I stopped watching Under the Dome when the Time Warner’s CBS blackout started at the beginning of August, so boy was I surprised to tune into the finale and find that all our old friends are STILL trapped under that dome! (Except for the ones who are dead, which is a startling number of them. They are up in the sky dome, asking their own Monarch how to “protect the egg.”) Junior is still a policeman somehow, but is now hesitantly a member of Team Kids. There is a little dome and it has an egg and a butterfly in it. Big Jim has murdered pretty much everybody, but is attempting to pin it all on Barbie. “My name is James ‘Big Jim’ Rennie. I live at 6969 Dome Street, Chester’s Mill, Maine. This is my confession. If you’re watching this tape, it is because Barbie is the one who killed everybody. Don’t listen to the dome when it tells you to murder me. Thank you, goodbye,” basically. (The reference and the time it took to get there 100% paid off.) The lithe, beautiful girl is still beautiful and lithe. So, now that we’re caught up, let’s talk about last night’s finale!

The finale opens with Team Kids + Mom and Policewoman watching the egg and butterfly mini-dome. Policewoman is a jerk now? At the very least, she is sill bad and has maybe gotten worse at being a policewoman. The kids tell her about the mini-dome, which she had never seen before, and she insists that they don’t know what they’re talking about and that the dome is police property and that she has just GOTTA TOUCH THAT DOOOOOME. Then, the butterfly begins to hit the mini-dome and create black splotches all around it. Every is looking at it, wide-eyed, as it creates the black splotches. Joe says, “When the butterfly hits the dome it makes some kinda spot.” UH, YEAH WE KNOW, JOE! Everyone has eyeballs and brains and their brains can comprehend the information they get from their eyeballs, you dumb-dumb. As the black splotches cover the mini-dome, black splotches begin to cover the dome-dome. Uh-oh.

Once the dome is completely covered in black, Joe says, “It’s the middle of the day and it looks like midnight out there.” JOE! WE FUCKING KNOW! So the kids are like, “Uh, maybe we should touch it?” And Policewoman says (really), “No, this is police property now and if anyone’s going to touch it it’s going to be me,” hahahaaaa, so she touches it and gets blasted across the room. “Rule number one of being the police is touching, and I’m not going to have any little dome keep me from doing my job.” While she’s on the ground, Team Kids sneaks the dome out of the house.

E.T. PHONE DOME! Elsewhere, the Journalist has been shot. I thought the she was dead because in the “previously on” she was shot right in her chest, but she is not dead. She just has a band-aid on. She visits Barbie in jail and he’s like, “Wait, weren’t you shot?” And she’s like, “I guess the dome wants me to be okay.” Uh. Sure. She and pretty girl (previously absent member of Team Kids) break Barbie out of jail and meet up with the rest of Team Kids at “the place where [she and her brother] went after [they] broke mom’s old mirror.” Ugh. Joe. “Mom’s old mirror.” NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT, JOE. Once they arrive, all the youths put their hands on the dome and the dome collapses. But uh-oh, the butterfly is dead! OR IS IT?! It isn’t. Angry Girl touches the butterfly and it flies around the room as the music swells and everyone watches it as if they’ve never seen a damn butterfly before in their lives. It flies around Barbie and Joe is like, “You’re the Monarch.” What? Then there’s an domequake and Journalist picks up the black egg and the domequake stops, so Barbie’s like, “She’s your Monarch.” WHAT?

Then Big Jim is at church and tells people to have faith in God, because there is a religious element now that I’m not sure was there before. Then, later, in his office, he tells the DJ that they have to hang Barbie. WHAT?! Don’t you guys have any more guns? Have you run out of bullets? If you’ve run out of bullets, you seriously need to take a hard look at the life you and your townspeople are leading underneath that dome, dude. The DJ is like, “What? Why?” And Big Jim says, “We have to show everyone how serious we are about law and order.” And I’m like, “WE CAN TALK ABOUT NETFLIX LATER, BIG JIM, BUT UR GONNA NEED 2 EXPLAIN 2 ME WHY U WANT 2 HANG BARBIE!” #mylaugh They agree to hang Barbie “for Dodee,” whom Big Jim killed but whom DJ thinks Barbie killed. “Dodee would want us to build gallows and hang Barbie in front of the town, as any radio-head would.”

Then the Policewoman comes in to talk to Big Jim and says the thing about “pink stars are falling in lines,” which Big Jim had somehow never heard up until this point, except for WHEN HIS WIFE ALWAYS USED TO SAY IT BEFORE SHE DIED! He brings Policewoman to his deceased wife’s art space where she had a million paintings of black eggs and pink stars falling in lines, as a bunch of Under the Dome set design interns excitedly text their parents. Policewoman tells Big Jim that he and his family are “special,” so now he thinks they are special. But Journalist also thinks she is special! UH-OH!

Speaking of Journalist, she, Team Kids, and Barbie are in the woods because– Oh, I forgot, because earlier Junior wanted to take the egg to his dad. But everyone else is like, “Your dad is a straight-up murderer.” So Journalist threw the egg to Team Kids and Barbie stayed back to fight Junior. So now they’re in the woods to talk about the egg. Pretty girl is like, “Let’s just destroy it,” and the rest of them are like, “Ahhh I don’t knowww,” so then Angry Girl takes it and asks it sweetly what they should do. Just a bunch of people in the woods talking to an egg.

The egg responds by taking on the form of Angry Girl’s now deceased (aw, R.I.P.) mom. A very cruel trick for the egg to play on Angry Girl! The egg, in human form, tells the group that they were put under the dome “for [their] protection.” Uh, everyone under the dome is either mentally unstable or has diabetes. Could you maybe have put them under a dome for their protection with more medication? She tells them that if they “want the darkness to abate” they must “earn the light by protecting the egg.” YOU PUT THEM UNDER A DOME AND KILLED PEOPLE THEY LOVE, NOW YOU’RE GIVING THEM RIDDLES?! (Pretty girl does not say, “egg on my face!” though she should.) So Angry Girl’s alien non-mom disappears and they all stand around in a circle figuring out how to hide the egg. Not one of them suggests hiding it up their butt, which is ridiculous. The journalist takes it and declares that because she is the Monarch, she will decide where to hide it. I think, “Uh, someone’s a little proud, but FINALLY SOMEONE IS GOING TO SAY UP MY BUTT,” but she doesn’t. Instead, she, with tears in her eyes (?!), goes and throws the egg in the river. Hahah. Okay.

Back at Big Jim’s office, Junior asks Big Jim to tell him the truth: is he a murderer? I don’t want to give any spoilers for any other popular and perfect television shows, but — Ehh? DO YOU SEE WHAT I’M SAYING? I bet Big Jim saw what I’m saying. BJ tells Junior that, yes, he is a murder, but it’s because he needs to be, and also the dome has chosen them as the special ones. Then Joe comes in and says, “There seems to be a lot of commentary on humanity’s counterintuitive interpretation of religi–” SHUT UP, JOE! (JK, who even knows where Joe is.)

At the same time the Journalist throws the egg into the river, Barbie’s head is in the noose, and pink stars begin to rise toward the sky. While the crowd that has gathered to watch the hanging (?!?!?!?) (SERIOUSLY, WHAT?!) is distracted by the rising pink stars, Big Jim tells Junior to throw the switch, or whatever. Junior hesitates. THE END UNTIL NEXT SEASON.

PS: Remember how this was supposed to be a mini-series and how last night should’ve been the end?