Jack O'Neill Speaks: Richard Dean Anderson Calls the Stargate Revival 'A Dead Issue'

1 month ago by Eli Gatewood 4 min read

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Six original SG-1 and Atlantis stars shared a stage at Rose City Comic Con last weekend — one of the biggest Stargate reunions a convention has ever pulled off. But it was Richard Dean Anderson's blunt read on the cancelled Amazon series that's the story: for the first time, Jack O'Neill himself weighed in, and he doesn't sound optimistic.

Portland just hosted something this fandom doesn't get often: six original cast members on one stage at once. Rose City Comic Con's "Chevron Seven Locked" panel, held September 11-13, brought together Richard Dean Anderson, Ben Browder, Tony Amendola, Rachel Luttrell, Joe Flanigan, and Torri Higginson — spanning both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis casts in a single reunion. That alone would've been worth writing up. What actually made news was what Anderson said once he got talking about the cancellation.

"It Technically Didn't Seem Like a Reboot"

Anderson — Jack O'Neill himself, across ten seasons and two movies — has mostly stayed quiet on the whole Amazon mess. Not anymore. Asked about the canceled Martin Gero series, he laid out the premise about as clearly as anyone in the cast has:

"I've stayed out of touch with many things in my life, but the politics going on over the reboot, they're calling it — first of all, it technically didn't seem like a reboot more than it was using Michael Shanks' character, Daniel, well again, as the conduit that would take us from our show, from our universe to the next generation of it."

That lines up exactly with what I reported after the Ascension 2 details came out earlier this month — Daniel Jackson turning up on a ship called the Argo, bridging our continuity into a new one. Hearing it confirmed independently by O'Neill's actor, months later and on a different continent, is about as solid as corroboration gets for a show that technically doesn't exist anymore.

"Kind of a Dead Issue"

Here's the part that's going to sting more than any Amazon press release ever could. When the conversation turned to whether the show could still happen, Anderson didn't offer the usual careful optimism cast members give at conventions. He said the negotiations breakdown was down to something going "awry in the negotiations, or the development, or who's going to run it, who's going to control it, etc." — and when he and Shanks talk about it these days, it reportedly feels "kind of a dead issue."

I've spent a lot of this year cataloguing reasons to stay hopeful: a rewatch podcast landing in October, a petition that's now past 123,000 signatures, Atlantis, SG-1 and Universe simultaneously topping MGM+'s charts two weeks ago. Every one of those is real and none of them are nothing. But Richard Dean Anderson isn't a fan account running on adrenaline and #SaveStargate hashtags — he's the guy who was actually going to be back in the room, and he's telling you plainly that it doesn't feel like it's moving.

Why I'm Not Calling This the End

I'm not going to pretend that's not deflating to report. But "dead issue" from an actor describing the state of stalled negotiations isn't the same thing as Amazon issuing a final, on-the-record kill notice — and Amazon still hasn't said one official word since June, which is its own kind of tell. Studios that have genuinely moved on don't usually let a cancellation fester in silence for four months while a fandom builds petitions, flies banners, and gets a six-person convention reunion trending. Silence this long is either indifference or leverage, and honestly it could be either.

What's changed is the tone. For most of the summer, this was a story about fans refusing to let a decision stand. Now it's got the show's own original lead saying the quiet part: the people who'd know are pessimistic. That doesn't erase the podcast, the streaming numbers, or the petition — it just means the next real update on this, whenever it comes, matters more than the last dozen combined. Chevron's not locked. For the first time in a while, it might not even be trying.