Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Season 4 return amid the 2026 TV schedule is just around the corner, and I've been excited for a while. However, comments from series co-creator Akiva Goldsman already have me nervous for the fifth and final season's run. The producer spoke about the ending of the beloved series and shed some light on the plan that he and the creative team have in place.
Goldsman spoke to TV Insider about charting out Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' endgame, which track with what he told CinemaBlend about SNW about his goals for the finale. The goal is for the series finale to bring us right up to Kirk's first day as Captain of the Enterprise, which means the final season will need to take care of some other things first. He explained below:
Job number one of the [show’s final] season is to get us right up to Kirk’s first day in the chair. And so, canonically, there will likely be some questions answered; I mean, there sort of has to be. You’ve got to know where some folks end up and how some folks shift. That’s our plan.
It's not anything unexpected, considering we've learned Sulu and Bones have been cast for the final season. However, I do have concerns. Namely, I worry about what this means for the final season and whether this specific direction will lead to the final episodes feeling drastically different from the rest of the series.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Has A Lot To Tackle (And Not A Lot Of Time Left To Do It)
Assuming that Season 4 doesn't get a jumpstart on writing off its characters that aren't around in the original Star Trek, Strange New Worlds is going to spend a lot of time handling that in its abbreviated season. There will only be six episodes in Season 5, as that was the number co-creators Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers told Paramount+ they needed to close out the show after Season 4.
I worry that's a tight window to work out all the changes needed to make the bridge look like Kirk's Enterprise. But, presumably, the co-creators had a plan.
Will The Need To Resolve Storylines Hurt The Flow Of The Series?
Something Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has thrived on since its debut is great way it balances its characters' story arcs with the "adventure of the week" format. Now, based on what I'm hearing, it almost feels necessary for the series to adapt heavier serialization in order to get to the point where it can set up Kirk's first day on the Enterprise.
It's important to me that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has a great final season because, quite frankly, a bad final stretch has tainted the legacy of many shows (Trek or otherwise). Let's not forget that when people bring up Enterprise, one of the main elements talked about is how bad the ending is.
If SNW's final season feels like too much of a deviation from what worked before, I fear people will feel like it's less than everything that came before. Granted, the series hasn't steered fans wrong so far, and Season 4 has been largely acclaimed by the cast, who say it's among the best of the series. Whatever was filmed, the series is already wrapped for good, so I guess I just need to have faith (of the heart) that the final season won't be too far off course from what we've seen.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds returns to television on Thursday, July 23rd. Tune in to see Captain Pike's crew take on some new adventures and tackle a wild scenario in its Season 4 premiere.
