Star Trek: Picard covered a lot of ground in Season 1, and it seems likely we’ll learn some more about Jean-Luc and his crew in Season 2. We’ll also see the return of characters like Q and Guinan, as well as a trip back to the year 2024 in Picard’s effort to stop a change in reality. Yes, there’s time travel in Picard Season 2, but according to showrunners Terry Matalas and Akiva Goldsman, this season of the Paramount+ series is about more than that.
Terry Matalas and Akiva Goldsman spoke to SFX Magazine about Star Trek: Picard Season 2 and confirmed this season is indeed a time-traveling story. At the same time, there’s a lot more to it than that, and Matalas explained how, once again, this story will seek to further flesh out Jean-Luc Picard as a character.
It’s a time-travel story, and all good time-travel tales are emotional at their core and speak to something that’s happening with your main character. So we started by asking ourselves the question of season one: how do we deconstruct Captain Picard? What don’t we know about him? Why is he on a vineyard by himself with a dog? Why did he never marry Beverly Crusher and have a family of 10? Those are jumping-off points to answer some of those personal mysteries.
Name-dropping Beverly Crusher is always going to set off alarm bells in my head, though last we spoke to Gates McFadden, she didn’t think she’d appear in Star Trek: Picard Season 2. She did have a recent cameo in Star Trek: Prodigy, however, and even if she doesn’t appear, we could still get answers as to why Picard and Crusher took things to the next level. Hopefully, we do learn about it because McFadden is tired of answering that question.
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 wants to tell a story of Q’s return and perhaps even a life where Seven of Nine doesn’t have her Borg implant, but it also wants to focus on character-driven stories. Akiva Goldsman added to the statement about Season 2 and why it’s important this season covers more than time travel.
It will sound extraordinarily facile, but the idea of Season 2 of Picard is that the only thing that actually transcends time – and I don’t mean time travel alone, I also mean emotional time, the kind of stuck in time that comes from trauma – the only thing that transcends time and which heals is love.
Star Trek: Picard also has more familiar faces on the way, though no specifics on whether it’ll happen in Season 2 or Season 3, which is currently in development. Hopefully, we’ll get to see the entire main cast of The Next Generation before the series ends, though Jonathan Frakes didn’t seem too hopeful on it when we talked to him.
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 premieres on Paramount+ starting on Thursday, March 3rd. I personally think it’s one of the best shows on Paramount+, though there’s lots of other content on there I think qualifies for that title.
