Paramount Plus has decided to celebrate Captain Picard Day in the best way this Wednesday by teasing Star Trek: Picard season 2. The first proper promo for the next run of the Patrick Stewart vehicle was released today, which got fans hyped thanks to it featuring John de Lancie’s return as Q. The first poster for the second chapter has also dropped, though, which further teases an intriguing line from the trailer: “Time is broken…”
The one-sheet in question hints at a time-bending storyline for season 2. Instead of including any of the familiar locations from the last run, it depicts 21st century Los Angeles, with the city’s famed highways being formed into the Starfleet logo. The warning that time is fractured in the trailer wasn’t really illustrated, but this poster helps get across the idea that the past, present and future are merging together.
It’s possible that this threat is even bigger than Q. The interdimensional trickster visits Picard in his vineyard home in the trailer, and though he taunts and plays with Jean-Luc like he always did, it looks like he could be worried about something, too, and may have come to Picard for help with this temporal crisis. Season 1 got a lot of mileage out of taking a classic Trek character and portraying them in a very different way, so we can probably expect this new run to do the same thing with Q.
As for the poster, should we take it literally? Is it telling us that Picard will end up in the present day? There’s a history of that happening in Trek, of course – most obviously in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Please say we’re about to see Picard dealing with a punk on a bus.
We’ve got a while to theorize about what’s going on with time, as Star Trek: Picard season 2 isn’t due to hit streaming until sometime in 2022. But the good news is that we have a bunch of other Trek content, like animated series Prodigy and Discovery season 4, to enjoy in the meantime.