Paramount Jeri Ryan as Seven
As the second season of “Star Trek: Picard” winds down — and fans brace for the season finale on May 5, 2022 — a bunch of storylines were tied up in Episode 9. While some answers were solved for Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his team of time travelers, some big questions remain unanswered going into next week’s episode.
ATTENTION READER: THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS AND INFORMATION ABOUT “STAR TREK: PICARD” SEASON 2: EPISODE 9, “HIDE AND SEEK.”
Viewers saw several exciting things happen in “Hide and Seek,” including the return of Elnor (Evan Evagora), though he was just a hologram. Fans were treated as a possible reason for Cristóbal Rios (Santiago Cabrera) to stay in the 21st Century. His budding love with Dr. Teresa Ramirez (Sol Rodriguez) might get Rios to swear off being a starship captain in the future.
Here are a few other interesting items from “Hide and Seek,” which could ripple into “Picard” Season 3, and possibly other shows and stories.
Seven becomes a Borg Again
Toward the end of the episode, Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), who has been taken over by the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching), injures Seven. It turns out the only way to save Seven (Jeri Ryan) was to invade her body with Borg implants. And they show up in the same spots which they were in throughout “Star Trek: Voyager.”
This is notable because, in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Ryan said that she used to think she’d never return to the role which made her famous.
“After ’Voyager’ ended, if you asked me if I would play this character again, I would have said, ‘Absolutely not,’” the actress told reporter Ryan Parker. I was convinced that I had said goodbye to her, and that chapter was done.”
“This has been such a gift, even more than I expected it to be, because I was a little hesitant when I signed on to do ‘Picard,’” she said in the interview. “Ideas sound great on paper, but until you start seeing fully realized scripts and how the characters are really being developed, you just don’t know. So, it has been such a gift on so many levels to be able to revisit this character and continue this huge amount of her journey and massive arc.”
She also said that Seven would be back, presumably, for “Picard: Season 3.”
Picard and his Mother
While fans learned the tragic ending of Picard’s mother (Madeline Wise), the show did reference an episode of “The Next Generation,” where Picard encountered an illusion of his mother. In that episode, “Where No One Has Gone Before,” Picard did get an offer for tea with his “Maman,” as he said he imagined he might have in “Hide and Seek.” The late Herta Ware played Yvette Picard in that episode.
Red Light, Green Light
As the troops, controlled by Dr. Adam Soong (Brent Spiner), stormed Picard’s home in France, they had green lasers mounted on their weapons. The producers of “Star Trek: Picard” likely made that choice because green is one of the colors of the Borg. This is not actually the best color for the job.
According to Crimson Trace, a manufacturer of weapon accessories, green lasers are used in the daytime, and red lasers are the preferred choice for the evening. Crimson Trace’s Mike Faw said that “laser sights that are clearly visible at night with special night vision equipment are actually infrared laser sights and are not visible to the naked eye.”
Picard, Guns, and Borg
It might be that Mr. Worf (Michael Dorn) has the record for shooting Borg drones with a phaser. That worked only a few times because the Borg would adapt their personal shields to block the weapon. But Picard has used old-fashioned firearms to take out the villains a few times.
Trek fans might remember the famous scene in “Star Trek: First Contact” when Picard created a holodeck scene and used a Tommy gun to mow down a bunch of Borg who got onto the Enterprise-D. In “Hide and Seek,” Picard picked up a pistol and used all the rounds in the clip to take out the Borg troopers. Those guys did not have personal shields, so the bullets worked just fine.
Will Season 2 End on a Cliffhanger?
TwitterA Tweet from Terry Matalas
Toward the end of “Hide and Seek,” many fans wondered if this story would bleed into Season 3 of “Picard.” At the end of the episode, Picard, Rios, Seven, and Raffi (Michelle Hurd) hurried away to prevent anything from happening to Renée Picard (Penelope Mitchell) and her space mission. Meanwhile, Agnes flew away in the La Sirena, and Soong also escaped.
Worry not, said “Picard” co-showrunner Terry Matalas, who confirmed on Twitter that this season will be “self-contained.” This is excellent news, as nobody wants another situation like “The Best of Both Worlds.” That was when Riker (Jonathan Frakes) said “fire” at the end of Season 3 of “The Next Generation.” Fans had to wait three months to find out what happened in “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II,” which was the first episode of Season 4.
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