Episode 20: The Last Man
US Air Date: 07/03/2008
Writers: Paul Mullie, Joseph Mallozzi
Director: Peter F Woeste
After another unsuccessful search for Teyla, Sheppard ’gates home to Atlantis to discover that the city is sweltering hot, utterly abandoned and surrounded by a vast desert. Sheppard is dumbfounded until a hologram of McKay – an //aged McKay – welcomes him to the future. A solar flare has interfered with the Stargate, causing it to send Sheppard 48,000 years forward in time. He may now be the last human alive in the universe.
The hologram has further horrifying news – Michael killed Teyla and used her baby for genetic research. His army of hybrids swarmed across the galaxy, exterminating the Wraith and enslaving all humans. Carter and Ronon were both killed in battle, and the IOA put Richard Woolsey in charge of Atlantis. McKay and Keller left Atlantis, returned to Earth and fell in love, but Keller contracted a fatal disease as a result of exposure to the Hoffan drug. McKay then devoted 25 years of his life to bringing Sheppard home in order to rewrite the timeline that had gone so wrong.
McKay arranged for the hologram to greet Sheppard, seal him into a stasis pod to keep him from aging, and monitor the planet’s sun for centuries until just the right solar flare appears to send Sheppard back to his own time. The plan works and, 12 days after Sheppard disappeared, he arrives back in Atlantis. He leads the team on a raid of the facility where Teyla was fated to die – but she isn’t there, and the place is booby-trapped. As the building blows up around his team, it looks like Sheppard has run out of time.
