watches as Vaughn enters and tells the guards that they can leave as Vaughn rolls up his sleeves.  Vaughn is completely calm and collected.  Personally, if I was in Sark’s position, I would be scared to death to see Vaughn enter through that door.  But Sark doesn’t respond to him entering.  Vaughn casually walks over to Sark and says, “Last time we were together, our roles were reversed.”  I love the smile that Vaughn has as he says this.  I get the impression that he doesn’t necessarily want Sark to be forthcoming with information right away.  Still smiling from the situation, Vaughn says, “Funny how things happen.”  With that Sark finally speaks, and tells Vaughn, “I’m afraid the irony is lost on me.”  Sark is trying to get a rise out of Vaughn, but Vaughn isn’t going to play into Sark’s attempts.  Vaughn sighs and gets closer to Sark, then smiles as he prepares for what is coming.  Before beginning, Vaughn wants to taunt him a little as well, which I think is fantastic.  Vaughn tells Sark, “You like the electric batons and the injections. I’m not into accessories.”  Vaughn smiles as he thinks about what type of pain he is ready to inflict on Sark.  Sark then tells him, “I’m more than willing to cooperate, Mr. Vaughn. I will tell you everything you want. But I will need something in return.”  Before Sark can even finish that line of thinking, Vaughn interrupts him and tells him that there will be no deals.  To which Sark declares that they are at an impasse.  Then goes on to tell him that it won’t take Lauren long to figure out the Rambaldi stuff.  With that Vaughn nods his head, stands up strait, smirks at Sark, and says, “Well, better get started then.”  Vaughn being the professional that he is doesn’t start beating him up, he does give Sark the chance to answer his questions.  He asked him where Lauren is, when Sark doesn’t respond, that is when Vaughn begins.  Without hesitating, Vaughn walks up behind Sark and immediately slams Sark's head into the table.  It’s Vaughn’s move, I don’t know exactly how you would practice that move, but Vaughn has definitely perfected it, as we’ve seen it happen to Sark many times over the years.

After the head butt to the table, Vaughn pulls back Sark’s head and pushes his nose in to Sark’s face with his thumb and tells Sark that he thinks he broke it. Then he steps back and asks him if he’s ready to talk.  Sark is not happy, and you can see the amount of damage that Vaughn inflicted, maybe when they switched scenes for a moment he did the head bang a few more times, but he tells Vaughn yes, and Vaughn sits on top of the table ready to listen. Sark continues telling Vaughn, “When I first learned of your wife’s true allegiance, I almost felt pity for you.  How embarrassing it must have been to learn that the woman you shared your bed with was only using you as an unfortunate means to an end.”  Sark looked up and smirked at Vaughn.  Vaughn stays calm and simply tells him, “I wouldn’t do this if I were you.”  Not paying any attention to Vaughn’s warning continued with his train of thought saying, “But then she wasn’t sharing your bed lately, was she? She was in mine. Or in my car. Or an elevator. Or a garage. There was this one time…This is my favorite. We were engaged in an alley, and she called you to tell you that she loved you. That woman was deliciously filthy.”  Once Vaughn saw that Sark was only going to talk about his and Laurens extra-curricular activities, Vaughn took a key from his pocket, stood up off the table, freed one of Sark's hands from the cuff and twisted his arm and then pulled it behind his back and got Sark to shut up in a hurry about Lauren and start gasping in pain instead.  Vaughn says to him, “Feel that? Feels like a knife slicing through you, doesn’t it? Now where is she?”  When once again Sark goes silent about where Lauren is, Vaughn takes that as his invitation to inflict more pain and without any trouble pulls back on Sark's shoulder, and you can hear the pop as it becomes dislocated.

While Vaughn is helping Sark remember where Lauren is, Sydney has been held in another part of the Rotunda still being questioned by Foster.  She tells him that he needs to focus on Lauren and gives him the reasons why.  He then begins to question whether Nadia and Lauren are connected somehow, and that she is also somehow involved.  All because of what Rambaldi has decided would be their fate.  With this newest line of questioning Sydney has had enough.  She tells him that if he wants to arrest her, he better do it, if not they were done talking.  As she leaves he tells her that until DCI has his findings on the case, she is reassigned as a desk clerk. 

Back in the interrogation Vaughn has hold of Sark's now dislocated arm and is still applying pressure to it, making sure that Sark is in an incredible amount of pain.  While doing this, Vaughn tells Sark, “I’m not going to kill you. That would be too easy. But I’ll leave you so disfigured that when you walk down the street, people will pity you. Lauren is going to pay for the damage she’s done to the people I care about, not for having an affair with you.  I don’t give a rats ass who she’s sleeping with. So for the last time, where is she?”   Sark doesn’t answer and we don’t see what happens next.  That is the last we see of Sark and Vaughn together.  But it is for that last bit that Vaughn told Sark that I included this in the breakdown.  Well not the only reason.  I actually really like the scenes where Vaughn has the upper hand on Sark and is able to torture and inflict pain on him so easily.  They make for great adversaries throughout the series.  Although I believe that I have already gone into that.  But Vaughn has made it very clear now, that he really doesn’t care about Lauren or what she does.  However he is really pissed about what she did to Sydney.  He said people that I care about, but there is one person who matters to him and he is ready to make sure that they get their just reward for what they did to her.

When Sydney gets back to the Rotunda after her own interrogation, she looks around at the destruction that Lauren caused and she is sickened by it.  She sees Weiss and asks him how Marshall is doing.  Weiss tells her that Marshall is still in surgery, then goes on to tell her about all of the other injuries and how many people were affected.  With all of this, even if she was still upset with Vaughn, her next question is about where Vaughn is.  I think it is pretty clear that she also wants to know how he is.  Weiss tells her, “I haven’t seen him since he finished interrogating Sark, but, uh, word it he worked him over pretty good. Didn’t get any information out of him, but had to feel pretty good trying. I’m sure he’ll be back soon. Probably needed to walk it off.”   As Weiss is telling her this, you can see the look of concern cross her face.  I think she knows that Vaughn got something, they have dealt with Sark for long enough to know that he has flexible loyalties when it comes to self-preservation and that Vaughn most likely did get something.

So it comes to no surprise that the next thing we see is Sydney talking to Vaughn on the phone, obviously concerned for him.  She is off in a corner where she can’t be overheard and she tells Vaughn, “Eric said you took off. Need some company?”  We then see that Vaughn is outside in a dark location in the rain, and he is watching something in the distance. When he answers her you can see that he is preoccupied with whatever he is watching, and tells her, “No, I’m good.”   She then asks him where he is and you can see that he doesn’t want her involved with what he is doing, he feels like he needs to protect her from Lauren and that he needs to take care of this on his own.  And simply responds to her by saying, “Doesn’t matter.”  Back in the Rotunda, Sydney smiles for a moment then has a realization of what he might be doing.  She asks, “What does that mean?”  And when she doesn’t get a response from him she goes on.  She asks, “Vaughn, what’s going on?”  We see Vaughn again and it appears that he is fighting himself with what he needs to do, but while he does this he doesn’t answer Sydney.  We then see Sydney sigh and get a look of fear cross over her face.  She takes a deep breath and realizes what is going on and says, “Sark talked, didn’t he? And you know where Lauren is.”  Vaughn is still watching something across from him and you can see that he doesn’t want to say much to Sydney about it.  Still protecting her from anything that he can, he simply says, “I’m taking care of it.”  After hearing this, Sydney is visibly shaken and very concerned for Vaughn.  Honestly it looks like she could cry thinking about what she knows he’s planning. She tells him, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you cannot do this Michael. If you kill her, you will be arrested and charged with her murder. And if you’re not, if you get away with it, it’ll haunt you, Michael. God after everything we’ve been through, I’ll lose you all over again.”   While Sydney is pleading with Vaughn you can see that he is thinking it over and considering what to do.  He can also tell how serious this is for her, with how rarely she refers to him as Michael; he knows that she means it.  Also just by the sound of her voice she is terrified, she may have been mad at him in the last episode, but she is trying to get over it, and thinking of losing him whether to jail, or just his own demons.  She knows him well enough to know that killing her isn’t something that he can easily live with.  However, Vaughn has seen Lauren ruin too many lives, including his and Sydney’s to let her get away with it.  So he isn’t going to back down easily.  While Sydney was pleading with him, he saw Lauren’s car approach, and once Sydney is done speaking, he tells Sydney that he has to go and he hangs up the phone. 

Their phone conversation leaves both of them wondering what the next course of action really should be.  Sydney wants to know how she can save her soul mate from changing who he is.  Vaughn knows that he has to do something to stop Lauren from continuing to destroy the lives of the people that he cares most about, while taking Sydney’s words into consideration.  Because right now Vaughn knows two things for sure; one, he wants to spend the rest of his life making the last year up to Sydney and two, Lauren needs to pay for what she has done.  Now he just needs to figure out how to make the two balance out with each other.

After getting off the phone with Sydney Vaughn watches as Lauren pulls into a parking spot and hurries into a nearby building.  By the look on his face, he is still ready to kill Lauren, but we know better.  Even though he is cautioned by Sydney’s pleading he still plans on exacting some revenge on her and making the rest of her living life very difficult.  I do still find it amazing that with all the rage that Vaughn has in him at this moment, he is still able to stay calm and wait for her to get her Intel, even taking pictures of it.  Making sure that while he is on an unsanctioned mission of his own making, he is still going to pass along any usable Intel.   Vaughn finds out that the Rambaldi equation is simply a location, which turns out to be in Palermo.   After Lauren gets her answer, Vaughn watches her shot her source and walk away with the money she was paying him with.   Now that Vaughn has her in his sights, she is not going to get away.  He lies in wait in a hallway, just as she did earlier, and when she approaches he knock her unconscious with a crow bar.  Once he does this he says very bitterly, yet its humorous to me, “Hi, Honey.”  After greeting her, he does get in a few more blows with the crow bar before taking her away. 

Knowing that Vaughn isn’t in a place where he is ready to give up on going after Lauren, Sydney goes to find out where Vaughn is headed.  She requests the tapes from Sark’s interrogation only to find that it has been classified by Jack.  Sydney finds Jack and tells him that she wants to see the tape.  Jack tells her, “No, you don’t, not if you want what’s best for Vaughn.”  Sydney anxiously responds, “You know what he’s going to do if we don’t stop him.”  Jack simply looks at her and tells her, “Yes. He’ll get closure.”  Sydney then realizes that Jack has been pushing Vaughn towards killing Lauren and Sydney is not happy.  She stares him down as she tells him, “You want him to kill Lauren.”  And she is not happy about it.  Jack remains his same cool and collected person he always is and explains his reasoning to Sydney, saying, “If he doesn’t, it will eat at him like a cancer. The only cure is to end it now. She destroyed Vaughn’s life.”  Sydney is getting more upset with each word and then finally tells him, “Vaughn’s life, not yours. This is about what Lauren did to Vaughn, not what mom did to you. I don’t know what you’ve told him or how much of this you’ve orchestrated, but in some twisted way, You’ve got Vaughn carrying your burden, trying to get you closure by doing the one thing you never had the chance to do… Kill the person who betrayed you.”  When Sydney finished speaking Jack looked at her and told her, “I did have the chance. And I didn’t take it. And not a day went by that I didn’t regret letting her go. Vaughn will feel the same way. He will end up like me, and I love you too much to let that happen.”  Once Jack is done with what he has to say to Sydney, he walks away leaving her to wonder what she should do and if her father is right about Vaughn and Lauren.  While Sydney and Jack are speaking we see Vaughn pull into a warehouse and open up the truck containing Lauren.  He picks her up and carries her over his shoulder to his work area.  .  Also it is interesting to note that even if Sydney and Vaughn aren’t really together anymore or yet, or however you want to look at it, with as much as Jack doesn’t necessarily approve of Vaughn and Sydney being together, he knows that they will and he is already making sure that Vaughn will be okay mentally once they are together.  I kind of wish that Vaughn was able to hear some of these things that Jack has said to Sydney about Vaughn, just so he knows that Jack does actually accept him as a good fit for Sydney.  

In the warehouse that we saw Vaughn pulling into, Lauren is now hanging from a pulley system by her hands, and is beginning to wake up. Lauren seeing the position she is in, and seeing that Vaughn is in a position to torture her, she makes an attempt to play the victim hoping that she can appeal to the gentleman that she has manipulated so many times within Vaughn.  She tells him, “Michael. Please, I need you to understand. When the Covenant asked me to marry you, I knew eventually they wanted me to coax you back into the CIA. But two years went by, and I hadn’t heard from them. By then, I convinced myself I never would. I prayed I wouldn’t, because I’d fallen in love with you.” While Lauren was pleading for her life Vaughn was quietly working away, basically ignoring her, but Lauren telling him that she had fallen in love with him through him over the edge, and he yelled at her to shut up.  The last thing Vaughn wants is a reminder of how much she has ruined him over the last year with her fake love; taking him away from Sydney when she needed him the most.  He is angry; with all that he has gone through we have never seen him this angry.  He usually has the ability to stay calm and collected even when facing his worst nightmare.  But now I think that if he wanted to be calm, he could, but he wants to scare Lauren and he is doing a good job.  After yelling at her to shut up, he walks over to her, gets right into her face and tells her, “I am going to erase you. I’m going to remove any evidence you ever existed. You used me. You used my grief. My work, who I am… You took that from me. I’m taking it back.” I love the way that Vaughn is able to be so scary, yet besides when yelling at her to shut up, he didn’t yell again when telling her what he was going to do, and why.  Calm and collected is much scarier than yelling. After telling her this, he goes back to the table and picks something up, he then goes on, “This is hydrochloric acid. You’ll be unrecognizable.” He makes it clear that he has no intention of killing her, only inflicting a large amount of pain on her.  He knows that much he can live with as well as get a way with, and still be able to be with Sydney.

For some reason I thought that I had included this portion when I was posting about  Vaughn creating a new person for after he lost Sydney.  If you need a refresher, here is the link. http://romancingalias.blogspot.com/2013/09/vaughns-personal-battle-lauren-vs-sydney.html  But Vaughn telling Lauren that she took advantage of who he was, his grief over losing Sydney, everything about him was used as a ploy to gain advantages for the Covenant.  So Lauren telling him that she loves him, only reminds him of what she took away from him.  She turned him into a person he didn’t like, someone that he had no desire to be.  Also knowing that Lauren is Covenant and that the Covenant was responsible for taking Sydney and faking her death, I think it’s reasonable to assume that Vaughn blames Lauren for making him lose the one person he has really cared for in his life.

With all of the stuff that Lauren did manage to get away with over the course of this season you would expect her to be a little smarter than she is in this scene, because after he tells her that, she makes an attempt to change his mind but does it with the wrong topic, she says to him, “Michael, I swear I was going to tell you everything. You remember that night we went downtown and had dinner? Instead you told me Sydney was back.”  Once Sydney’s name was mentioned Vaughn just about loses it.  He yells at her, “Don’t say her name!”  But apparently Lauren is really stupid and enjoys antagonizing a man that is about to kill her, by telling him, “She came back and you didn’t need me anymore! I could see it in your eyes. Sydney came back, and you…”  Once Lauren said Sydney’s name again, Vaughn Immediately turned around and yelled right in her face, “I said don’t say her name!”  After yelling this at Lauren Vaughn points his gun right at her face, but Lauren kept going saying, “Sydney came back and I lost you!”  Considering all the shit she put him through since Sydney returned, including trying on multiple occasion to kill him, she has no right to say anything about losing him to Sydney, especially when he wanted to be back with Sydney, but stayed with Lauren anyway.  Just looking into the situation form the outside, I’m mad at her for making a statement like that.  I can only imagine the rage that Vaughn must feel with her saying that.  So seeing him start firing gunshots right above her head is not surprising.  Plus it got her to finally realize that her playing the naïve little girl that loves him more than anything isn’t working and she starts whimpering in fear.  When Vaughn fired off his entire clip above her head, I think he knew that if he didn’t empty the clip after seeing how mad he was getting with her comments, he wouldn’t be able to exact his revenge in the way that he wanted to, that he would end up killing her.  So after emptying his clip, he yanks her head back by her hair so she is looking right at him, he tells her, “I hate you. But I love Sydney more. That’s the only reason you’re not dying tonight.”   I love how he makes it abundantly clear that yes, he does love Sydney more than he ever loved or even hated Lauren, and that if it weren’t for Sydney he would kill her, but he is keeping her alive because he wants to be there for Sydney.  Unfortunately right after he says this, a knife is thrown into his back and he staggers back a little, blood starts dripping from his mouth and he collapses.  We don’t see who threw the knife, but Lauren does know them and she looks at them and says, “Thank God.”  Whoever threw the knife takes keys from Vaughn’s pocket and then Lauren spits on Vaughn

The next thing we know is that Sydney waiting in a hospital and immediately after we see Vaughn being wheeled in on a gurney.  Sydney immediately jumps out of her chair and runs to Vaughn’s side, you can see that she is scared to death of losing him, she yells, “Oh, My God, Vaughn!”  While the paramedics are telling the doctors what happened as well as Vaughn’s vitals, Sydney listens to them as well as running besides them, but is continuously yelling his name and hoping for a response from him. Before they push him through the doors leading to surgery, Sydney leans in close to him and says, “You are going to be okay! Vaughn?” She is left at the door to surgery visibly shaken not knowing what to do next.  This last moment reminds me of the moment in Counteragent after she takes Vaughn’s blood and then he crashes.  She has to watch him being wheeled away there as well, not knowing what to do.  Luckily this time she doesn’t have to immediately compose herself to talk to the girlfriend.

The next thing we see is Jack coming around the nurse’s station and taking a seat next to a very somber Sydney.  He tells her, “I heard. Is he still in surgery?”  Sydney doesn’t answer him, but simply tells him, “You were right. Lauren has to pay.”   I love how Sydney and Vaughn are constantly trying to protect each other.  The one thing that will motivate them more than anything else is someone hurting the other.  Vaughn wanted revenge on Lauren manly because of what she had done to Sydney.  Originally when Sydney found out that Vaughn was going to kill Lauren, she was upset about it, but after seeing what happened to Vaughn she is just as mad.  Now it’s Sydney’s turn to exact her revenge on Lauren fort all the pain that she caused Vaughn over the last year.  But Jack doesn’t see it like Sydney does, he tells Sydney, “Vaughn is going to be okay, and when he is, he has to end it, not you.”  Sydney looks up at Jack and tells him, “If it’s okay for Vaughn, it’s okay for me.”  She stares jack down for a small moment letting him know how serious she is before going on to tell him, “I need your help. Expedited credentials, transportation.”  Unfortunately Jack is not on board with Sydney going and tells her, “My advice was specific to her betrayal of him.”  Sydney isn’t going to stand down though, she tells him, “Lauren betrayed all of us.”  To which Jack quickly responds, “Not in the same way. She was his wife.”  After that statement, Sydney looks as though she could lose it and shows some emotion to Jack, and tells him, “I don’t care about any of that now. I want her to die. And that’s going to happen whether you help me or not.”  I think it is here when Jack realizes that while he relates to the pain that Vaughn is going though more on a personal level, he is finally seeing what this whole ordeal has done to Sydney.  You can see the pain in his eyes that he gets when he sees Sydney in pain and he finally agrees that she has a right to this as well and nods his head in approval.

Since Vaughn didn’t get the pictures that he took of Lauren and her contact back to the CIA, Sydney had to find a way to find out where she was headed, so she took a play from Lauren book, but with better equipment.  She dressed as Lauren with a voice modulator in place, and was placed in the cell next to Sark.  She got the information needed from Sark before revealing to him who she really was.  What happened next is a great interaction between Sydney and Sark.  Sark sees what he has done and trying to recover says to Sydney, “This little trick of yours means Vaughn failed. Tell me, is he dead?”  Knowing that Sark and Lauren had a relationship, Sydney milks her response for all it’s worth and tells Sark, “No, he’s not. But thanks to you, Lauren won’t be so lucky.”  Also it must have felt good for Sydney to see how much damage Vaughn was able to do to Sark.

After her encounter with Sark, Sydney goes home and finds the Palermo location, Jack meets up with her and he gives her the documentation that she asked for, as well as offering to go instead.  Sydney simply told him that he can’t; making it clear that she had to do this for Vaughn.  Jack looked a little distracted, so Sydney asked him what he was thinking, Jack brushed it off and told her that they would talk when she returned.  My guess is that he was going to tell her the truth about killing Irina, but he didn’t want to have Sydney worrying about that on top of everything else.  Although it probably would’ve been better if Jack had told her rather than having to find out for herself.

Sydney makes her way to Palermo and set herself up in a spot where she can watch what is going on below and watch for Lauren, but also be able to stay for a while until the right moment.  Meanwhile back in LA Vaughn is just waking up from surgery.  He wakes up and looks around; you can tell that he is a little confused and also not happy to be back in a hospital.  Weiss is there ready to answer any questions and be there for Vaughn.  Once Vaughn is a little oriented to his surroundings, his first thought is to ask where Sydney is, when he doesn’t see her, he starts to get up, and he is really upset that Sydney is not there.  He knows that if he’s in the hospital, Sydney is probably out to get whoever put him there.  Weiss has to hold him back and tell him to take it easy, and to sit back and relax.  But Vaughn isn’t going to relax, pleading with Weiss he says, “Tell me where she is.”  Weiss looks down, not wanting to upset his friend more, but knows he has to and finally says, “She went after Lauren.”  Hearing what he feared to be true, Vaughn starts to get up again and says, “Oh no. I have to get to her.”   But Weiss gently pushes him back down on to the bed and tells him, “No, no, no, no. Mike, you got a punctured lung. You even breathe wrong, that thing could collapse again.”  Hearing what may happen to him doesn’t seem to faze Vaughn; his only concern is for Sydney. He has urgency in his voice when he tells Weiss, “I have to warn her.”   Luck is not on Vaughn’s side though, Weiss tells him, “No chance. There’s a guard outside the door. Foster’s got the building locked down. He revoked your clearance pending an investigation of your rogue op. You’re not going anywhere.”  Vaughn is just getting more agitated with this, and tells Weiss, “I have to get to Syd. She’s walking into a trap.”  This confuses Weiss and prompts him to say, “What? What are you talking about?”  Vaughn shakes his head and then tells Weiss, “Lauren didn’t stab me. Katya Derevko did.”   So Katya defiantly has her own agenda and has had it since we first saw her back in Crossings.

I have to assume it is a few minutes later when we see Vaughn flat line and Weiss rush out the door for help.  Because Vaughn is ready to grab the defibrillator and shock the men coming to rescue him form the flat line.  Vaughn takes off his oxygen and gets out of bed and tells Weiss, “Let’s go.”  So they had planned this together, although I wonder if Weiss was included in all of Vaughn’s plans.  Vaughn gets dressed and comes out of the hospital room with a gun pointed at Weiss.  The other guards that are placed within the hospital are yelling for Vaughn to freeze.   But Vaughn just yells back at them that they need to freeze. Playing along with the role he has been given, Weiss tells Vaughn, to think about what he’s doing.   Vaughn just continues walking with Weiss still holding the gun to his head, and yelling for the guards to put their guns in the trash. Weiss tells the guards to follow Vaughn’s commands.   Vaughn tells the guards to get in the elevator, then he pushes Weiss in to, and by the look on Weiss’s face, he was not expecting that part.  Vaughn takes the radio and shoves Weiss in.  Vaughn then shoots out the elevators controls and lets the door shut, and runs off to the stairwell.  I think Vaughn knew that Weiss may end up trying to stop him at some point, or he wanted to make sure that Weiss was safe from any inquiry, either way he wasn’t going to let anything get in his way of getting to Sydney.  As agents are dispatched to go assist the men in the elevator, Vaughn takes the fire hose and slides down it to get to the bottom floor rather than taking the stairs.  When he gets to the door and looks outside to find more agents standing by, he gets on the radio and says, “Vaughn’s going out the front. All units to the main entrance now!”  That’s one way to get away from security.  He watches as the men disappear and then he runs off himself.

In Palermo, Sydney is still sitting and waiting for her chance, the sun has gone down.  We then see her from behind as a gun gets pointed at her head.  She instinctively uses her training to takes the gun from the assailant.  She is surprised to find that it is Katya, and they speak for a moment.  Katya pretends to have Sydney’s best interests at heart when talking with her.  But when Sydney hands back the gun and turns around, Katya fires a shot at Sydney’s head, but Katya is surprised to find that she has an empty clip.  She asks Sydney how she knew; only to have Sydney tell her that she didn’t know, but know she does.  Sydney then shoots Katya with a tranq gun and Katya falls to the ground.  Sydney then starts making her way down through the Covenant camp taking out guards one by one with her tranq gun.  Sydney watches as Lauren arrives and prepares her real gun to take down Lauren with.  Sydney fires her gun, but the man Lauren was speaking with got in the way and he was shot instead.  Know that Lauren knows that someone is there she pulls out her own weapon and starts shooting.  Sydney ducks down behind a rock and hides.

A little while later, Sydney is up and is back to sneaking around the Covenant’s camp, hoping to find Lauren. Unfortunately Lauren finds Sydney first.  Once Lauren has a hold of Sydney the fighting begins.  Each of them takes turns having the upper hand on the other.  Now honestly I’m not interested in the specifics of another cat fight to end the season.  Lauren does say a few things to about Sydney’s disappearance and Irina, but Sydney has no interest in what she has to say.  Once thing that Lauren says doesn’t peak Sydney’s interest during the fight, but Sydney does remember it, Lauren told her, “There’s a bank in Wittenberg. A numbered vault. Proof…”  But before she can go on, Sydney gets in a good hit.  They continue fighting and Lauren knocks Sydney down pretty good and goes to grab her gun and points it right at Sydney.  But before she does anything, she hears a voice; Vaughn is there and is yelling at her to stop.  Upon hearing his voice, Lauren picks Sydney up and holds her to gun point.  She turns and we see Vaughn standing a little ways away pointing his gun at Lauren.  He yells at Lauren, “Let her go!”  But Lauren isn’t going to go down easily, she yells back for him to put the gun down.  But that just upsets Vaughn and he yells, “Do it now!”  Lauren yells back for him to put down the gun.  But he keeps his aim ready and simply nods his head.  Grasping at straws Lauren says, “If you love her, you’ll put the gun down.”  Showing Vaughn that she was the one that he almost shot during Blowback; Vaughn wanting to make sure that Lauren is crystal clear on who he loves and it being Sydney, does lower his gun.  But you can tell that he doesn’t plan on keeping it down, when it is down, Lauren makes the comment, “You really are a boy scout.” Once she said that, his gun was immediately up and she had a bullet in her shoulder, which was quickly followed with another shot into her chest.  Once Sydney was released she ran right for Vaughn and they quickly embraced.

Seeing Sydney and Vaughn finally be able to embrace the way that they have wanted to for the last year, makes me smile from ear to ear.  Seeing them caress each other’s faces and hold on to each other almost makes what they’ve gone through worth it, but not really.  Sydney breaks away from Vaughn by a few inches; just enough to be able to stroke the back of his head and see his face at the same time.  She looks up at him clearly concerned after last seeing him being taken into surgery and asks, “What are you doing? How did you get here?”  And without missing a beat, he looks at her as if he never wants to let her go and tells her, “I came for you.”   And with that they go in to kiss each other for the first time without having the fear of a firing squad or it being in a dream.  You can almost see them going back in time to the car the night Sydney was abducted.

Before they can live their happily ever after, at least for now, Lauren does manage to get back up.  She refuses to go down without a good fight.  But as she is getting up, Vaughn sees her behind Sydney, seeing Lauren trying to ruin this moment that he has with Sydney upsets him again and he fires his weapon three more times and we see the blood cascading down her body.  As she is falling down she manages to get out the numbers, 1…0…6…2.  After she gets out the numbers, she is right above the hole that the Covenant had been digging, and Vaughn has had enough.  He fires his gun one last time hitting her again in the chest, but forcing her to fall over in to the hole. Sydney and Vaughn both watch her fall down relieved that she is gone.  After she falls and they know that Lauren is gone, Vaughn asks Sydney, “What was that?”  Not caring about anything that Lauren had information about, Sydney ignores it and tells Vaughn, “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”   They then go back into that kiss, transporting them for a few minutes to a place where there is no Lauren and the last year never existed.  They will worry about those problems later.  But right now they finally have each other the way they are meant to be.

As far as the relationship goes, season three ends here.  After all that they have been through during the season, they will have some things to work through.  They are happy now and that's good enough for me.  We'll see how they work through their issues when we begin season four.  But for now, I'm going to focus on the fact that here and now they are happy that Lauren is now out of the picture and they can begin to develop their relationship again, and hopefully make it back to where they were.

• Items that I find Noteworthy…
• Sloane broke into the CIA safe house to talk to Nadia.  It turns out that while Nadia was under the influence of the Rambaldi fluid, she became lucid towards the end and changed parts of the formula.  The location from the Rambaldi location that the CIA have as well as the Covenant is not in Palermo as they suspect.  While hesitant at first to escape from the CIA with Sloane, Nadia does eventually escape and join him.
• At the digging sight Sydney was determined not to listen to anything that Lauren had to say, but curiosity got the best of her and she went to Wittenberg.  While there, she broke into Vault 1062 and found a classified folder that had her as the subject.  We never see more than her name and birthdate, but we do see that the information inside clearly upsets Sydney.  Moments after she arrived and has read through the documents, Jack arrives and tells her, “Sydney, you were never supposed to have found this.” And the episode ends.  We don’t find out exactly what happens until the 2^nd episode is season four.  But it allows for Jack not to be Sydney’s rock any longer and allow room for Vaughn to come back in and take his place in her life where he belongs.  Since the beginning Vaughn has been the one that Sydney has turned to when she couldn't handle all the ups and downs of her life.  Besides their romantic relationship, I'm guessing that they both missed that aspect of their friendship the most, being able to be there for one another.   It will be nice to see that back as well.