Star Trek: Picard Season 2 Teases the Return of Q

This new teaser for Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard previews the return of Q, the omnipotent yet mischievous entity who was fascinated with testing the moral fiber of Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), and who was played by John de Lancie in Star Trek: The Next Generation (and Deep Space Nine, and Voyager). Here, we hear de Lancie's voice saying "the trial never ends," a reference to the very first episode of ST:TNG, "Encounter at Farpoint," which featured the debut of Q as a self-appointed magistrate who declared that he was putting humanity on trial and using the actions of the Enterprise crew as a means to judge the species as a whole.

This announcement comes as part of Star Trek's "First Contact Day," so dubbed because the film Star Trek: First Contact notes that April 5, 2063 is the year Earth makes its first alien contact with the Vulcans. Former TNG star Wil Wheaton interviewed Stewart about this announcement (see video below), and he teased that despite 178 episodes of TNG and four feature films, this new season will touch on times in the past that have never been seen before. De Lancie himself also joins the interview segment with his traditional greeting of "Bonjour, Mon Capitan." 

De Lancie dismissed the notion that he might be too old to play an ageless being. "It's been a long time coming, and I'm more than ready, and I've actually... changed my visage, you know, I've aged a little bit, so as to be more in keeping with where we are right now." Q appearing as an old man to mock the age of Picard is absolutely something Q would do. 

Stewart was cagey about how Q gets involved with the events of Season 2. "Q's arrival is, as it often was, utterly unexpected, but also comes at a shattering moment in the episode, and I do mean a shattering moment, which whether it's directly connected to Q or not, I am actually still not quite sure. But there is significant trauma and in fact, at the moment, I am working on how the trauma of of this moment hangs around Picard for quite a substantial part of the episode, and then [claps hands], there he is."

That sure sounds like a beloved character of some sort might be dying. Unless "shattering" is a code word for "Shatner-ing" and somehow William Shatner is returning, but that's a long shot.

Wheaton asks de Lancie how hard it was to get back into character after so many years. "He's deliciously naughty, marvelously annoying, terribly self-involved, and so I dare say, as my wife says, it's not much of a stretch." 

Star Trek: Picard returns in 2022 to Paramount+.

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Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.