‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Bosses Tease Plan for Show’s End & Promise Questions Will Be Answered

Star Trek: The Captains

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Starship captain Christopher Pike was having terrifying visions. And no wonder; while visiting the Klingon planet Boreth, he’d put his hand on a time crystal and seen a vivid, harrowing picture of his fate. Ten years in the future, he would be saving the lives of a group of Starfleet cadets, but he’d also sustain radiation burns that would leave him disfigured, paralyzed, and incapable of speech. How do you reconcile that? How do you go on?

As the resolute Pike, played with charm and strength by Anson Mount, says in the premiere episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, “Till our last moment, the future is what we make it.” Granted, he’s giving that message to the leaders of two warring factions on a distant planet who are prepping for civil war, but he was also reminding himself that it’s important to live in the present.

The future is indeed “what we make it” on Strange New Worlds, a series that, unlike any other, celebrates the power, drama and endurance of the 60-year-old Star Trek franchise. Show producers took on the audacious task of creating a prequel series, one that begins with Pike commanding the USS Enterprise and presumably ending with Capt. James T. Kirk (played here by Paul Wesley) assuming control. (As fans of the Original Series recall, Pike, played by Jeffrey Hunter in the series’ first pilot, “The Cage,” would ultimately give way to William Shatner‘s Kirk.) In the process, SNW has continued crafting fascinating backstories to characters we’ve adored for decades, filling in details to a well-known timeline. That producers have succeeded in a series viewers have embraced is no small thing.

Marni Grossman / Paramount+

And on July 23, those viewers will get to see the premiere of Season 4, with its 10 episodes; Season 5’s final six episodes of the series have been filmed, but a premiere date remains as closely guarded a secret as the plots of what’s to come.

SNW creators Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet, and showrunners Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, have, since the show’s 2022 premiere, risked fan derision and worse. But, as Kirk — played by Shatner — once famously declared in the Original Series, “Risk is our business.”

“Job No. 1 of the [show’s final] season is to get us right up to Kirk’s first day in the chair,” confirms Goldsman. “And so, canonically, there will likely be some questions answered; I mean, there sort of has to be. You’ve got to know where some folks end up and how some folks shift. That’s our plan.”

The plan so far has created interesting choices. We know from the Original Series that Mr. Spock is engaged to, and then spurned by, his Vulcan intended, T’Pring. In SNW, we get some prelude to this, as Spock (Ethan Peck) seems to frustrate T’Pring (Gia Sandhu) with his devotion to Starfleet. Spock and Christine Chapel’s (Jess Bush) brush with romance and sad breakup take liberties with the original story, but it is Chapel who, in this series, helps the Vulcan science officer channel his half-human side.

Marni Grossman / Paramount+

Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) comes to the Enterprise as a genius but very green cadet and language expert; she’s quickly tested and begins to see her place. Scotty (Scottish actor Martin Quinn) makes an appearance in Season 2 and is a full-time engineer in Season 3, although far from the miracle worker he will one day become.

Seeing these introductions is SNW‘s great guilty pleasure for fans of the Original Series, and perhaps nothing rivals the first meeting between Spock and a young lieutenant on the USS Farragut named James T. Kirk. “I kept trying to make a meal out of it, but if you do that it just becomes this unnatural thing,” says Wesley of their characters’ meet-cute. And it is when Spock needs to give Kirk a mind meld for the first time that Kirk suggests to the Vulcan who will one day be his closest friend, “Maybe call me Jim.” “OK…Jim,” a hesitant Spock says as he sets to probe Kirk’s mind.

While these goosebump moments thrill, Goldsman and Alonso Myers know they’ll have their hands full explaining the fates of other favorite characters. Andorian chief engineer Hemmer (played by Bruce Horan, the first legally blind costar of a Trek series) died in Season 1, but other main players have journeys ahead. Security chief La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), helmsman Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) and chief medical officer Joseph M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) were not in the Original Series. And Una (Rebecca Romijn), aka Number One, Pike’s first officer, was not a character who was on the bridge when Kirk took over.

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Anson Mount Reveals His 'Star Trek' Plans After 'Strange New Worlds' Ends

Two mysteries have so far been solved; Thomas Jane and Kai Murakami will appear in the Season 5 series finale as, respectively, Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy and helmsman Sulu.

But how will they appear? And what is the destiny of these other fan favorites? SNW is now tasked with, on the one hand, creating an acceptable farewell to this beloved newer show and also plausibly linking it to our favorite old Star Trek series. How does Goldsman plan to do that?

The co-showrunner shrugs before offering the only logical reply: “Very carefully.”— Additional reporting by Damian Holbrook and Meredith Jacobs

Star Trek: Strange New World, Season 4 Premiere, Thursday, July 23, Paramount+

TV Guide Magazine’s Star Trek: The Captains Special Issue is available for order online now at StarTrek.TVGM2026.com, and for purchase on newsstands nationwide.