Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' second season will feature a major crossover episode with Star Trek: Lower Decks that will mix the worlds of live-action and animation.
Paramount+ announced the news during the Star Trek Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con and Strange New Worlds' star Anson Mount, who plays Captain Christopher Pike, revealed that Tawny Newsome's Ensign Beckett Mariner and Jack Quaid's Ensign Brad Boimler will join the U.S.S. Enterprise in this special episode.
Furthermore, Star Trek: The Next Generation actor and director Jonathan Frakes, who player Commander William Riker, will be directing the episode for a third Star Trek series connection.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers talked about how this unexpected crossover came to be and how the stars really did align to make it so.
"All of us are huge Lower Decks fans on the Strange New Worlds writing staff," Alonso Myers said. "One of our writers is also a writer on The Boys and had the idea for a crossover and we thought it would be great if we could get even more people to come on. The crazy thing is that we had a whole discussion about it and then Alex [Kurtzman] called us and said, out of nowhere and coincidently, “hey, you guys should do a crossover with Lower Decks,” and I was like, “Have I got good news for you!"
Alongside the Lower Decks crossover, the Gorn look to be a big part of Strange New Worlds future, and not in a great way for our crew.
"I think early on, when Akiva and I were breaking the pilot, we wanted the Gorn to be the big bad of the series; The idea of what we could to do with the Gorn now, with the technology, stretching them over the season as the big bad, it’s the exciting," executive producer Alex Kurtzman said. "It’s still episodic, but they’re there. It’s not going to be the only time you see the Gorn.”
Paul Wesley was also in attendance at Star Trek Universe, and on his birthday no less, and he talked about brining Captain James T. Kirk to life.
“We only saw Kirk for a handful of scenes in the finale and that was a particularly intense episode and when you go back and watch the original episode, 'Balance of Terror,' Kirk is quite intense in that episode so I look forward to fans seeing a different Kirk," Wesley said. "Certainly not a different timeline Kirk but one who is a bit lighter. As a lieutenant on the Farragut. Still finding his way. There’s more levity. It's an exciting season. So I’m looking forward to everyone seeing that."
Oh, and the team behind Strange New Worlds surprised Wesley with a Kirk cake for his birthday and it's just wonderful.
It’s Paul Wesley’s birthday so they brought him a custom creamy KirkCake™ #sdcc #StarTrekSDCC pic.twitter.com/DU6hv6pMIj
— Fowler Zip Zap Zop SDCC (@TheMattFowler) July 23, 2022
There is no premiere date or window for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' second season, but this news should excite fans and prove that the possibilties are endless for this show that is truly going where no one has gone before.
The first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds recently came to a close and we gave it a rare 10/10. In our review, we said, "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ first season manages to recapture the joy of classic Trek in a way that perhaps many of us didn’t know was missing until we experienced this show."
The news of this crossover was accompanied by a teaser and posters for Star Trek: Picard's third season that shows the return of the crew of The Next Generation and a trailer for Lower Decks' third season that teases a visit to Deep Space 9.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.