Patrick Stewart Confirms What We Suspected About Picard Season 3
So far, "Star Trek: Picard" has been a huge success for Paramount+ and its nine-figure bet on Alex Kurtzman to create new "Star Trek" original series. When Season 1 premiered in January 2020 it was an instant critical hit, boasting a robust 87% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes among the professional TV-watchers.
In Season 1, the story caught up with Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) years after the events of "Star Trek: Nemesis," with Picard still grieving over the death of his synthetic second officer Data (Brent Spiner). The story began when Data's android daughter Dahj arrived on Picard's family's vineyard asking for his help, and ended with Picard sacrificing himself for synthetic life. Based on the trailer for Season 2, Picard's consciousness will be inhabiting a new synthetic body, in which he will travel back to the 21st century to stop his nemesis Q (John de Lancie) from establishing a totalitarian government on Earth.
That's enough story to cover several more seasons of television, but for anyone hoping "Picard" lasts past 2023, we have some unfortunate news.
Picard will officially end after Season 3
In an interview with SFX Magazine alongside "Picard" co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman, Patrick Stewart confirmed that the upcoming third season will be the show's last (via Trek Central on Twitter).
"Picard" Season 3 has been in the works for quite some time. Technically, Paramount+ renewed "Picard" for both Season 2 and Season 3 back in January 2020, but the third season was officially announced in September 2021. Since 2020, the plan was to film Season 2 and Season 3 back-to-back in a bid to control production costs and accommodate the casts' schedules (via The Hollywood Reporter).
"Picard" Season 2 will premiere on Thursday, March 3, 2022, with new episodes released on Thursdays (via Deadline). Season 3 doesn't yet have an official release date, but Deadline has reported that it will be available in "early 2023."
It's definitely disappointing to some fans that "Picard" won't be going beyond Season 3. On the bright side, there's still plenty of new "Star Trek" content in the near future. In addition to "Star Trek: Discovery," "Trek: Lower Decks," and the kid-centric "Star Trek: Prodigy" on Nickelodeon, there's also the upcoming "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds," which will debut later this year. It won't have Picard, but at least it's something.