I’ve decided that Wednesday is ABC’s “Must-See-TV” night, with “Alias,” “Lost,” and “Invasion” taking up a mystery/sci-fi three-hour block, and it’s difficult to pick which show to write about. “Invasion” was all about fate, and “Lost” was all about betrayal (in a major way), but I’ll go with “Alias” this week. The show has finally, fully brought its storyline back to where it all began, Rimbaldi, the fictional apocalyptic philosopher who’s been dead for five centuries who is the focus of Arvin Sloane’s bad-guy obsession.

Now that Sidney is doubled (and who can wait for that meet & greet?), the show has returned its focus to “The Prophecy,” and P. 47, the mysterious page of a Rimbaldi manuscript that contains a drawing with a stikingly similar depiction of Sydney Bristow. The page itself predicts that “The Chosen One”–after a great struggle between her and a nemesis (who we’ve all thought until now was Nadia, Sydney’s sister)–the woman portrayed will fulfill the following prophecy:

“This woman here depicted will possess unseen marks. Signs that she will be the one to bring forth my works. Bind them with fury. A burning anger, unless prevented. At vulgar cost, this woman will render the greatest power unto utter desolation.”

There’s little question that Sydney is somehow linked with this power to bring about utter desolation, but after last night’s episdoe, I wonder if it is Sloane who is to help her fulfill this destiny?

In a particularly torn and tragic moment after Sloane has spent an entire year trying to cure his beloved, long lost daughter from a disease of his own Rimbaldi-related making, the culmination of last night’s episode was a reunion and forgiveness secene between Nadia and her father. Yet after years of Sloane’s bad-boy ambiguity–has he turned good? is he still bad?–he simply had to return to his true, ruthless, Rimbaldi-obsessed ways. Nadia, dismayed to find P. 47 hidden in Sloane’s desk, confronts her father, saying that he must choose between her and Rimbaldi. She holds P. 47 precariously over the flames in the fireplace. Sloane, desperate to salvage both P. 47 and his father-daughter relationship, begs Nadia not to ask him to choose “between family and his faith.”

Rimbaldi, apparently, is Sloane’s religion. And last night, Nadia played the role of sacrificial lamb. Sloane’s “faith” not only costs Nadia her life, but her death becomes the catalyst that fully resurrects Sloane’s utter devotion to his god, Rimbaldi.