Warning: Contains spoilers about the latest season of Star Trek: Picard.
Star Trek: Picard has come to an end, with the final season giving the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation the fitting ending they so dearly deserved. Of course, the joy of Star Trek is that it is never really over; there are always new stories to tell in the never-ending universe that they so boldly traverse. But if you are hoping for a spin-off anytime soon, then you may need to arm yourself with some patience.
Though this may be the end of the Picard series, a post-credit scene has set up the potential for a spinoff, with Jack, Picard’s son, hearing that his trials “have just begun” from the omnipotent Q, a character who made his first appearance in The Next Generation.
So now we have the potential to follow on from Picard’s story, with Matalas having previously expressed a desire to do just that on social media. He is not, however, ready to jump in guns a blazing just yet though, though he talked about the possibility with Alex Kurtzman, the man in charge of overseeing the expansion of the franchise, telling Variety,
“Alex and I talk all the time. If it’s something that’s going to be done, we want to make sure we don’t rush into it. We want to make sure we do it right. That’s where we’re at with it, I say coyly. At the moment, there’s nothing developed on it. But we talk all the time.”
He does, however, deny that he wrote season three with the exact thought of seeding a spin-off series, but with the goal of ending on a hopeful note. He answered Variety’s question on whether or not he intended to set up a spin-off by saying,
“Well, not specifically seeding for a spinoff, as lovely as that is to think about. I definitely wanted the feeling that it could go on, that it was a passing of the torch of the last generation to the next. That I really wanted. I think that’s the spirit of Star Trek, that they’re going to continue exploring strange new worlds. That’s a feeling of hope. So you want to get just a little taste of what that might be — for it to be a satisfying ending, it needed to be a satisfying beginning. Having said that, of course, I want to see Jack and Seven and Sidney and Raffi and everybody go on forever. But yeah, that was the creative impulse behind it.”
The showrunner admits he does not know what is to come next, but based on the success of the Picard series, we hope that a spin-off is somewhere on the table and that they take the time they need to do it justice.
You can watch all of Star Trek: Picard streaming on Paramount Plus.