Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari” Mollari collapses from a heart attack and battles with his guilt in a dream state, while Lennier announces a career change… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on March 10, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 1 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by David J. EagleSeason 5, Episode 2Production episode 503Original air date: January 28, 1998 It was the dawn of the third age… Delenn gets a call from Ruell on Minbar, wanting to start the process of finding a replacement for Lennier, which is the first Delenn is hearing that Lennier won’t be her aide anymore. She confronts Lennier on the subject during their morning meeting, at which point Lennier abashedly says he was going to tell her after dinner that night and didn’t realize Minbar would be so efficient in working to replace him. He feels that Delenn no longer needs him, as she has Sheridan now, and so he feels redundant. Plus, he feels the loss of Cole deeply, and so wishes to, in essence, replace him in the Rangers. Mollari is arguing with Allan over the disposition of a case of brivari he’s had delivered. Vir takes Allan aside to try to reason with him. Mollari takes advantage of Allan not looking at him to sneak a drink from one of the bottles. A few seconds later, he collapses. Allan calls in the medical emergency, and Mollari is brought to medlab, with the bottle sent for chemical analysis. However, he was not poisoned: he had a heart attack in his left heart. Centauri have two hearts; the left one cleans the blood of toxins, and is also smaller and harder to operate on. Franklin reports to Sheridan that it’ll be very difficult for Mollari to recover from this. Sheridan and Delenn watch over the comatose Mollari, with Sheridan joking that it’s the quietest he’s ever seen the ambassador. Delenn says she’s worried about him. They briefly discuss Lennier, with Delenn saying he must find his own path. The comatose Mollari has a very vivid hallucinatory dream. It starts with him being given a tarot reading by a hooded Delenn. Mollari declares to her that no one will care if he lives or dies, and he thinks that dying now would be better than the death he saw for himself in his prophetic dreams, with him and G’Kar strangling each other. Delenn informs him that a single word can save him, but doesn’t tell him what that word is. She gives him a bloody tarot card, and then leaves him with a grate covering a large red thing that beats like a heart. Credit: Warner Bros. Television In the Zocalo, Vir and Lennier meet up for what is their final drink together as commiserating ambassador’s aides. Vir is drinking a Shirley Temple, and Lennier mentions the possibility of visiting that particular temple the next time he’s on Earth, har har. They wish each other well. In Mollari’s dream, he also is in the Zocalo, but the bottles behind the bar are all empty. Sheridan arrives, and Mollari queries him about being dead. Sheridan says he didn’t enjoy it much, and he says that his plan for the nineteen years he has left is to live the best life he can. Mollari feels he’s wasted his life. Sheridan says all Mollari has to do to live is turn around. Mollari—who knows full well that G’Kar is standing behind him—says he doesn’t want to. Sheridan disappears. In medlab, Mollari’s condition is deteriorating. Franklin does what he can, but at this point, either Mollari will come out of it or he won’t. Vir joins Franklin at the ambassador’s bedside, on what Vir refers to as a death-watch. In the dream, Vir tells Mollari that he’d miss him. Mollari admits that he’d miss himself as well, but he still won’t turn around to face G’Kar. In medlab, Mollari is crashing. Franklin works to keep him alive while Vir watches. In the dream, Mollari finally turns around to face G’Kar. In medlab, G’Kar enters to observe Franklin working on Mollari. In the dream, G’Kar and Mollari are in the Centauri throne room, with G’Kar telling Mollari that he fears the power of the throne, and reminds him of when Mollari went with Refa to bomb the Narn homeworld. Mollari insists that it wasn’t his idea, and that he’s never apologized for anything in his life. G’Kar counters that it’s because he was never sorry for what he did, only for getting caught. Credit: Warner Bros. Television They then are in the room where G’Kar was whipped, only G’Kar is now dressed as Cartagia and Mollari is dressed as G’Kar was at the time. Mollari is tied to the column and whipped as G’Kar was, with Mollari finally screaming on the 39th lash, as G’Kar did. Once again, Mollari sees the pulsing red thing, and this time Mollari not only pounds at it, but says he’s sorry. In medlab, he awakens from his coma. Upon seeing G’Kar in the observation room, he mouths an apology. G’Kar just stares for a moment, then leaves. As he recovers, Mollari complains about hospital food, because that’s always a cheap and easy joke to make. Meanwhile, Lennier tries to leave without saying goodbye, but Delenn catches him before he can depart. Lennier insists that it isn’t goodbye, that he’s still devoted to her, heart, body, and soul, and he hopes to return a better person. Delenn says that isn’t possible, and wishes him well. Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan appears in Mollari’s dream in multiple outfits: the EarthForce uniform he wore when he first reported to the station, in just the undershirt, as he was in “Severed Dreams,” then in the Army of Light uniform he started wearing at the end of “Ceremonies of Light and Dark,” then in the robes of Ranger One that Sinclair wore in “The Coming of Shadows” and the “War Without End” two-parter, then in white Minbari robes like those worn by Delenn in (among other places) “The Parliament of Dreams” and by Dukhat in “Atonement.” Then he turns glowy and disappears much like the evolved human in the framing sequence of “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars.” The household god of frustration. Garibaldi is the one who tells Vir that Mollari had a heart attack and wasn’t the victim of a poisoning. Why the director of covert intelligence for the Interstellar Alliance is delivering medical news to an ambassdorial aide is left as an exercise for the viewer, though it’s likely to justify Jerry Doyle’s place in the opening credits. If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is gobsmacked by Lennier’s departure. Credit: Warner Bros. Television In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Apparently there is a Centauri legend about how a great and noble spirit trapped in the body of a monster will attempt to kill the body of the monster in order to be free. But if the monster subjected to the noble spirit’s trial survives, he becomes a better person. Can’t imagine why they’re discussing that particular bit of mythology… Though it take a thousand years, we shall be free. In Mollari’s dream, G’Kar says that this could be a remnant of G’Kar’s Dust-induced telepathic contact with Mollari in “Dust to Dust.” We live for the one, we die for the one. There’s always been a bit of the Foreign Legion in the Rangers, and Lennier joining them to get away from his complicated feelings for Delenn definitely goes along with that. No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Lennier insists that Delenn doesn’t need him because she has Sheridan now. Since the duties of a husband are not even remotely the same as the duties of an ambassadorial aide, it’s obvious that he’s talking about the possibility of a romantic relationship with Delenn. Welcome aboard. The only guests in this one are Ross Kettle as Ruell and Akiko Ann Morison as the medtech. William Forward also appears as Refa via archive footage from “The Long, Twilight Struggle.” Trivial matters. We see old footage of Mollari and G’Kar strangling each other from “The Coming of Shadows” and of Refa inviting Mollari to join him in the bombing of the Narn homeworld in “The Long, Twilight Struggle.” Brivari was established as a Centauri drink Mollari is fond of in “Knives.” Mollari first mentioned his prophetic dream of him and G’Kar strangling each other to death in “Midnight on the Firing Line,” and we saw it in full when Sheridan jumped forward in time in “War Without End, Part 2.” Mollari first mentioned a dancer he married in “A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 1,” which seemed to contradict the arranged marriage to three wives mentioned in “The War Prayer,” with those wives seen in “Soul Mates”; Mollari’s dialogue in this episode reconciles the two, establishing that his family forced him to divorce the dancer and go ahead with the arranged marriages. Cartagia had G’Kar whipped in “The Summoning.” Vir and Lennier were shown to be drinking buddies in “The Fall of Night.” J. Michael Straczynski had intended to do an episode in the fifth season entitled “The Very Long Night of Susan Ivanova,” but Claudia Christian’s departure meant he had to abandon that notion, but he recycled the title for this episode (which had a plot that was nothing at all like the Ivanova one). The echoes of all of our conversations. “Do you know what this is? No, I can see you do not. You have that vacant look in your eyes that says, ‘Hold my head to your ear, you will hear the sea’.” —Mollari ranting at Allan. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “Prophecy is a guess that comes true—when it doesn’t, it’s a metaphor.” I really really really really really dislike stories like this where a person’s remarkably specific psychological issues also resolve their physical medical issues at the exact same moment. The notion that Mollari’s heart would heal itself at the exact same moment that he decides to finally apologize to G’Kar is just too damn precious and ridiculous. Getting there is only worth watching because, no matter how good, bad, or mediocre the material, Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurasik can generally make it work. Which they kind of do here? Honestly, Jurasik’s best material comes at the beginning of the episode when he’s ranting and raving about his brivari shipment to Allan. His dream sequences are perfectly adequate, but there’s something lacking in these scenes. This show has generally been good at showing the disconnected, surreal nature of dreams and visions, but this is all very linear and straightforward. The closest it comes is Sheridan’s ever-changing outfits, but even that feels more like a cute trick than the bit of surreality it wants to be. The best part of it all is the re-creation of G’Kar’s torture in “The Summoning,” and that’s entirely on Katsulas’ back, as he provides us with a delightful Wortham Krimmer impersonation, absolutely nailing Cartagia’s mannerisms and speaking style, while still very much being G’Kar. It’s still, ultimately, a very bland dream sequence that barely carries any weight, mainly thanks to Katsulas. The Lennier B-plot has a similar issue. There have been plenty of stories that have shown the weight of Lennier’s dedication to Delenn (probably the best is “Rumors, Bargains, and Lies”), but his actions in this episode just seem, I dunno, pathetic? Weak? Unconvincing? I particularly was rolling my eyes at the line about how Delenn doesn’t need him because she has Sheridan now, and that didn’t even work as a bullshit justification, as Sheridan’s contribution to Delenn’s existence is not the same as Lennier’s. Of course, we know what Lennier really meant, but if he’s trying to do this with dignity, he’s failing. I think that’s the biggest problem I have with this storyline. Lennier is one of the most dignified and respectable people in the cast, and to see him acting like a doofus rankles. I get that the characters are supposed to be complicated, but getting this on top of Cole being a doofus because of his love for Ivanova and it stops being complex characterization and starts becoming a lazy trope. What’s funny is that Cole’s death actually provides us with a much more interesting reason for Lennier joining the Rangers: guilt. Lennier’s the one who set Cole on the path to finding out about the Great Hit Point Rearranger, which is what led to him abandoning his post in the middle of a war to sacrifice his life for Ivanova’s. But all Lennier can talk about is mooning over Delenn and how he wants to, in essence, replace Cole because he feels the latter’s absence. Next week: “The Paragon of Animals.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “The Very Long Night of Londo Mollari” appeared first on Reactor.