Life on Mars (USA)/Life Is a Rock

Life Is a Rock
Season 1, Episode 17
Airdate	April 1, 2009
Written by
Directed by
← 1x16 Everyone Knows It's Windy	— N/A
Life on Mars (USA) — Season One

This article about an episode needs to be expanded with more information. Please help out by editing it.

Life Is a Rock is the seventeenth episode of the first season of Life on Mars (USA), and the final episode.

Starring:

Guest Starring:

Plot Overview

In the series finale, a mysterious caller offers Sam a chance to return to 2008. The caller said he would have to do three things before he could go home. The first was to "save yourself." The first clue leads him to finding out that the younger version of himself has been kidnapped by his father, Vic.

Sam and Gene set out to find Sammy, only to be trapped by Vic. Gene gets away, but Sam ends up in the neighborhood of Hyde, where he receives the second clue from the caller, telling him to duck. Thus missing getting shot in the head. He finds Sammy in a boat and Vic corners him. Sam tells him he's not afraid of him anymore, and they brawl it out. Vic sits on Sam with a knife pointed to Sam's chest. Sam then reveals to Vic that he's his son. Vic replies saying he knows, then prepares to kill him. Just as he's about to, he gets shot in the back by Gene, dying instantly.

Sammy is reunited with his mother, and Sam tells the mother his real name (making her believe he was named Luke Skywalker). Later, he watches on the TV a vision of the future: him on New Year's Eve 2010 tucking Annie in at a retirement home. He realizes that Annie could be the reason he was in 1973, and promises to Annie to stay, and they kiss. Later, when the caller tells Sam there's one last task, Sam rejects the offer to go home, and hangs up.

Sam then hugs Gene, and wakes up in the present. However, he doesn't wake up in a hospital. He wakes up in a spaceship (in the year 2035), undergoing a computer simulation that glitched that made him go into 1973. The whole gang is there, too, heading to Mars to find genetic material. Sam then reconciles with his father Major Tom (who was Gene in the simulation). The episode ends with the crew landing on Mars.

Notes

• This episode is the last episode of the season and series.

Trivia

Memorable Moments

• Sam fighting with his father (Vic) on the dock, and finding out Vic knew Sam was his son.
• Sam declining his chance to go back to 2009.
• Sam getting lost in the town of Hyde.