Star Trek: Picard is returning to Paramount+ this week with its second season, hot and ready for Trekkies to hungrily consume.
This season, Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is set to face some intriguing odds, as Q (John de Lancie) once more steps in to meddle with reality in a bid to see how the former admiral grapples with the ultimate trial.
But Q’s shenanigans aren’t the only thing Picard will find himself wrestling with throughout this new lineup of episodes, as shared by showrunner Akiva Goldsman in a chat with ComicBook.com.
“I think season one was resurrection, and this might be redemption. I think we’re going deeper in reverse, and what I mean by that we’re going backwards in both time and in spirit, in psychology, so it’s a look inward, a look back.”
From what we’ve seen from the second season of Star Trek: Picard in its latest trailer, we should take those statements to heart. In addition to examining his life and his own actions as part of Starfleet, it looks like Picard and crew will be dealing with time travel in several different ways, including a terrifying Borg queen making her way into the story.
Time travel also plays into the season as a central theme in terms of casting as well. We will be seeing Star Trek: The Next Generation’s John de Lancie reprise his role Q along with Whoopi Goldberg who is returning as Picard’s dear friend Guinan. While it may seem like something of a reunion, it doesn’t mean you should expect a cameo from the entire cast of The Next Generation as well.
“It’s not that we didn’t want to bring people back, just to be clear,” Goldsman says. “We only wanted to bring people back with reason. And we do have a three-season plan and I think that you’ll see that, not shockingly, to reach into Picard’s psyche., there are a couple of folks who are uniquely suited to do that. First among equals would be Q and Guinan. So they’re there because the story wants them .”
We’ll see how the unifying theme of redemption plays into the story threads of Season 2 when Star Trek: Picard returns this Thursday, March 3.