Does the Season 2 Trailer Hint at a Time Travel Story?

Paramount+ has released the teaser trailer for Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard, and it just may hint at a story that involves time travel.

Paramount+ has released the first teaser trailer for Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard, which is set to premiere sometime in 2022. The trailer itself doesn’t feature any actual footage from the new season, which has just recently begun filming. Instead, it takes us on a tour of Jean-Luc Picard’s home and study, showing multiple artifacts, such as a clock, a book and model ships.

All of this builds up to the reveal of a Queen of Hearts card that burns away to focus only on the letter Q, confirming the return of the fan-favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation villain played by John de Lancie. But while the teaser’s primary focus is the reveal of Q’s return, it may also hide a hint that Season 2’s story will take Picard on an adventure across time.

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As the teaser trailer takes fans on a tour of Picard’s home, the Captain’s voice offers a narration that leans heavily on the theme of time. “The true final frontier is time,” he says. “Time can turn even our most impulsive, our most ill-considered actions into history. Time offers so many opportunities, but never second chances.” This narration, on its own, can be taken as Picard looking back at his long life as a Starfleet officer, but things take a very interesting turn in the teaser when it shows an hourglass inside Picard’s home. Inside the glass, the sand is not falling — rather, it’s moving upwards. This indicates the idea of time moving backward, which may be a sign that Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard will take the title character on a time travel story.

This theory is further fueled by the return of Q. As a member of the Q Continuum, Q has great cosmic powers, ones that have allowed him to manipulate time before. In fact, in the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “All Good Things…,” Picard hopped between three different timelines, all as part of Q’s final trial. But now, as the villain says in the closing moments of the Picard Season 2 trailer, “the trial never ends.”

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If Q’s trial is set to continue, then he may be planning to displace Picard in time. After all, the last time the two faced each other was in an episode that involved time travel, and that could stretch into Picard when Q returns. This could explain why the trailer also shows Picard’s old communicator badge, as well as a model of the U.S.S. Stargazer, the ship he commanded before the Enterprise.

So far, Picard is the series that is furthest ahead in the current Star Trek timeline (outside of Star Trek: Discovery, of course, which has stranded its crew in the 32nd century). However, if time travel is involved when the series returns, Season 2 could take Picard back to the era of The Next Generation as his chess match with Q continues.

Star Trek: Picard stars Patrick Stewart, Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd, Evan Evagora, Isa Briones, Santiago Cabrera and Harry Treadaway. The first season is available on Paramount+.

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