Stargate | SG-1 and Star Wars Crossover Theory in all its Absurdity

Stargate and Star Wars are definitely part of the same universe. Right?

Everyone loves a fan theory and this is one of the best. That O’Neill, Carter, McKay, Rush, and co. share more with Luke, Leia, Rey, and Rose than just voluminous convention audiences and outer space. So open your minds, go with this, and let us know whether any of this strikes a chord with you.

First, let’s address the elephant in the room. Yes, we know that Star Wars gets mentioned in Stargate. So before we continue, let’s talk about that. Stargate SG-1’s Jack O’Neill introduces himself as Luke Skywalker at one point, Stargate Atlantis’ John Sheppherd calls Ronon ‘Chewie’, and in the Stargate SG-1 episode ‘Ascension’ (S5, Ep3) Star Wars is described as sci-fi, with the emphasis on ‘fi’ for ‘fiction’.

From that, we can deduce that in the Stargate SG-1 canon, there is a movie series called Star Wars. Fine, but think about, say, 2017’s Logan in which Hugh Jackman picks up an Uncanny X-Men comic and then slags it off swearily to Laura (Dafne Keen). Dramatized versions of real-life events can collide within the reality of a TV show or film (Wolverine is quick to say most of the X-Men story is made up), so who’s to say that the Star Wars movie series isn’t a fictionalized version of things that happened long ago and far, far away in the Stargate universe? Or perhaps even a myth with roots in ancient history?

So there we go. And anyway, the whole point of this article is to debate a theory. And if that’s not at the core of everything science fiction is about, then what is? Are you going to tell me Roswell and Area 51 aren’t real just because there are a few kooks who go too far with it? Or that Stanley Kubrick didn’t direct the Moon landing (wink emoji)?

Right, now that I’ve convinced you, let’s take a look at the evidence…

There’s, er, a Stargate in Stargate

Obviously, the gate allows those who go through it to travel incredibly long distances. We know that the tech in Star Wars, despite its used or ‘ancient future’ aesthetic, is sophisticated enough to maintain a gate at their end. That means the faraway galaxy isn’t a problem. And as I’ve established, we’re not necessarily saying that anything from the Clone Wars to Rey is happening concurrently with Stargate SG-1 from a temporal perspective. Just that they share DNA, after all, Star Wars takes place “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….” and for lack of any meta-reference point introduced in the saga, we have to assume that the statement relates to time and distance from us and our galaxy, which is the same world that Stargate ostensibly takes place in as they too have watched the crawl.

It’s also worth adding that Star Wars doesn’t give us a definitive homeworld or origin story for humanity, other than showing us that they are a remarkably widespread and varied bunch. Although the Gou’ald did the lion’s share of parachuting humans across our galaxy when they discovered how warm and snug we are for hosting megalomaniacal space worms, it was the Ancients who deposited them (a long time ago) into the Pegasus Galaxy (far, far away). As Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) says in the Stargate Atlantis episode  ‘Rising: Part 1’ (S1, Ep1):

“We know the Ancients on Earth were suffering from a plague. Uh, maybe some of them were trying to start over, seeding life in a new galaxy. Maybe that’s what Ancients do.”

Crystals Have a Role in Ancient and Jedi Tech

Crystals are a huge part of Ancients' technology and now those beautiful, glittery things are fundamental to dozens of races and species across the universe, from the Asgard to the Tok’ra. From flying to telecommunication to weapons to data storage, they’re kind of like what Intel or Apple’s microchips will end up being in a few hundred years. Crystals – specifically Kaiburr or Kyber crystals – are also central to Jedi/Sith tech, being the key component of lightsabers.

While the Jedi might be quote-unquote a religious order, their lightsabers are very much technology-based. Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, the 1978 novel by Alan Dean Foster, revolves around the retrieval by Luke and Leia of one such crystal on the planet of Mimban, before Darth Vader can get his evil hands on it. The book was briefly entertained as a possible sequel to Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977) and was based on story discussions with George Lucas. Its centrality to the plot serves to show how important and how powerful Kyber crystals are. So did the Ancients mine their own crystals on the ice plant Illum and then engineer them to make themselves all-powerful? It’s not an impossibility.

As Yoda says in the unmade Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode ‘The Big Bang’ (S6, Ep4):

“Long ago in forgotten times, when the Sith and Jedi fought for control of the galaxy, weapons there were, of unimaginable power. Always at their heart, a Kyber crystal was.”

Compare this to Teal’c’s account of Intar in the Stargate SG-1, episode ‘Rules of Engagement’ (S3, Ep9):

“Intar. They are used for training and only meant to stun. They can be identified by this crystal. They can take the form of any weapon.”

Force Ghosts and Ascended Ancients

While we don’t know whether Obi-Wan, Mace Windu, and Leia are laughing it up in an Astral Diner, we do know that Force ghosts are a thing. We always know some of the things they can do, even though they don’t appear to have a word for it as the Ancients have. But non-corporeal Jedi could well be Ascended Ancients. We know they are knowledgeable, although Yoda never specifically says how much of his brain he’s using. Telekinesis, telepathy – check. Ben Kenobi popped into Luke’s thoughts without us seeing him several times, while Luke himself caught the saber Rey threw away in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), and Yoda caused a lightning strike to destroy the temple in the same movie. And the fact they can sit down on rocks and stuff in the real world shows to what extent they can interact with solid objects. Like those who are Ascended, Force ghosts are wise, but not omnipotent. In other words, if Star Wars and Stargate SG-1 are on the same plane of existence – then Ascension and Obi-Wan being reduced to a pile of brown cloak share striking similarities, not least Ascended Daniel Jackson using the same tailor.

Daniel already equated Ascension with Buddhist philosophy and that’s something that’s been talked about with the Jedi as well – a feeling of living things being connected and trying to be at one with your surroundings which is the essence of the Force. One thing we’re missing is seemingly an Ascended being’s ability to become human again. We’ve never seen that in Star Wars, even though Darth Maul does manage to stay alive despite being sliced in half which would suggest a particularly strong constitution (plus we’re told the Dark Side has a flexible relationship with death).

So let’s just admit it: Ascended beings = Force ghosts. Although at least Oma Desala doesn’t speak backward, Dagobah-style. Something to fix for the Stargate reboot. Compare Yoda’s line in Star Wars Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980):

"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”

...to Oma Desala in the Stargate SG-1 episode ‘Meridian’ (S5, Ep21):

“When the mind is enlightened, the spirit is freed, and the body matters not.”

Daedalus Pops Up in an Empire Convoy

2018, the release of the sixth and final installment of Jody Houser and Luke Ross’s Thrawn comic book for Marvel. Just in case you don’t know, blue-faced psycho Grand Admiral Thrawn is a legendary figure in the Star Wars Expanded Universe (as I refuse to stop calling it.) An origin story adapted from the novel by Timothy Zahn, this sixth story features a page in which Thrawn’s ship Chimaera is facing the threat of multiple insurgent vessels.

Look to the right of the page and what do you see? Why, isn’t that the Daedalus? The comic book takes place a few years before the events of A New Hope (in it, Thrawn meets Darth Vader for the first time having heard good things about his work for the Empire) and you can only see it from the back, so it’s hard to tell whether it’s the Daedalus or another BC-304 class ship. But it’s another clue that Stargate tech may well be a recognized feature in the Star Wars universe – perhaps another civilization reverse-engineered Ancient, Goa’uld, and Asgardian tech in parallel evolution.

Mind Worms and Face Tattoos

Okay, so this one is super-random and super-specific. Remember Trelak from the Stargate SG-1 episode ‘It’s Good To Be King’ (S8, Ep13)? System Lord Ares is trying to go back to an old planetary haunt in order to turn it into a military asset, but unfortunately, that’s where Harry Maybourne has retired. Trelak, played by Wayne Brady, is Ares’ First Prime and as a Jaffa, is also host to a larval Goa’uld symbiote. The most noticeable thing about his appearance is a massive gold marking on his forehead.

Now, check out CT-9544, aka Scythe. He’s a Clone Trooper from the second season of Clone Wars, particularly in ‘Brain Invaders’ (S2, Ep8) in which his grey matter is infiltrated by a Geonosian brain worm. Oh – and what’s that on his forehead? That’s right, a tiger skull tattoo, which looks remarkably like Trelak’s just with a different material. Both got a parasite, both got the same-looking kind of thing on their head.

Co-incidence? We think not. I mean, sure, the Genonsian brain worms don’t pose as gods and don’t behave with any great sophistication, but this could well be the Goa’uld origin story.

Stargate and Star Wars Are Out There in the Multiverse

There’s a core tenet at the heart of the many-worlds theory that if you accept it, then literally anything is possible, whether that’s Stargate SG-1 and Star Wars sharing a universe or a timeline where Ed Sheeran and Donald Trump are married frogs working as night porters at a vampire hospital run by Meghan Markle’s newborn baby. I’m no Hugh Everett or Bryce DeWitt, so I’m not going to even try and explain the data here, but suffice it to say, if you embrace their vision of the world then my ramblings here have to be true whether you like it or not.

Saying that, the pedants amongst you will respond by saying, ‘Ah, but you said the conceit of this article is that Stargate SG-1 and Star Wars are part of the same universe, and if you’re talking about multiverses or alternative realities of whatever you want to call it, then technically they’re not in the same universe, so screw you.’ And I would say, what about the Stargate Atlantis episode ‘Vegas’ (S5, Ep19) where the crew from our reality somehow managed to pass through a tear in the space-time continuum and end up in the universe where Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) is a Sin City detective?

If it can happen once, then it can happen again (or might have happened before). And as such, we know the Ancients were the creators of humanity – so if some Alterans exploited that rift in the millions of years before Earth humans came into being, then they could have seeded the Star Wars galaxy with its array of homosapiens and other creatures (who might have derived from evolution). It would also explain the level of technology in the SW universe. And if that’s true, then Stargate and Star Wars are by their very nature part of the same ecosystem.

Lightspeed in Star Wars and Hyperspace in Stargate

I’m not going to spend too long on this because the concept of subspace and hyperspeed travel tend to emerge from the same physics across the sci-fi palate. But ‘Wars and ‘Gate do share a lot of close similarities. Almost no sensors can track ships in Stargate hyperspace and it’s not until The Last Jedi that The First Order figures out how to pinpoint Rebel ships traveling at lightspeed and even then it comes as a shock. And hyperdrives in both franchises propel their respective ships into hyperspace, where the barriers outlined by Einstein’s special theory relativity preventing faster-than-light travel don’t apply. Of course, we wait with bated breath for the development of recent research by Erik Lentz and his “warp bubble”, which appears to challenge Albert’s theory.

Midichlorians and Stuff

This last one comes courtesy of a Reddit thread initiated by buddascrayon, though I have to give credit to Gigazwiebel for its creation. His/her/their theory is that something went wrong on a Stargate expedition and the travelers were left stranded.

Before they expired, they took the last of their technological resources and used genetic manipulation to evolve a micro-organism indigenous to that galaxy (Midichlorians), so that it could eventually become human, or at least be part of some humans. Then they wrote religious texts explaining the importance of the organism and what it meant for those who harbored and could utilize them effectively, housed those writings in a temple, and left their descendants to it. This throws back to our earlier point that Jedis and Ancients share some DNA, literally in this case. As our Redditors contend, it’s a “gestationally passed, almost viral version of the headsucker device but with a more controlled release of the information stored… Using genetic memory like the Goa’uld.” Makes sense, right?

So there we have it. Cast-iron, irrefutable proof that Stargate SG-1 and Star Wars are part of the same universe. Or if not, then a glorious opportunity for us all to start arguing in the comments.

The article was originally published on May 18th, 2021, on the original Companion website.