Star Trek: Picard's Wil Wheaton Explains Why We Didn't See Wesley In Season 3 Finale
Gifting fans with a cascade of Borg-battling action and dangling character arcs neatly tied up, the last episode of the final season of "Star Trek: Picard" was pretty much everything a dedicated Trekkie could wish for. But one high-profile character noticeably missing from the series finale is Wil Wheaton's Wesley Crusher.
A familiar face to fans from his time aboard the Enterprise-D during "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Wesley's position within the ship's crew was always something of a mixed blessing as far as the kid-phobic Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) was concerned. But as it turns out, it wasn't the Captain's well-known aversion to having children aboard his ship that prevented Wheaton's character from showing up for duty on the "Star Trek: Picard" season-capping installment — at least, that is according to Wheaton himself.
In a Facebook response to a question posed by Gizmodo (via Collider), Wheaton spelled out his reasoning for why Wesley couldn't pay a quick visit to his mom and the rest of his old Enterprise pals on the "Star Trek: Picard" finale. As fans are aware, Wesley abandoned his human life to become a Traveler in the concluding episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation." As Wheaton pointed out, while it may not be official "Star Trek" canon, the Traveler protocols stipulate that, "Once you've joined, you must NEVER interact directly with the people, places, planets, etc. that were part of your previous life, because it can affect your judgment and break reality."
Wil Wheaton says Wesley wanted to see his family and friends, but he simply couldn't
The Travelers, as any well-versed Trekkie would be happy to tell you, are a mysterious race of beings who first make themselves known to the Federation in the 2360s. Capable of tweaking space-time and warp fields purely through the power of their minds, Travelers can slip easily between both dimensions and time periods. Due to Travelers' ability to affect the very fabric of reality, upon becoming one of them, Wil Wheaton's Wesley Crusher gave up the prospect of interacting with his former family and friends.
Expanding on his reply to the Gizmodo query noted above, Wheaton said, "Wesley would like nothing more than to visit his mom, and meet his brother [Jack, played by Ed Speleers]." However, the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" star went on to explain that the Traveler rules that prevent any contact with figures from his previous existence are there for good reasons. And while being kept away from the most important people in his former life was clearly painful for Wesley, Wheaton said, "Not seeing them is a sacrifice he has to make in service of something so much bigger than anything else in his reality."