In the Romulans and the Borg, the first season of the show that bears his name pitted Jean-Luc Picard against two of the most enduring adversaries of his Starfleet career. In Star Trek: Picard season 2, he’ll encounter another – the omnipotent, god-like Q. With most of the main story arcs of the show’s first year now wrapped up, the Star Trek: The Next Generation legend, and his new crew on board La Sirena, are free to boldly go in exciting new directions – and who knows, maybe seek out new life and new civilizations... But what missions does Star Trek: Picard season 2 have in store for the former Enterprise captain? When will we see it? And which of his Next Generation crewmates will he bring along for the ride? You can find the answers to these questions – and many more – below. Engage! The Star Trek: Picard season 2 shoot was originally supposed to get underway in June 2020, until Covid-19 put everything on hiatus. Production on season 2’s 10-episode run eventually got under way in California in February 2021. That delay means we'll see Star Trek: Picard season 2 after Star Trek: Discovery season 4 has left Spacedock in late 2021. The First Contact Day virtual event on April 5, 2021 confirmed that Jean-Luc's second solo voyage will debut in 2022 on Paramount Plus in the US and on Amazon Prime Video in other territories. The streaming service is yet to narrow the time period down further, but we'd expect to see it in the first half of the year. The first teaser for Star Trek: Picard season 2 was released during the First Contact event. Alongside numerous Next Generation Easter eggs (including a model of Picard's first starship command, the USS Stargazer) the major reveal was that John de Lancie will be reprising his role as omnipotent superbeing Q. "The trial never ends..." So excited to announce that I will be returning to visit my dear old friend Jean-Luc Picard in season 2 of Picard! @StarTrekOnPPlus @paramountplus @CTVSciFi @primevideouk @SirPatStew #StarTrekPicard #StarTrek pic.twitter.com/DOeBT8NkUWApril 5, 2021 A more full-featured trailer featuring Stewart, de Lancie and other members of the cast was released on June 16, 2021. It doesn't give much away about the plot, other than suggesting that Picard and company are trying to stop a dark future from coming to pass. Time has been broken. #StarTrekPicard season two, coming 2022 💫 #StarTrek pic.twitter.com/OjqarMnFBrJune 16, 2021 Red alert! Big spoilers for Star Trek: Picard season 1 follow – change course now if you haven’t seen it yet. Jean-Luc Picard will be a new man in Star Trek – literally. When Picard’s human body succumbed to terminal Irumodic Syndrome, his consciousness was transferred into to an artificial ‘golem’ body created by Dr Altan Soong, the biological son of Data’s ‘father’, Dr Noonian Soong. Although Soong Jr made it clear that the new body is effectively identical to the old one – it will still age and die, for example – it’s going to have an effect on the way the 90-something character approaches his life. “I wanted to know exactly what they had done to me when they saved [Picard]’s life,” Patrick Stewart said in an interview with Gold Derby. “Was there any chance that this might have an impact on Picard’s personality or behaviour? [Executive producers Terry Matalas and Akiva Goldsman] felt it probably wouldn’t, but it lies there as an option should we need to take it. But also there is another human aspect being introduced in season 2, which I am not allowed to talk about. But it’s going to have, I think, quite an impact.” With the first year’s main story arcs about a the Romulan Zhat Vash’s efforts to wipe out all Synthetic life and the reclaimed Borg Cube (now crash-landed on the Synthetic homeworld of Coppelius) now seemingly done and dusted, Star Trek: Picard season 2 is primed to seek out all-new worlds – and civilisations. “I wish I could sit here and blurt out to you all the new storylines, and situations and times that you're going to be seeing in this second season,” Stewart said at First Contact Day. “Despite 178 episodes of TNG [The Next Generation] and four feature films, there are events coming up in season 2 that have never been seen before.” It’s clear that not everything will be new, however, now that it’s been confirmed Q is back in Jean-Luc Picard’s orbit. A member of the omnipotent Q continuum, the mischievous character cropped up regularly in The Next Generation (and spin-off shows Deep Space Nine and Voyager) to make life as awkward as he could for Starfleet. He always took a particular interest in Picard, having put humanity on trial in TNG pilot ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ – an arc that was only partially resolved in series finale ‘All Good Things’. Could Q be continuing his self-convened legal proceedings in Star Trek: Picard season 2? “Q's arrival is, as it often was, is unexpected,” said Stewart. “But it also comes at a shattering moment in the episode. And I do mean a shattering moment. Whether it's directly connected to Q or not, I'm not sure, but there is significant trauma. And in fact at the moment, I'm working on how the trauma of this moment hangs around Picard for quite a substantial part of the episode and then – there [Q] is.” “In the same way that we have tried to do with Picard himself, Terry Matalas and I don’t pretend that the interstitial years [between The Next Generation and Picard] didn’t happen,” executive producer Akiva Goldsman told the Hollywood Reporter. “Obviously, chronological time is less relevant to Q. The time between shows is probably not even the blink of an eye in Q time – if you even have Q time. But we definitely chose to follow suit when it came to him, so as we tried to evolve the other characters, the same is true of Q. This is a show of a different time with actors of a different age. We’re now talking about the issues that come up in the last [stage] of your life. We wanted a Q that could play in that arena with Picard.” Goldsman also described Q as a “trickster god” and expanded on the importance of Picard’s relationship with Q. “There’s a lot of discussion in [Star Trek: Picard] season 2 about the nature of connectedness,” he said. “Q’s kind of a great lightning rod for that because in some ways he’s one of Picard’s deepest… not deep in the same way that Riker is or Beverly Crusher was but in its own [way, a] uniquely, profoundly deep relationship.” One major difference between Star Trek: Picard season 2 and its predecessor is that this time Jean-Luc – now long-retired from Starfleet – has his own crew. So don’t be surprised if the new season feels more of an ensemble show, with more time devoted to Cris Rios, Raffi Musiker, Soji Asha, Elnor and Seven of Nine. Integrating all of them – and new characters – into the narrative will be one of the new season’s hardest missions. “That's the challenge,” season 1 showrunner Michael Chabon told the Hollywood Reporter. “First, it's got to be good, right? It has to be focused on Picard but have room for all the other characters. It’s never going to be just a show about the crew of a starship that's part of Starfleet and everyone's wearing uniforms and they're flying around, encountering alien life and weird planets. Those are the challenges we face going into season 2, and I'm so excited about the story we’ve come up with.” Chabon expanded on the idea in another interview with Variety: “It’s about letting people’s identities emerge. I think we’ll have more time for that in the second season than we’ve had in the first season. We just had so many characters and so much story to tell in this first season, that a lot of the sort of more personal aspects of things – including again, [things] like people’s families, and all that stuff – just all got sort of left [behind].” And for anyone who was left underwhelmed with the season 1 finale, the production team have hopefully found a solution going into Star Trek: Picard season 2. “Figure out the end earlier!” said Goldsman when the Hollywood Reporter asked what the team had learned from their first year. “If you’re going to do a serialized show, you have the whole story before you start shooting. It’s more like a movie in that way – you better know the end of your third act before you start filming your first scene.” Star Trek: Picard episode 1 recap This is the crew manifest for Star Trek: Picard season 2 as it stands: The show was always built around the star power of Sir Patrick Stewart, and he’ll be joined in the Star Trek: Picard season 2 cast by his regular La Sirena crew: Michelle Hurd (Raffi Musiker), Santiago Cabrera (Cris Rios), Evan Evagora (Elnor), Alison Pill (Dr Agnes Jurati), and Isa Briones (Soji Asha). Star Trek: Voyager veteran Jeri Ryan will also be back as former Borg Seven of Nine – presumably she’ll be looking to do something to help the Borg Cube (and its residents) stranded on Coppelius. In addition to the returning John de Lancie as Q, there’s another veteran of The Next Generation returning to the Final Frontier – Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan. Stewart formally invited his former co-star to join the Star Trek: Picard season 2 cast during an appearance on Goldberg’s TV show, The View. “It was wonderful having you, and we cannot wait to have you with us again one more time," said Stewart. .@SirPatStew officially invites @WhoopiGoldberg to join season two of #StarTrekPicard: “It was wonderful having you, and we cannot wait to have you with us again one more time.” https://t.co/f8u2wbJuik #StarTrek pic.twitter.com/mxOtyJxF63January 22, 2020 Officially the bartender in Ten Forward, the Enterprise-D’s relaxation area, Guinan (a centuries-old El-Aurian) was also Picard’s confidante. She also had little time for Q, so it’ll be intriguing if they end up colliding with each other in the new season. As for the rest of the Next Generation crew, the one star certain to return is Jonathan Frakes – though not necessarily on screen. He confirmed to TrekMovie that he’s back to direct a pair of Star Trek: Picard season 2 episodes, but claimed that he wasn’t sure whether he’d be back as Captain William Riker. If Riker does return, however, it’s a safe bet Marina Sirtis will be back as his screen wife, Deanna Troi. And although Brent Spiner has said he’s played the android Data for the last time, he hasn’t ruled out a return as Dr Altan Soong. “I wouldn't really entertain the idea of doing [Data] again because I just don't think it would be realistic,” he told TV Guide. But what about Worf, Geordi LaForge and Dr Crusher? Thanks to the amount of time the role requires in the make-up chair, Michael Dorn said he’d only be up for returning as the Federation’s resident Klingon, Worf, if it was really worthwhile. “I’m only interested in if it’s something really interesting,” he told Inverse. “If the character was a major part of the franchise or whatever the show is. He’s not just going to show up, beat somebody up, and then go home.” While Worf’s status is ambiguous, two cast members have seemingly ruled themselves out of a return. In April 2021, LeVar Burton told Whoopi Goldberg on The View (via TrekMovie) that, “I can say unequivocally that I am not doing season 2 of Picard” – though it’s important to add that he hasn’t ruled out an appearance as Geordi La Forge in a future season. And there’ll be no return (yet) for Gates McFadden – which means that Star Trek: Picard season 2 won’t be able to explore the status of Jean-Luc’s will they/won’t they relationship with Dr Beverly Crusher. “I’m not in the second season,” she told TrekMovie. “I’m sad that I’m not. I’m disappointed because it would have been so much fun to just work with those people. But we’ll see. I have no idea…” But don’t give up hope just yet, because this could be a clever deployment of smoke and mirrors. Marina Sirtis claimed she wasn’t going to be in the first season of the show and look what happened there… Although CBS has yet to confirm it, and won't comment on rumours, the Hollywood Reporter claims sources have revealed that season 3 has been informally given the go ahead – and may be filmed back-to-back with season 2. When a subsequent Hollywood Reporter interview asked Goldsman in April 2021 if this was still the plan, he replied: “I would love to answer that, but I cannot.” According to an interview in Variety, Michael Chabon won't be as heavily involved in season 2 of Star Trek: Picard as he was in the first. He's shifting his attention to developing a TV series for Showtime based on his novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. But he will continue to work on Picard season 2 as an executive producer, and give notes to the writers. "I’m still an executive producer on Picard," he told Variety. "I’m writing two episodes. I was there breaking the second season, all the way through. I was engaged, I think, to exactly the same degree as I was on the first season." Terry Matalas, a veteran of Twelve Monkeys and MacGyver will take over as the Star Trek: Picard season 2 showrunner. Star Trek: Picard is available to watch on Paramount Plus in the US and Amazon Prime Video internationally.
Star Trek: Picard season 2 release date: 2022
Star Trek: Picard season 2 trailer: see both teasers
Cut to the chase
Star Trek: Picard season 2 story: what's Jean-Luc's new mission?
Star Trek: Picard episode 2 recap
Star Trek: Picard episode 3 recap
Star Trek: Picard episode 4 recap
Star Trek: Picard episode 5 recap
Star Trek: Picard episode 6 recap
Star Trek: Picard episode 7 recap
Star Trek: Picard episode 8 recap
Star Trek: Picard episode 9 recap
Star Trek: Picard episode 10 recapStar Trek: Picard season 2 cast: Q, Guinan and other returning characters
There could also be a Star Trek: Picard season 3
Star Trek: Picard season 2 showrunner: there's a change at the helm
source https://www.techradar.com/news/star-trek-picard-season-2-release-date/
Our past recaps of Star Trek: Picard
