‘Star Trek: Picard’ Season 2 Trailer Teases the Return of John de Lancie’s Q

Even Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) can’t escape a global pandemic, leading to a delay in the start of production of Season 2 of Paramount+’s Star Trek: Picard. But as of today’s panel for the series, as part of Paramount+’s First Contact Day event, we not only got our first tease of the 2022 debuting season, but also the news that Picard’s old nemesis Q (John de Lancie) will be returning to test the Starfleet captain once again. And it’s about time. Literally.

In the teaser, which zooms over various pieces of memorabilia from Picard’s history, we hear him talk all about how time is the one enemy we can’t beat. “The true final frontier is time,” Picard says. “Time can turn even our most impulsive, our most ill considered actions into history. What we do in a crisis often weighs on us less heavily than what we wish we had done. What could have been.”

Just in case it wasn’t clear that Picard isn’t only referring to time as a metaphor, but as something that is literally going to be messed with in Season 2, an hourglass starts running backwards, as the camera pans over to a table with a deck of card on it; the Queen of Hearts laid out face up.

“Time offers so many opportunities,” Picard continues, “but never second chances.”

The card starts dissolving into dust, leaving only the letter “Q,” as de Lancie intones, “The trial never ends,” followed by extremely ominous laughter.

There’s a ton to unpack there, particular if you don’t have thirty tabs open on Memory Alpha (the Star Trek wiki) right now. But the main bullet-points are that Star Trek: Picard has started production, the season will premiere in 2022, and the full cast — including Brent Spiner — will be back.

Okay, ready for the too deep dive? Here goes. The first layer here is that Star Trek: Picard Season 1 tackled one of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s greatest hits with the villainous Borg. Over the course of the first season, Picard grappled with the revelation that his best friend Data (Spiner) had two “children,” traced them back to their origins, tangled with the Borg, who have a long and horrific history with both characters, and ultimately stopped an AI threat from outside of time. Season 2 seems to be delving into another of the greatest hits with time travel, and Q.

Here’s the slightly deeper layer: Q has appeared on multiple Star Trek series, including an animated turn on Lower Decks, but is most associated with Next Generation, and Picard in particular. The nearly godlike being first tested Picard in the premiere episode of Next Generation, using him as his crew as a defense for all of humanity. Q popped up several times throughout the series, before wrapping things up in the stellar final episodes of the show, which found Picard jumping through three timelines as Q once again put him on trial for the fate of the entire species. That’s where that whole “the trial never ends” thing comes from, strongly implying that whatever Q had going did not end with the final episode of Next Generation, and in fact will continue with Picard and his new crew.

There’s one more, widely speculative layer here, though. The premiere episode of Star Trek: Picard opened with Picard in a dream, playing cards with Data. What cards was Data holding? Five queens of hearts. That seems like too big of a coincidence for it not to have been a setup for Q, and tying in Data to the new season. Of note, Data is “dead” at this point, and Spiner is playing Data’s creator, Dr. Altan Inigo Soong. But with time travel and Q literally on the table, could this all lead to the return of Data? Or: was Data in that dream actually Q all along?

Along with Stewart and Spiner, Star Trek: Picard Season 2 also stars Alison Pill, Isa Briones, Evan Evagora, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, Jeri Ryan and Orla Brady. The series is produced by CBS Studios in association with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment. For season two, Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, Terry Matalas, Michael Chabon, Doug Aarniokoski, Dylan Massin, Patrick Stewart, Heather Kadin, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth serve as executive producers; Aaron Baiers (Secret Hideout) and Kirsten Beyer serve as co-executive producers. Akiva Goldsman and Terry Matalas serve as co-showrunners for Season 2.

Check out the teaser above, and just try keeping de Lancie’s laughter out of your nightmares.

Where to watch Star Trek: Picard