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For many years the SG-1 team’s greatest adversary was Apophis, the golden-clad Goa’uld System Lord who tried to attack Earth directly back in the show’s first season. But eventually his story came to an end. By the show’s fifth season, the writers were looking to introduce a new Big Bad.
They settled on the persona of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis, a figure historically associated with funeral rites, graves, and the underworld. He got a fascinating and unique backstory on Stargate SG-1: Anubis has been gone for a thousand years, believed even by his fellow Goa’uld to be dead. So his return made for a lot of drama, with SG-1 and also with the Goa’uld System Lords.
Played by David Palffy (who had also played Sokar back in Season Three), Anubis’s storyline ran for several years — so viewers who want to revisit his story have a nice, meaty rewatch ahead of them! We’re going to include not just the episodes where the villain himself appears, but also where he is driving the action from behind the scenes in his rise to power.
Ready to take on Anubis? Here’s the complete watch list!
Before Anubis’s big reveal, SG-1 learned about the rise of a powerful new Goa’uld from one of his underlings. The Tollan leaders surprise Earth by offering to share their advanced weapons technology, which is suspicious to say the least. SG-1’s investigation leads not to the secret power himself, but to a very familiar enemy.
Anubis reveals himself to the System Lords in order to make a play to rejoin their ranks — not by showing up to their summit himself of course, but by sending another underling as his representative. In this case it’s Osiris, who reveals that Anubis is responsible for numerous attacks on the other Goa’uld.
While Daniel tries to come up with a way to rescue Osiris’s host from the System Lord summit, the Goa’uld vote on Anubis’s request to be made a System Lord again. Meanwhile he’s also made a major strike against the Tok’ra, and promises to take out Earth next.
While Anubis isn’t in this classic “asteroid about to hit Earth” story, he is definitely the one pulling the strings. Anubis had promised the other System Lords that he would destroy Earth without running afoul of the Asgard’s Protected Planets Treaty, and here his evil plan is put into action.
After working through intermediaries all season long, the season finale is Anubis’s first closeup. The villain comes on board Osiris’s ship after she uses his new shield technology to stand up to the Asgard. She’s even captured Supreme Commander Thor.
No longer hiding in the shadows — and no longer vulnerable to the advanced technology of the Asgard or the Tollan — Anubis decides to kick off Season Six by taking a direct run at Earth. He uses a massive device to try and overload Earth’s Stargate … the first hint that, while he was away, Anubis learned about remnant Ancient technology and where to find it.
Anubis returns in force at the end of the sixth season, when an ascended Daniel Jackson tells SG-1 that the Goa’uld powerhouse has been assembling the pieces to a new super-weapon that will give him a decisive advantage over the other System Lords. The last piece is hidden on the planet Abydos, and the team must defend their friends there by any means necessary.
Anubis’s new weapon has the System Lords on the ropes, and even Lord Yu’s attempts to rally them together has proved disastrous. As Daniel Jackson returns to mortal form, SG-1 launches a daring plan to lure Anubis into a trap and eliminate the super-weapon.
After capturing a member of SG-1 Anubis makes things personal, taking his massive ship to Jonas Quinn’s homeworld. He’s learned about the power of Kelowna’s rare element of naquadria, and is intent on harnessing it.
In this two-parter the team encounters Anubis’s latest attempt to make himself the most powerful Goa’uld in the galaxy: he has used Ancient technology to engineer a new kind of super-soldier, in order to eventually replace the Jaffa. Even a single Kull warrior appears to be unstoppable, and Anubis is building an army of them.
Thanks to Daniel’s discovery, Major Carter and her Tok’ra father have been working on a way to counter-act the energy animating the Kull warriors. But their time has run out, as a Kull attacks and decimates the Alpha Site. Carter is on the run, alone in the woods, as the Kull relentlessly stalks her. Can her team catch up to her in time?
Anubis may not play a direct role in this episode, but it gives the audience some important setup for the two-part season finale. Along with “Lost City,” this is effectively a three-part story. Meet the new U.S. President Henry Hayes and settle in for a recap of the story so far, and how Anubis came to power, before he makes his move against Earth.
The conflict with Anubis comes to a climax when the Goa’uld attempts to invade and conquer Earth, having built up his army and eliminated most all of Earth’s advanced allies. Now the discovery of a repository of Ancient knowledge may be the planet’s only hope, and Jack O’Neill puts his life on the line to download the Ancient library into his head.
Anubis’s defeat has been much exaggerated, as Stargate Command discovers that because their enemy isn’t flesh and blood he can’t be killed so easily. As disembodied energy Anubis is able to temporarily take control of a human host, moving from one person to the next in an attempt to escape Earth through the Stargate.
The Replicators have arrived in our galaxy, but the mechanical menace is only one of the threats in this climactic two-parter. Anubis has survived once again and found a new host, and is revealed to be pulling the strings of another one of Earth’s antagonists. Now the System Lords themselves are fighting for their very survival.
In the wake of “Reckoning” the galaxy is left forever changed … but Anubis isn’t done trying to remake it in his own image yet. Now he wishes to seize control of the newly discovered Ancient weapon on the planet Dakara, newly captured by the Jaffa resistance. And he knows that the ascended beings won’t do anything to stop him.
If you make use of this guide in your viewing, let us know! We’d love to hear how you are watching (or rewatching) Stargate according to individual story arcs.
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