„I’ve never been so happy to see so many wrinkles“

Jean-Luc Picard is a retired Starfleet admiral in the depicted timeline of Star Trek: Picard, which begins 20 years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis. The first two seasons of PIC feature several guest actors from TNG reprising their roles in the franchise along with the show’s lead actor Patrick Stewart in several episodes. However, it is only in the third and final season of the series that these characters start to appear in each episode and the complete command crew of the USS Enterprise reunites on the bridge of a restored Enterprise-D. The final season is also particularly abundant in retrospective and nostalgic scenes. Nonetheless, at moments, the showrunners also take a deconstructive approach toward the past events from other Star Trek productions. In this chapter, I undertake a critical examination of PIC’s final season with a focus on age, closure, and continuity, in order to demonstrate the show’s divergence from the established serial logic of its previous seasons and the cultural significance of this divergence.