This was a tragedy. The hero always dies at the end of a tragedy. It’s a dark story about a lonely man with a broken past who sees a chance to be a hero and possibly end his life-long pain. I don’t think every version of Sheppard would be this heroic. I think Rodney’s point was that this reality is very similar to one in which a version Sheppard he met was heroic. The fun of AU is the variation and similarity. Some people obviously don’t like tragedies. The final sequence is set at sunset — not exactly by design but I think it worked out. We tried to make it progressively more magic hour as the sequence goes on. You can see the sun setting behind the mountains as the trailer explodes. Some have asked why Rodney doesn’t send help. Even if he did, it would not have been local. This is a high security situation. Sheppard gets up from his car and falls, dying, probably no more than five minutes after the explosion. We hear Harriman say the planes ETA is three minutes and they were already scrambled, meaning a chopper from area 51 with a special forces ground crew prepared to handle that type of situation would be at least ten minutes away. Sorry, but Romeo doesn’t save Juliet and live happily ever after. Of course, like I said, the show was designed so you could imagine it plays out the way you want. If you want to believe you hear the helicopter arriving over the final shot I can’t stop you.
