Of course, you can’t exactly have a nice, character-driven story as the series finale. You gotta have action! Suspense! Suicide missions! Great timing! Lots of luck! Possible deaths of main characters! And a happy ending. The one-hour finale definitely has all of that. They pulled out all the stops. But they might have pulled out too many: The episode was rushed and overflowing with plot points and cameos in an effort to wrap everything up in a tidy bow.

The plot goes a little something like this: Some alien Wraiths get their hands on technology that will make their hive ship indestructible, plus they also receive a transmission about Earth’s top-secret coordinates (which we saw go out in last week’s episode). The Atlantis team, other battleships and Stargate Command must pull together quickly to stop these Wraiths from making Earth their new feeding ground. (Did you get all that? Good.)

As much as you want the series to end on a happy note, you also kind of want some unexpected twists. Usually, when danger strikes, you know that John Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) and his team will get out of it. But this is the last episode, so nobody’s safe, right? When their puddle jumper was shot at early on, I thought, hey, they really could die this time! I'm not spilling on who's dying or not dying so you'll have to tune in to see what happens.

The final scene is kind of hokey, but I guess it’s supposed to offer hope to the viewers that our old pals will be just fine in the long run. Atlantis always had a good heart and a healthy sense of humor about itself, and I think the characters certainly could have lived on for a few more seasons, but it seems like the writers ran out of steam. Let’s hope they’ll rejuvenate themselves soon: Some of them will be penning the newest series in the Stargate franchise — Stargate Universe — which is slated to debut this summer.