Jack O'Neill - Character Arc

Character Arc

Jack O'Neill is a United States Air Force colonel with experience in special operations before joining the Stargate Program. He then joins a suicidal mission through the Stargate with a couple of airmen and Dr. Daniel Jackson who deciphers the Stargate. They are transported to another planet where O'Neill's standing order is to detonate a nuclear warhead near the Stargate at the sign of danger, but a young boy named Skaara gives him a renewed sense of life. After the defeat of Ra, O'Neill and his team return to Earth while Jackson remains on the planet. He was married to Sarah O'Neill, but their marriage suffered when Jack sank into a deep depression after their son accidentally shot himself with O'Neill's pistol. Though they are still together when Jack is initially recruited for his first mission through the Stargate, by the time he returned she had left him.

O'Neill returns to the Stargate Program when the Goa'uld Apophis attacks Earth. He is given command of SG-1, which consists of Samantha Carter, Teal'c and Jackson. Eventually O'Neill gets the Repository of the Ancients temporarily "downloaded" to his brain and becomes the first modern human to travel to another galaxy, the Asgard home galaxy. A second download of the Ancients' knowledge into his brain during the season 7 finale, allows him to lead SG-1 to an Ancient outpost in Antarctica. O'Neill possesses the ATA gene, and thus is able to operate the Ancient control chair and save Earth from Anubis' fleet. With the Ancient knowledge about to overwhelm his personality and kill him, he is placed into a stasis pod in the outpost until Thor of the Asgard is able to remove the knowledge and save his life. After that event, O'Neill is promoted to brigadier general and is given command of Stargate Command. O'Neill is promoted again off-screen and becomes the new head of the Department of Homeworld Security with Major General Hank Landry taking his position as the new commander of Stargate Command.

In the pilot of Stargate Atlantis, O'Neill convinces John Sheppard to join the Atlantis expedition to the Pegasus Galaxy. He, along with Richard Woolsey, visits Atlantis to create a treaty between the humans of Earth and the Ancients. O'Neill returns for a brief cameo, where he gets killed in an alternate timeline where Ba'al controls the Goa'uld Empire. O'Neill reappears as a lieutenant general in Stargate Universe with Nicholas Rush, where he is recruiting Eli Wallace into the Icarus Project. After the attack on the Icarus Base, he contacts Carter from The Pentagon to talk about the ongoing situation. With help from the Ancient Communication Stones, Everett Young body swaps with Colonel David Telford to tell O'Neill about dire situation they are in.