Star Trek: Picard returns for its third and final season this week, with its titular hero tasked with one last adventure alongside faces old and new. But although the season has made it clear it’s largely operating on a clean break from its predecessors, if you’re hopping on board for The Next Generation nostalgia in season three, here’s what you need to remember coming into it.
Picard’s a Synth Now
At the end of the first season of Picard, Jean-Luc died, his failing body — thanks to the resurgence of the Irumodic Syndrome that we saw plaguing him in TNG’s finale, “All Good Things” — finally giving the ghost after he rallied to save the synth intelligence Soji and her people from some very angry Romulans. He got better, of course, because we’re talking about the third season of a show named after him, but he did so by getting a brand new body.
That body, an advanced android form designed by Altan Inigo Soong, is completely synthetic, and perfectly healthy, so Picard will never have to worry about Irumodic Syndrome plaguing him again. It still ages and is essentially just a new body, and Picard is still the Picard he was — and remembers dying — but honestly? Almost nobody brings up the fact that he’s a robot now.
Data’s Dead (Again)
Data died in Star Trek: Nemesis of course, but his death hangs over a lot of Picard’s first season — before he eventually shows up in the finale to have a chat-from-beyond-the-grave with the similarly dead Jean-Luc. Here, Data re-enforces that it’s Picard who should keep on living, not him, and so he sacrifices the last vestiges of his memory once again so Picard can come back in Soong’s new android body.
We know Brent Spiner is back (again, he’s played multiple Soongs as well as Data in Picard so far) for the third season, and intriguingly he’s been described as playing “a character named Lore,” of course a nod to Data’s evil twin android brother from TNG. Could the original Lore be revived from his original de-activation, or maybe we’re going to finally follow up on Nemesis’ tease that some of Data’s memories lived on in his other identical android sibling B-4 at last? We’ll have to wait and see.
Welcome to the 25th Century, for Real This Time
The first season of Picard was set at the tail end of the 23rd century, in the wake of the events of the primary Star Trek series The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Although its second was the first Trek TV show to explore the near future of the earliest years of the 25th century, season two is actually barely set there, instead opting for a whole lot of time-travel nonsense.
Picard season three is the first time we’re actually going to be spending an extended period of time in the early 2400s, a period explored by the non-canonical (well, mostly) Star Trek Online, but one fans have been dying to actually see more of for decades at this point.
Q’s Dead (?)
Speaking of time travel nonsense in Picard season two, its bonkers finale saw Q — who sent Picard and his friends to an alternate fascist timeline that then led to them jumping back to the early 21st century to avoid said fascist timeline happening — reveal that his latest shenanigans were both a test and a parting gift for his long-time frenemy. Q was dying, and wanted to show Jean-Luc how to love himself — pissing him off, nearly eradicating his known existence, and nearly killing him multiple times — by confronting the tragedies of his family’s pasts, and having done so, used the last of his omnipotence to whiz Picard and his friends back to their own time to save the day.
However, Q’s Q, which means there could be any number of contrivances that bring him back at some point. But for now, he’s gone.
The Borg Were Besties With the Federation. Don’t Worry About It.
Q in part did all this to help tweak a temporal paradox that led to one of Picard’s allies, Dr. Agnes Jurati, joining a reformed Borg Queen in the past to create a less-aggressive collective. This culminated in Borg-Jurati coming to the aid of the Federation when a massive Transwarp Conduit (just like the subspace corridor system the Borg used to advance their cybernetic civilisation) opened up in the Sol system, threatening to destroy billions of people for… reasons. After that got dealt with in like, five minutes, Borg-Jurati revealed that despite Transwarp being the Borg’s whole thing, they don’t actually know who tried to open this conduit, so she proposes that the Borg Collective join the Federation in a temporary membership capacity, so Starfleet and the Collective can research and investigate it together.
This is insane. It is insane. That whole season finale was i n s a n e. But don’t worry about it because from what we know, season three of Picard is set about a year after the events of season two and no one ever mentions That Time The Borg Joined The Federation. Everything seems to be fine. No one is screaming about one of the most insane things to ever happen in in Star Trek constantly. Don’t worry about it.
Oh, and Before That, Romulus Blew Up. Worry About That, But Only a Little Bit.
Picard as an entirety is actually set after the events of the opening of the 2009 Star Trek movie. That film, before it established the alternate Kelvin timeline, opens having been set in the primary Trek continuity, where the homeworld of the Romulans, Romulus, was destroyed in a cataclysmic event where the system’s star went supernova. Picard was involved in attempts to evacuate Romulans from the system before the supernova, but things went badly, and the remnants of the Star Empire cast a large shadow over Picard’s first season.
It’s probably less important now for season three, but, y’know. Good worldbuilding stuff to remember.
Almost Everyone Actually From Picard Is Gone Now…
Picard’s first two seasons, outside of a few cameos, largely focused on an original cast of characters. That is by and large not the case for season three, which is almost entirely a clean break. Picard primary cast members Isa Briones, Alison Pill, Evan Evagora, and Santiago Cabrera all confirmed after the conclusion of season two that they were done with the show — even if it seems like their characters still had stories to tell. Of the primary cast of those first two seasons, aside from Patrick Stewart only Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine and Michelle Ann Hurd’s Raffi Musiker will appear in season three.
… Because His Next Generation Besties Are Back
Why the slate-wiping? Because Picard decided to go all out for its final season with a full on TNG reunion. LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, and Brent Spiner will all return to play their previous Star Trek roles this season. They’re not cameos or one-off appearances; the return of these iconic stars is a fundamental part of Picard season three’s story.
It’s not just old faces though, there are some new characters in season three — like Todd Stashwick, playing a Starfleet Captain named Liam Shaw, and Ed Speleers, playing a mysterious new character.
Including Riker, Who’s Been Through Some Shit
Frakes and Sirtis’ Will Riker and Deanna Troi already previously appeared in Picard, giving us some important insight into their lives after TNG. It established that Riker himself is still a commanding officer in Starfleet, having returned to duty after a period of retirement, while Deanna herself was fully retired from service, raising a family with Will on the planet Nepenthe.
Riker and Troi had two children, Thaddeus and Kestra, but tragedy struck the family when Thad was diagnosed with a rare disease — usually curable, but rendered terminal after a ban on android and synthetic research in the Federation. Thaddeus died as a teenager, a tragedy that’s still haunting both of his parents.
Actually, Everyone’s Been Through Some Shit
As far as we know coming into season three, it’s not just Riker and Troi who’ve had a rough go of it since we last saw them. Beverly Crusher begins the season being chased by a mysterious threat, and has seemingly long left Starfleet life behind. Likewise, Worf is now a meditating, monastic wandering ronin from what we’ve seen of him. Perhaps most “normal” is Geordi LaForge, now a Commodore in Starfleet. He continues to serve, and now does so alongside his daughters Sidney and Alandra — but even that’s not perfect, as we know heading into the season that at least Sidney does not see eye-to-eye with her father, having parted from his legacy as an engineer to train as a pilot.
Except Wesley Crusher, Who’s Still Going Through His Old Shit
One major TNG name we know is not back for season three is Wil Wheaton’s Wesley Crusher. This is because Wheaton already showed up for a cameo in the aforementioned bonkers season two finale of Picard. There it was established that Wesley was, as he departed the Enterprise to do so in TNG, still working with the Travellers, and whisked away the genetically modified Soong descendant Karre to join him.
Could he show up in season three? Maybe. After all, season two was filmed back to back with season three, so it’s not like Wheaton was unavailable. We have no idea if he will return though.
Seven of Nine Is Starfleet Now
Although Jeri Ryan has been a part of Picard from its first season, she’s been playing a version of Seven of Nine that did not join the Starfleet fold after Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant. In fact, we learned that her application to join was rejected, causing her to break ties with her former friends and colleagues and eventually forge her own path as a member of the Fenris Rangers, a band of frontier lawmen that attempted to protect and police the border of the Romulan Neutral Zone.
That’s changed as of season three; having been awarded a field commission in Picard’s season two finale, Seven is now officially a Starfleet officer, with the rank of Commander.
And She’s Got a New Ship
Seven serves as the First Officer aboard a ship we’ll be seeing a lot of in Picard season three: the Titan-A, captained by the aforementioned Liam Shaw. The Titan was previously captained by Riker before his initial retirement, a Luna-class starship seen in Star Trek: Lower Decks, but the ship we meet in Picard is in fact its refit, redesigned entirely as a spiritual successor to the classic Constitution-class pioneered by the original Enterprise.
The Enterprise Is Back, But Not the One You’d Expect
Although the Titan-A is visually a throwback to the classic Enterprise, it’s not the only nod to the iconic vessel line in season three: the current Enterprise refit, the F, will also play some role in the season.
The Enterprise-F, an Odyssey-class ship, has never appeared on-screen before, but it’s not an entirely new ship to Star Trek: it’s been canonised from the MMORPG Star Trek Online, its design and title replicated based on the original ship’s model in the game.
Picard Might Be Over, But There Might Be More for These Characters
Picard season three has long since been confirmed as the final season of the show, and yet in the run up to its broadcast its creative team has not shied away from the fact that the season will potentially leave paths open for many of these characters to return, Picard included. Whether it’s the returning TNG crew or specific Picard characters like Seven and Raffi, it’s hard to say right now just what this season will bring to provide both a definitive end to Picard while potentially leaving the door open for more stories to tell. Hell, we don’t even know if it’s true that it does yet — cast and crew alike could just be saying this now to avoid revealing more final ends for any of the cast this season.
We’ll begin to learn more when Picard season three begins streaming on Paramount+ February 16.