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For a minute there, it felt like you couldn’t chuck a rock at Paramount+ without hitting a Star Trek, bouncing it off about five different deflector dishes, and braining a large number of people in different eras of Starfleet uniforms in the process. Now, though, the streamer has announced that it’s set a rough end date for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the only currently active Trek show on the roster. Admittedly, though, it’s a pretty distant endpoint: The series, which is set to release its third season starting in July, will now officially terminate with its fifth.
The simple existence of said fifth season was actually part of the announcement today, with the streamer revealing that the series has now officially been renewed for six episodes beyond its current four-season order. But those six episodes will bring the story of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and his crew (which includes numerous characters pulled from the original Star Trek, notably Ethan Peck as a young version of Spock) to a close. Credit to the streamer: As with the animated Lower Decks, which ended last December, Paramount+ is giving Strange New Worlds plenty of runway to bring its version of space exploration to a close.
Which has always been a little hard to pin down, but might be glibly described as “the fun one.” Not that Strange New Worlds doesn’t have a decent amount of drama attached to it—Pike’s got to end up in that mechanized wheelchair from the original Trek one of these days—but it’s also a series that has never been shy about letting its cast members burst into song, or interact with their animated counterparts, or do an episode-long fantasy riff because, hey, it’s space, anything can happen. Embracing the franchise’s episodic roots, and not taking itself too seriously, the show’s two seasons have showed it to be a winning blend of Trek‘s more fun-loving traits. We’ll be said to see it go, whenever that actually ends up happening—but happy to know it’ll be able to go out on its own terms.
Strange New Worlds‘ third season debuts on Paramount+ on July 17.
