Ranked! The 10 Best Cliffhangers From Stargate SG-1

You all know the moments we’re talking about here: that moment when there’s a massive reveal, our beloved heroes are in peril, all seems lost, and then … the camera fades to black. How are they possibly going to get out of this one?!

The cliffhanger is a tried-and-true staple of dramatic television. It’s high-stakes, and it gets us tuning in again for the next week’s episode.

Stargate SG-1 did some great cliffhangers over its 10-year run. Here we’re going to run down our Top 10 favorite cliffhanger moments from the show. What’s on your list? Check out the video or read on for our list, then post yours below!

Before we get into our picks, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Just what counts as a “cliffhanger”? It’s a particular dramatic device: a moment that leaves you on the edge of your seat and that comes at the very end of the episode – the very last scene or two. Unlike an “Act-Out” (which is designed to get you to come back after the commercial), cliffhangers are meant to get you speculating all week — or sometimes all summer — about how this story could possibly be resolved, and then come back for the next episode.

Now, let’s add one more very important qualification: to count as a cliffhanger the dramatic moment should be resolved at the start of the next episode. If it’s just a gobsmacking plot development that sets up the season or is paid off way down the line, that’s just a good old fashioned plot twist.

Oh, and of course there will be tons of spoilers here. So if you’re still watching SG-1 for the first time, enjoy the ride, finish the show, and come back to this list later.

Number 10: The Enemy Within

Episode: “Children of the Gods” (Season One)

What better place to start than at the very beginning? The Goa’uld Apophis pays a visit to Earth and then to Abydos, Sha’re and Skaara are taken as hosts, and SG-1 is officially formed after Teal’c defects and helps a dungeon full of prisoners to escape.

But as the team steps down off the gate ramp, the audience sees that one of their own has secretly been taken over by a Goa’uld. It’s none other than Charles Kawalsky, another character held over from the movie.

It was a great way to end the pilot episode of a new TV show. If the leader of SG-2 and a movie character isn’t safe, maybe no one is! Could the Goa’uld inside Kawalsky be removed? And how much damage would he do before he was discovered?

Ironically, this cliffhanger was cut out when co-creator Brad Wright returned to the pilot 12 years later with Children of the Gods: Final Cut. The scene was removed not because Wright didn’t like it, but because the Final Cut was being released on DVD. It was intended to stand alone as a movie rather than setting up the next episode. So, no cliffhanger was required.

Number 9: An Old Girlfriend

Episode: “Summit” (Season Five)

Daniel has gone undercover to infiltrate a meeting of the most powerful Goa’uld in the galaxy: the System Lords, who are gathering on a space station in the Hasara system to learn who has been attacking them all – and ultimately grant Anubis entry into their ranks. Daniel has used the memory-altering Reole chemical to convince Lord Yu that he is his loyal servant, and none of the other System Lords know who Daniel is.

Now, he’s about to uncork a vial of symbiote poison that will wipe out the entire Goa’uld leadership.

Then, the doors to the meeting hall open and in walks a familiar face: It’s Osiris, who has taken as its host Sarah Gardner … Daniel’s old college girlfriend. She doesn’t rat him out to the others, and in the final scenes she confronts Daniel in private about what he is doing there.

Meanwhile, in the tunnels beneath the surface of Revanna the Tok’ra HQ has been bombed into oblivion, leaving SG-1 and their allies trapped. It’s a double cliffhanger of sorts, but this one ranks on our Top 10 list because Osiris is so awesome … and surely about to expose Daniel right in the middle of a nest of vipers.

Number 8: True Believer

Episode: “The Fourth Horseman, Part 1” (Season Nine)

The newly formed Free Jaffa Nation are trying to figure out what they want to be. The Goa’uld sold them and their ancestors a bill of goods, pretending to be gods and using the Jaffa people’s religious faith to manipulate them into servitude.

Now the Goa’uld have been cast down, and the Jaffa are free to create their own government. They have a strong leader in Gerak (played by guest star Lou Gossett). So what does Gerak do when the Priors of the Ori come knocking? He ends up … kinda liking what he hears, actually.

Gerak reads the Book of Origin, and decides that what the Jaffa need most to unite them as a people after the Goa’uld were exposed as false gods is just some different gods. He converts to Origin, and submits to being converted into a Prior himself. In this cliffhanger moment at the end of Part 1, Gerak’s transformation is revealed: he steps into the meeting hall on Dakara and declares that it is the destiny of all Jaffa to follow Origin.

Not only had Gerak sold his soul to the Devil and traded one false god for another, but one of our team’s closest allies — the Free Jaffa — could join forces with the enemy.

Number 7: Millions of Light Years

Episode: “Exodus” (Season Four)

So we’ve got this cool idea: We’re going to use a spy as a double agent to lure Apophis and his giant fleet of ships to come destroy the Tok’ra homeworld. Then, after all the Tok’ra have escaped, we dial up the Stargate to a black hole and dump it into the sun.

Now here’s where things get interesting: the stellar matter gets sucked through the wormhole, the Vorash star becomes unstable, and explodes … wiping out the enemy fleet before they know what hit them.

It’s an audacious plan to end SG-1’s fourth season, after Apophis has seized the forces of both Sokar and Heru’ur and is poised to conquer the galaxy. And everything pretty much goes to plan (except for Teal’c being shot and presumed dead, of course): the star explodes, Apophis’ fleet is wiped off the map, and SG-1 and Jacob Carter escape with their ship just ahead of the shockwave.

But the energy from the explosion has an unforeseen effect on their hyperspace window. And when they drop out of hyperspace they see that things have gone very, very wrong. The plan worked, but now in only a matter of seconds they have traveled over four million light years – all the way to another galaxy. It’s going to take them 125 years to get home.

To make matters worse, Apophis is here too. The fleet was destroyed but Apophis’ mothership made it into hyperspace in time. The massive ship looms above out heroes as we fade to black.

Enjoy your summer!

Number 6: Someone’s Gettin’ Goa’ulded

Episode: “Out of Mind” (Season Two)

One of the more memorable villains introduced early on in the series was Hathor, the sexy Goa’uld queen and once the consort of Ra himself. After a failed attempt to take over Stargate Command and breed a new army of Jaffa, Hathor escaped through the Stargate. Of course she would be seen again.

At the end of Season Two Jack O’Neill, Samantha Carter, and Daniel Jackson awaken from stasis to discover that the year is now 2077. Everyone they know is dead, and the new folks in charge have a lot of questions for them.

Except … not really, because this is all fake and Hathor is behind it. She’s recruited some new help and built a facsimile of the S.G.C., which honestly is a really elaborate and overly theatrical way to try and acquire intel about the state of the galaxy.

With her ruse exposed (and Jack saying some really unkind things about her breath), Hathor decides to take things up a notch. She has a mature Goa’uld symbiote who is ready to take a host. Which one will it be? Will Jack O’Neill step up and take one for the team? Will it be Major Carter, who has already been an unwilling host once before? Or will it be Dr. Jackson, who Hathor kinda seems to have a thing for?

This is the moment that ended the season. It’s a moment filled with tension, as one of our beloved team members is about to get Goa’ulded. And props to the writers for paying this off and not letting SG-1 just slip out of the situation. When the third season picked up, Jack O’Neill himself was forced to become a host.

Number 5: Replicator Survivor

Episode: “Nemesis” (Season Three)

The Replicators hijacked Thor’s mothership and tried to infest Earth, but were handily defeated by SG-1 when the team crashed the ship into the atmosphere and destroyed it … or so they thought!

The third season finale ends with wall-to-wall action, as the team uses Asgard technology to beam up their own Stargate and escape certain death. While fending off a swarm of techno-bugs they detonate an explosive device on the ship’s deceleration drive, crashing the ship and destroying every Replicator on board before they can reach the surface of Earth and gain a foothold.

That was the plan, anyway. The viewer is left assuming that SG-1 safely escaped through the Stargate, and just needs the S.G.C. to set up the beta gate so they can dial home again. All’s well that ends well, right?

In the final shot of the episode we see that the plan was only mostly successful, as a single Replicator crawls out of the ocean and onto a piece of debris from Thor’s ship. Let’s just hope he doesn’t find a submarine to infiltrate and a poor Russian sailor’s face to jump on …

Number 4: “We’re All In Very Big Trouble”

Episode: “There But For the Grace of God” (Season One)

OK, we’re fudging on the “cliffhanger” definition just a tiny bit here. The next episode doesn’t immediately resolve this final moment of SG-1’s first parallel universe story. Instead this sets up the next three episodes, as Daniel tries to convince everyone else that Apophis is about to invade Earth.

The Quantum Mirror sends Dr. Jackson to a parallel universe, where alternate versions of his friends are engaged in a futile struggle against a Goa’uld invasion. Humans have been going through the gate and getting into trouble for less than a year, and now Apophis has shown up in a mothership to attack this Earth and enslave its people. And Evil Teal’c, still First Prime of Apophis, is leading the charge.

Daniel gets the address that the attack was launched from, and makes a narrow escape back through the Stargate – with Evil Teal’c shooting him with a staff weapon as he goes. A wounded Daniel makes his way back to the Quantum Mirror and zaps himself back to his reality, where he gives his own team a dire warning: “We’re all in very big trouble. They’re coming.”

Now, our SG-1 has gotten under the Goa’uld’s skin as much as any alternate reality. And Daniel is convinced that the enemy is about to attack Earth directly here, too. Turns out … he was right. This was a fantastic start to the invasion arc that ends the first season. Earth is in the enemy’s crosshairs.

Number 3: Earth Under Siege

Episode: “Within the Serpent’s Grasp” (Season One)

With Stargate Command defunded by Senator Kinsey and ordered shut down immediately, SG-1 defies orders and goes through the Stargate to the address Daniel brought back from the other reality. It brings them not to a Goa’uld-controlled planet, but to a Stargate on board the very attack ship that is now headed to Earth. In command is Klorel, son of Apophis, who has taken the Abydonian Skaara as his host.

The team sets explosives all over the ship, and they don’t expect to survive its destruction. At the end of the episode Klorel is dead, and the one thing the team has going for them is that it should take the ship at least a year to reach Earth. But in the final moments Earth itself appears out the view port. The ship has arrived much quicker than expected.

The death gliders are preparing for launch, and all that’s left is to push the button and blow up the ship they’re on … and Earth will be saved. As the camera pulls out on this last shot, we see that things are even worse than our team knows. The mothership is not alone. A second Ha’tak vessel, bringing Apophis himself, is also there for the invasion. Even if SG-1 blows themselves up right now, it’s not going to save the Earth at all.

The scene fades to black on SG-1’s first season. Season Two would not disappoint, as Master Bra’tac joins the team in destroying both motherships, dealing a major blow to Apophis.

This direct attack on Earth was a story that the show had to tell, and when it finally came down to it the story was done so well.

Number 2: This Guy Won’t Stay Dead

Episode: “Jolinar’s Memories” (Season Three)

Apophis was SG-1’s first great villain, an ever-present foe throughout the first two seasons of the show. But as viewers got to know other Goa’uld power players out there in the galaxy, we learned that Apophis has plenty of enemies other than SG-1. Ultimately it’s Sokar who gets him: Apophis is tortured by his fellow Goa’uld but escapes to Earth, where he dies (“Serpent’s Song”). To stop Sokar’s assault on Earth’s Stargate, the team gives in and delivers Apophis’ body to Sokar.

The cliffhanger is Apophis’ shocking return, at the mid-point of Season Three. This one works so well because it has been so long since Apophis’ death the previous year. Throughout the first half of the new season the writers made frequent reference to Sokar, building him up as the likely new Big Bad — in episodes like “Fair Game,” “Demons,” and “Deadman Switch.”

Just a few weeks before “Jolinar’s Memories” aired, viewers were even reminded about Apophis’ death, as SG-1 used a recording of his final moments to convince a group of eager young followers that he’s not a god, but is really and truly dead (“Rules of Engagement”).

Whelp, so much for that. After SG-1 fails to escape from Sokar’s prison moon of Ne’tu, the local First Prime Nao’nak kills the warden, captures SG-1, and takes off his mask to reveal his true identity: it’s Apophis! Sokar used a sarcophagus to revive his enemy from the dead, so that he could continue to torture him. Now Apophis is looking to turn the tables … and he has our heroes right where he wants them.

Number 1: The Ori Invasion

Episode: “Camelot” (Season Nine)

It’s all come down to this. After a year of harassing the planets of the Milky Way Galaxy with Prior sermons, plagues, and giving advanced weapons tech to bad actors, the followers of the Ori are ready to invade with a fleet of advanced warships. All peoples everywhere will convert to Origin, or die.

Earth’s growing fleet of deep space carriers are armed and ready for battle at the newly formed Supergate. Joining the Odyssey (under the command of Colonel Paul Emerson) is the brand new Korolev, fresh off the line with a Russian crew commanded by Colonel Chekov.

But more than this, we’ve assembled an unlikely alliance of races from SG-1’s past: there are Goa’uld motherships, piloted by Tok’ra and Free Jaffa. Kvasir brings an Asgard ship into the battle. And Teal’c even convinces the cutthroat Lucian Alliance to bring several of their ships to try and hold the line against the Ori.

Carter dons an EVA suit to try and hack the enemy Supergate … but it’s too late: the Supergate activates in a spectacular sequence, and four Ori warships stream through. The coalition ships open fire, and it’s an all-out war to prevent the incursion into our galaxy. But none of these ships – human, Goa’uld, or Asgard – can stand up to the might of the Ori fleet. Our weapons are no match for their shields, and within minutes the coalition fleet is decimated. After all, the Ori’s worshipers have gotten technology from ascended beings who are basically as advanced as the Ancients.

The Korolev is destroyed, but in the cliffhanger the audience isn’t shown which of Earth ships actually exploded. Daniel and Cameron were on board the Russian ship, and their fates remains uncertain as the season closes. And Carter is floating in space in a suit in the middle of a shooting war.

Then, as the guns fall still and the enemy ships move through the debris, we push in on one of them for the final shot. Vala Mal Doran stands on board, watching helplessly as her friends get slaughtered. And her child, the immaculately conceived spawn of the Ori we’ll come to know as the war criminal Adria, is about to be born.

SG-1’s ninth season ends with one of the most spectacular space battles in Stargate history. There are so many loose ends here, and so many characters whose fates are left hanging in the balance. But what makes this the show’s greatest cliffhanger ever is that the stakes are so high. It’s not just Earth or the SG-1 team that’s on the line, but the whole galaxy.

Even our most powerful allies, even joining forces with our enemies, can’t slow down the Ori invasion. After an entire year of build-up, the show’s new antagonist was finally here in full force. And we had no way of stopping them.

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Those are our picks! Which cliffhangers are your favorite from Stargate SG-1? If we didn’t mention them just drop them in a comment below, or join the conversation over on our YouTube channel. And also let us know if you want to see this same kind of list for Stargate Atlantis or SGU.

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