Jonas Quinn's Fate

Fandom: Stargate

Being a Jonas Quinn fan in the Stargate fandom is a thankless job. First, you've got the people needlessly hating on the character for no real reason, other than that he isn't Daniel Jackson. (Which, can we all agree how stupid that is?) But then you've also got the writers/showrunners themselves badly mishandling and underutilizing the character. There was so much potential in Jonas and we'll sadly never get to see any of it explored.

But that's not the topic of this post. No, I've got a whole other essay-long rant in the making which will go further into my feelings on how the show's creative team failed Jonas. For now, let's focus on the big question: What happened to Jonas after he disappeared from SG-1?

For the longest time, I've been furious at what appeared to be the writers careless killing off of Jonas. In episode 10x7 "Counterstrike", during a meeting at Stargate Command, it is offhandedly mentioned that several more planets have fallen to the Ori, and Langara is one of the planets mentioned. We've seen in other episodes that when the Ori conquer a planet they give the citizens two choices: serve the Ori or die. Jonas would never join the Ori, so it seemed obvious that this meant he was now dead. Which felt like a massive slap in the face to any fans of the character. After all, not only did they kill him off-screen, but they also mentioned it as barely a footnote in an episode's opening scenes, without any specific reference to Jonas himself. He used to be a member of SG-1, why did no one in that room ask "What about Jonas? Did he survive?"

However, after years of being bitterly resigned to this abysmal ending for the character, I became resigned to it. I soothed my anger by writing countless fics in which Jonas survived the Ori invasion and started an underground resistance movement to fight back against their oppressors. It could hardly be considered AU even, since his death was never really confirmed and we never hear Langara mentioned again until it shows up in Stargate: Universe, once again free and independent.

And guess what? Today, I had my little semi-AU scenario confirmed by one of the show's producers! Well, sort of. I stumbled across this blog post on Joseph Mallozzi's website from September 3, 2007. In the Q&A section of the post, one reader asks about Jonas's fate after the Ori invasion.

"Anna writes: “Do you happen to know if Jonas was killed in season 9 when Kelowna fell to the Ori?”
Answer: We never explored this but, in my mind, Jonas went underground and is still alive somewhere, resisting the Ori army."

So, at least in Joseph Mallozzi's mind, Jonas did indeed survive and continue fighting back against the Ori on his home planet. I'm of the mind that something isn't really canon until it's onscreen, but in this case I will happily accept the idle musing of a producer on his personal blog as a canon fact. Jonas is alive, folks!

Time to break out those fix-it fics and remove the "AU" label on them, I guess. ;)