Patrick Stewart Still Sees 'Enormous Potential' For Picard's Star Trek Future After Season 3

The third and final season of "Star Trek: Picard," which is set to arrive on Paramount+ shortly after Valentine's Day 2023, will come with a slew of returning "Star Trek: The Next Generation" characters. In addition to the eponymous admiral (Patrick Stewart), the third season will also feature LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, and Gates McFadden. They will be joined by Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, and Brent Spiner, who have appeared on "Picard" in previous seasons. The reunification of that cast — their first time on screen together since "Star Trek: Nemesis" in 2002 — is reason enough to make some Trekkies wiggle in anticipation.

By its third season, "Picard" will take place in the early years of the 25th century. Picard is now a retired admiral, and is about 100 years old (Stewart himself is 82). He no longer has any interest in serving aboard a starship, and doesn't wear a uniform. The crises he faces over the course of the series have to do with his personal connections to the android character Data (in season 1) and to the omnipotent space deity Q (in season 2). He gathers a makeshift team of helpers, and treks out to solve oblique mysteries. In the show's third season, he will face off against a mysterious, revenge-oriented villain played by Amanda Plummer.

While Picard is a century old, a plot twist at the end of the show's first season saw his consciousness shunted into an identical android body. While the characters explain that he is definitely not immortal, there's no reason to believe that his mortality could be disabled, and that Picard could continue living in his artificial form for several centuries to come.

The future of the character may have much more in store.

Patrick Stewart certainly seems to think Jean-Luc Picard's journey is far from over. Speaking to Deadline, the actor, who will likely leave his "Star Trek" days behind him after "Picard" season 3, said that he believes Jean-Luc himself will persist in perpetuity:

"There is still enormous potential for matters in what we can do and there are doors left open and we didn't close all of them."

Of course, Stewart has to remain coy about the plot of "Picard" season 3 prior to its airing, so the actual details of what doors are left open will have to remain under-wraps for the moment. Because this is the perfect time for speculation, one might consider a few exciting possibilities. Perhaps Picard will indeed be made an immortal android, or at least a being capable of living many more hundreds of years. Seeing as the character has always had a keen interest in archaeology, perhaps he will take a team of young, hotshot Indiana Jones-types under his wing and become a galactic tomb raider exploring long-dead alien civilizations.

While "Picard" season 3 was announced as the show's last, strong viewership could tempt Paramount into continuing the series in some other form (if not revive it outright). As "Picard" co-creator Alex Kurtzman told Deadline:

"If the show blows the doors off the place, and we're certainly hoping it will as we're very proud of season three, who knows?"

The message here, then, is clear: Subscribe to Paramount+, talk about "Picard" on social media, and we'll definitely get the "Jean-Luc Picard: Tomb Raider" TV series spinoff we clearly all want to see. His first stop will have to be retrieving the Kurlan Naiskos from the Federation archive.

"Star Trek: Picard" season 3 will premiere on February 16, 2023, on Paramount+.