Before he was starring in blockbusters like Aquaman, Fast X and The Minecraft Movie, and even before he was performing opposite Emilia Clarke in Game of Thrones, Jason Momoa was best known for playing Ronon Dex on Stargate Atlantis. Momoa joined the Stargate SG-1 spinoff in its second season and quickly became one of its heaviest hitters, figuratively and literally. More than 15 years after Atlantis concluded, the actor recently looked back on his “beautiful time” working on the show, and it has me looking forward to the upcoming Stargate series even more.
Jason Momoa has been making the rounds lately promoting the Prime Video subscription-exclusive The Wrecking Crew, the first of his 2026 movies. While talking with Jonatan Bloomberg from MovieZine, he spent time reminiscing on Stargate Atlantis when Bloomberg shared how much the show’s meant to him and asked if the action experience he gained from there helped pave the way for where his film career went. Momoa started off by saying:
Stargate Atlantis really gave me… it was like going to college, to tell you the truth. It was four years of my life. You do 22 episodes, roughly takes about nine months out of the year, and you're pretty much dedicated to that. You’re shooting a week and a half an episode. You're really seeing how everything moves. It moves very quickly. And you get close to the directors. I’m still close with the cast, some of them are my dearest friends.
Introduced in the episode “Runner,” Ronon Dex was a soldier who hailed from the planet Sateda and was captured by the Wraith after they attacked his world and killed the woman he loved. Rather than immediately feed on Ronon like the Wraith usually do with their victims, they instead recognized him as being stronger than the average human and made him a Runner, i.e. a target they repeatedly hunt for sport. Upon meeting the Atlantis team, they disabled Ronon’s tracking device and invited him to join them
Whether he was using his own fists, the sword he made from the metal of a Wraith ship, or his unique energy pistol, Ronon Dex could be counted to take down many bad guys alongside the other Stargate Atlantis protagonists. It’s not hard to see how Jason Momoa’s experience on the show led to him taking on action-heavy roles in Hollywood. The actor continued on about those early years:
As far as action goes, that was when I was really cutting my teeth. Our stunt coordinators were amazing. We're all friends, and I still, to this day, am very close to a couple of our stunt performers in Canada. So it was very much like college for me, and after that was when I started writing my own stuff to go like, ‘This is what I wanna do.’ But it gave me a time to grow as an actor and obviously learn all the things I wanted to do as a stunt [performer], like samurai films and all these things that I loved when I was a kid.
Jason Momoa remained on Stargate Atlantis for the rest of its five-season run, with the show coming to an end in 2009. All these years later, he still looks back on playing Ronon Dex in a positive light, and it’s safe to say that his career would have turned out much differently if he hadn’t been cast as the character. As he concluded:
We had freedom in Stargate Atlantis to go play, and the weight of responsibility wasn't as hard as maybe like a big movie. It really was a fundamental and beautiful time in my life where I got to learn a bunch of stuff and make mistakes and, yeah, I had a great time.
Listening to Jason Momoa reflect on Stargate Atlantis reminded me of how it’s been 15 years since the last live-action Stargate show, Stargate Universe, ended after just two seasons. But as already mentioned, that dry spell will be ending at some point with Prime Video’s forthcoming Stargate series. With the exception of Martin Gero being tapped as the showrunner, all we know about this project is that it will be set in the same continuity as the previous Stargate shows rather than a full-on reboot.
Given his movie star status, we can probably rule out Jason Momoa leading this new show, but maybe a guest spot could be arranged for him to reprise Ronon Dex. Feel free to revisit Stargate Atlantis with your Hulu subscription or over on Pluto TV. Catch Momoa in theaters later this year playing Lobo in Supergirl and Blanka in Street Fighter.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
