Star Trek: Picard may be smack dab in the middle of its second season, but the Paramount+ spinoff series is already charting its final course. Indeed, to celebrate the franchise’s annual First Contact Day (April 5), an official announcement has confirmed that the show’s heretofore-speculated third season will be its last; a bitter pill for fans of the show that is being sweetened by the promise that the final frame will feature the entire reunited main cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation for an adventure creatively teased as a “road trip.”
LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn and Gates McFadden will, at long last, make their respective Picard debuts as Geordi LaForge, Worf and Beverly Crusher for the Paramount+ offshoot’s upcoming third and, as we now know, final season. They will join fellow returning Next Generation alumni Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, both of whom we last saw in Season 1 as the semi-retired William Riker and Deanna Troi, with Patrick Stewart’s title character back in the figurative (and maybe literal) captain’s chair for an adventure that, based on a brief teaser trailer (seen just below), is brimming with delectably juicy member berries immediately evocative of the 1987-1994 series from which this one was spun. Plus, the name of Brent Spiner (who’s currently fielding a new role on Season 2,) is also on this reunion marquee, but it remains to be seen if he will once again play Data since the character was killed off (again) back in Season 1.
Of course, the Star Trek: Picard Season 3 teaser trailer is predictably short on details, seeing as Season 2 currently has Stewart’s titular former Enterprise captain mired in a time-travel travesty conjured by a returning Q (John de Lancie) in what appears to be an alternate timeline version of Earth on the year 2024, which is headed toward the changed 25th century fate of becoming an alien-conquering consortium controlled by a fascist government. It’s a consequential puzzle that the chronologically displaced Picard and pals must solve, with one of the key pieces apparently connected to his ancestor, a prodigious but-troubled young astronaut named Renée Picard (Penelope Mitchell).
However, that is not to say that said teaser lacks potency or spoiler qualities since it also happens to showcase what appears to be actual footage and audio, perhaps surreptitiously produced in recent months. After all, the clip’s footage—primarily focused on Stewart’s Picard wistfully opening an old trunk containing his iconic red Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform, complete with the original oval-shaped communicator pin—proves that he makes it through the Q-conjured Season 2 time travel travails (hopefully with his odd, rarely referenced Season 1 android transformation corrected in some manner). However, as lines from the newly announced returning cast can be heard, the clip climaxes with an auspicious pièce de resistance, in which audio of Riker asks the former captain, “Aren’t we a little overdue for a good old-fashioned road trip?,” followed by Troi’s assurance, “I promise, you will not be alone,” leading to the imagery of Picard and Riker with phasers in-hand, preparing for a showdown against unseen forces.
The just-announced swan song third season of Star Trek: Picard—and all the show’s fandom-dividing aesthetics, writing and themes—will manifest under the auspices of executive producers Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, Patrick Stewart, Heather Kadin, Aaron Baiers, Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth, Doug Aarniokoski and Dylan Massin. Additionally, Terry Matalas, also one of the executive producers, will assume the central role of showrunner.
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 has yet to set a release window, much less a specific release date, but it is expected to arrive sometime in 2023. In the meantime, the series continues its weekly run on Paramount+ Thursdays, climaxing with the Season 2 finale (Episode 10), which hits the streamer on May 5.
