By Joshua Tyler
| Published
When Star Trek: Deep Space Nine finished its seven-season run, it left the future of the show’s Captain, Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks), hanging. He doesn’t die in battle, retire to a vineyard, or warp off into the sunset. He ascends.
In the final Deep Space Nine episode, “What You Leave Behind,” Sisko confronts Gul Dukat—now a vessel for the Pah-wraiths—in the Fire Caves on Bajor. With a last, desperate move, he hurls them both into the flames. Instead of dying, Sisko is taken by the Prophets, the godlike aliens inhabiting the Bajoran wormhole. He vanishes from reality and becomes something… else.
Moments later, he appears to Kasidy Yates (Penny Johnson), his pregnant wife, in a vision. He’s fine—kind of. He says he’s with the Prophets, learning, and existing beyond linear time. He promises to return eventually. But the show ends without giving us that moment. The man who once punched Q in the face is left living in a timeless realm of alien gods.
Now, it seems Star Trek’s new series, Starfleet Academy, may give us some closure on Sisko. In the show’s first trailer, a single frame shows a student studying up on Sisko. The display is titled “The Fate of Benjamin Sisko.”
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is a forthcoming Star Trek: Discovery spinoff series set in the 32nd century. It follows the first class of Starfleet cadets in over a century as they train to become officers amid a galaxy rebuilding. Holly Hunter stars as the captain and chancellor of the Academy, alongside an ensemble of recruits and returning legacy characters like Robert Picardo as The Doctor.
How deeply the show will dive into the past legends of Sisko is anyone’s guess. As a fan, I hope this display is all we get. I don’t trust Star Trek: Discovery’s writing team to handle anything this important.
While there is no canon explanation for Sisko’s final fate, there are plenty of non-canon stories about what happens to Ben after his ascension.
In the non-canonical Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novels, Sisko comes back. About a year after disappearing, he’s returned to linear time by the Prophets. He reunites with Kasidy and meets his daughter, Rebecca. But he’s changed—haunted by what he saw, what he is. For a while, he ditches Starfleet and tries to live an everyday life on Bajor. That goes as well as you’d expect for a man who used to commune with aliens and command fleets.
Eventually, Sisko re-enters Starfleet and takes command of the USS Robinson, a heavy explorer ship sent into the Gamma Quadrant. He becomes part of larger galactic politics, brushing up against the Dominion, the Typhon Pact, and the uneasy future of the Alpha Quadrant. He’s still the Emissary. Still a captain. Still trying to be a father and a legend at the same time.
That timeline was eventually undone. In 2021’s Coda trilogy—a multiverse-wrecking book event—the entire novel continuity collapses. Sisko’s return, his ship, his family’s future—it all vanishes into the void.
So what’s Sisko’s final fate? Canon says: He’s with the Prophets and may return someday. Non-canon says: He did. Then he got erased. He’s Schrödinger’s Captain. Let’s keep it that way.
