Prolific actor John de Lancie—currently voicing Granamyr on Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revolution—will always be Q to Star Trek fans, who welcomed the delightfully antagonistic character’s return on Star Trek: Picard. In a new interview, he gave some insight into the Picard finale’s post-credits scene, and what he initially hoped it might mean for the future.
Though Q died in the season two finale, de Lancie told TrekMovie’s All Access Star Trek podcast that Picard showrunner Terry Matalas had already worked out a plan to bring the character back. Good thing, since—as de Lancie pointed out—fans might wonder how Q could actually die in the first place: “We’re talking about an audience that is exceedingly on point about the show [laughs] … I believe what’s going to happen is that they’re going to be watching and turn to the person that they’re watching with and say, ‘But wait a minute, how is that possible? He’s immortal,’”… And I was thinking the same thing,” he said.
After filming the last episode of Picard season two, “Farewell,” de Lancie recalled, “There were 30 or 40 people there. People who had come to watch this last scene between Patrick [Stewart] and I. Patrick made a little speech. I made a little speech. And Terry came up to me at that point and said, ‘You’re coming back, and I figured out how to do it.’”
When the time indeed came to play Q again—for the post-credits scene that runs after Picard’s season three finale, also the series finale—De Lancie said he initially interpreted it as being a potential beginning for something new in the Star Trek world. “In reading it I went, ‘Oh well, there it is! … There’s the jump-off for the next show,’” he said. However, he added, “I don’t think at this point it will happen. There was a fun period of time that it looked like it could happen. But then there was the writers’ strike, which took a lot of people’s attentions away. I don’t think that they expected that season three was going to be as good and as well-received. They had already decided on another show. They were already moving in another direction. But it was certainly a really valiant and well-appreciated finale to The Next Generation.”
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