For three seasons, most of the world has watched Star Trek: Discovery through Netflix, the streaming platform that was, outside of the U.S. at least, also home to most of Star Trek’s past as well. But in a shocking move, days before the series was set to return to the streamer for its fourth season, now those fans will have to wait — and sign up for an entirely different streaming service.
Deadline reports that ViacomCBS has paid off the lucrative deal that brought Discovery to Netflix across the world outside of the U.S. and Canada four years ago, pulling the entire show from the platform at midnight tonight. The removal also means that Discovery’s fourth season, which was expected to begin airing weekly on Netflix starting this Friday, November 19 — a day after it premieres on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on CTV’s Sci-Fi Channel in Canada — will now not air in international markets for at least a few months.
The move comes as ViacomCBS prepares to bring the Paramount+ streaming platform to international markets in 2022. The company expects to launch Paramount+ in just over 20 countries, including the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, accelerating that to up to 45 by the end of the year. But that’s a fraction of the countries in which Discovery was previously available to watch on Netflix, around 190 — and it also means that fans who were expecting to see new episodes this week will now have to wait until some point in 2022.
— Star Trek on Paramount+ (@StarTrekOnPPlus) November 16, 2021
The move also leaves other contemporary Star Trek shows in limbo. While the prior mainline Star Trek shows — the original series and The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise — still currently remain on international Netflix markets (they left the U.S. version of the streaming service earlier this year), Picard, Lower Decks, and Prodigy all currently stream on different platforms. Picard and Lower Decks are primarily available on Amazon Prime Video in international markets, while the newly launched Prodigy has yet to be made available outside of its premiere being released on Nickelodeon’s YouTube channel. It’s likely that, at some point before their returns (and full premieres, in Prodigy’s case), they will all be migrated to Paramount+ exclusively in the next year. But if you were looking forward to sitting down to some new Star Trek this week outside of the U.S. and Canada, now you’ll be left boldly going nowhere.