Star Trek: Picard Showrunner Terry Matalas Reveals The First Question He Wanted Answered In Season 3 [Exclusive]

This post contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Picard" season 3, episode 2.

If you're caught up on your "Star Trek: Picard," then you know we find out that Jean-Luc (Patrick Stewart) and the young Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers) have more in common than the retired Starfleet admiral thought. That's right — Jack is Picard's son, the result of his and Beverly Crusher's (Gates McFadden) romantic entangling before she mysteriously disappeared a couple of decades ago.

We don't know yet why Beverly decided to keep Jack away from Jean-Luc, but when I asked showrunner Terry Matalas when the idea to give the show's titular character a son was hatched, he shared that he wanted to explore this type of relationship for Picard from the get-go.

"The first question I asked, even before the 'Next Generation' characters came into it, was, 'What's the last unexplored relationship in Captain Picard's life?'" he told me in an interview right before the third season premiere. Matalas went on to explain why giving Picard a son was the answer to his question, and why he wanted the mother of Jean-Luc's son to be Beverly Crusher.

Picard's family over the course of his life has been Starfleet. He never settled down, and he never married. And while the legendary captain (and later on, admiral) has had his fair share of loving and complex relationships throughout his appearances in the franchise, we've never seen him grapple with having a son (the events from the "Next Generation" episode, "Bloodlines," aside).

For Matalas, that relationship was something he wanted to dig into, and the opportunity to bring Beverly back into the "Star Trek" fold intrigued him. "We felt like he's explored a father-daughter thing with Soji [played by Isa Briones] in season 1. And it felt like a son [would be the way to go], but what would make sense?" he said.

The showrunner admitted that it was "a hard one to go to Beverly Crusher, because why would she not tell him?" But a mirror universe didn't feel right to him either, so he and his writing team opted to go to a character place with it. "Beverly Crusher is, I always felt, a character who never got her due," he explained before adding:

"She never got enough screen time, never got enough exploration. I always thought it was fascinating that in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,' she said goodbye to her son, Wesley Crusher, who went off into space and became this traveler, and then rarely speaks of him ever again, and what that must do for any human being. So it became suddenly rich, dramatic opportunity for these characters — but also dangerous if done wrong."

We'll get to see how Picard handles becoming a father as this season's episodes unfold every Thursday on Paramount+.