A team of scientists think they have found the location of the long lost city of Atlantis. It can be reached by a Stargate address that leads to the Pegasus galaxy.

McKay finds a way to send a message to Earth, leaving space for personal messages. Sheppard and Teyla are off to spy on the Wraith fleet approaching Atlantis.

The team is captured by Ford and are forced to take the Wraith enzyme. Ford has a plan.

Sheppard's interrogation is suddenly aborted. Teyla senses another hive ship has arrived. Meanwhile McKay tries to convince his guard to call in help.

The hive ship approaching Atlantis is Michael's. He wants a trade: the retrovirus for not revealing the secret of Atlantis and insights on Wraith technology.

Fallen into the Wraith trap, McKay initially resigns to fatal captivity in a cocoon, but Ronon keeps struggling to attempt escaping, or at least taking some Wraith down with them. Sheppard managed to hide his glider on the very hive ship, seeking a way out, surprised to get radio contact with Michael, who seeks revenge after the ingrate queen has him semi-restrained as 'too human' suspect. While they try to sabotage the hive and maybe escape, the Daedalus and Orion race just in time to fight the two hive ships before they may attack earth. Weir is summoned to SGC for a pointless grilling by the International Oversight Advisory, finding them bureaucrats unable to risk a decision beyond questioning what was already done. So she returns, never mind the career risk compared to a Wraith culling. Sheppard manages to reach the Daedalus and his party comes up with a daring plan to overpower the hive with the weaponized retrovirus, despite bombarded damage compromising even their life-support systems.

The Atlantis team finds an Ancient underwater research facility and puts a team together to check it out.

A transmission from space leads the team to the discovery of a breeding ground for Wraith soldiers.

After yet another fruitless search for the missing Teyla, Sheppard returns to Atlantis, only to find it deserted. Worse yet, the city isn't just abnormally hot, but the entire ocean has completely dried up, leaving a sandy desert! Sheppard then finds a hologram of an aged Dr. McKay, telling him that a solar flare had sent him 48,000 years into the future. Once he learns the demise of Atlantis and everyone on it, and worse yet that the sun in the solar system is dying and he won't survive there much longer, he and the holographic McKay must find a way to send Sheppard home and potentially change all of this.

Sheppard and his team are lured to a planet and are soon put on trial for crimes against the people of the Pegasus galaxy. In flashbacks, the three judge tribunal recounts the indictment against them including the re-awakening of the Wraith and the various missions where at least a few, if not more, innocent bystanders were killed. Sheppard does his best to argue that on balance, fewer were killed by their presence than would have been the case if they had never been there. A least one of the judges is clearly determined to find them guilty while a second seems far more sympathetic. It's left to Richard Woolsey, who has now joined them, to plead the rest of their case. A lawyer by profession, Richard clearly knows how the game is played and focuses on that third judge.