Captain Kirk's Body In Star Trek: Picard Could Be More Than Just An Easter Egg

The third season of "Star Trek: Picard" was full of Easter eggs and good old-fashioned nostalgia, but it turns out that one Easter egg might actually be a hint at things to come. 

In season 3, episode 6 of "Picard" (which is titled "The Bounty"), Worf (Michael Dorn), Raffi (Michelle Hurd), and Riker (Jonathan Frakes) break into Daystrom Institute's underground warehouse to try and retrieve what remains of Data (Brent Spiner). While they're there, they see a few interesting items taken by Starfleet Intelligence, including an attack tribble and the body of one James Tiberius Kirk. We don't actually get to see Kirk, of course, just his X-ray and some basic information about him. Still, it's pretty wild to know that Starfleet went and got his body off of Veridian III (where we last saw him at the end of "Star Trek Generations"). 

The role of Kirk was, of course, originally played by /Film contributor William Shatner on "Star Trek: The Original Series" back in the 1960s and then in the seven "Star Trek" films over the 30 years that followed. However, he's also been played by Chris Pine in the Kelvin-verse films (starting with "Star Trek" in 2009) and by Paul Wesley on "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds." That means it's not impossible that we could see the character show up in other "Trek" properties, too.

In an interview with ComicBook.com, "Star Trek: Picard" season 3 showrunner Terry Matalas confirmed that this little Easter egg could, in fact, have potential repercussions elsewhere — and they could be very exciting.

In the interview, Terry Matalas was asked if the Kirk's body Easter egg was a hint about anything that could potentially happen in the future, including Paul Wesley reprising the role of Kirk — as a clone perhaps? — in the 25th century, maybe on "Star Trek: Legacy." (Just to be totally clear: "Legacy," a proposed "Picard" spinoff series following Jeri Ryan's Captain Seven of Nine, hasn't been confirmed yet, but Matalas hopes to make it a reality.) 

Matalas explained:

"In 'Star Trek,' anything is possible, right? Look, we put that in there as an Easter egg. I always thought that it was a s****y grave on Veridian III. It was a pile of rocks, I don't care what fans think. It became a controversial idea. Starfleet showed up an hour and a half later. There was no way they were going to leave Kirk's body that had just come through the nexus under a pile of coal on the planet. So it was less an insidious plan, and it was mostly a nod to Shatner and Judy and Gar's [Reeves-Stevens] novel 'The Return' in that way, and to give some opportunity to keep that character alive in some way, whether that would be Shatner or some new actor, or crazy gender swap clone, some fun thing. It's science-fiction, and your imagination is endless. That was the idea behind that."

It turns out there already was a gender-swapped Kirk in the "Star Trek" comics, in one of the Kelvin-verse stories. That sounds like a lot of fun, but it could be exciting to see Wesley's young Kirk appear and link the franchise together in a brand new way, too.

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