Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Finally Pays Off Season 1's Biggest Tease

Shields up! This article contains spoilers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4, Episode 7, "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass."

The steadfast crew of the USS Enterprise have survived countless dangers and cosmic oddities before, but none could have prepared them for what the latest hour of "Strange New Worlds" has in store for them: a soap opera episode. As both we and a groggy Captain Pike (Anson Mount) soon learn, this latest genre-jumping gimmick comes courtesy of the ever-meddlesome Trelane (Rhys Darby). Of course, this is the same trickster we learned was actually part of the Q Continuum back in Season 3 and no less than the (implied) son of Q himself, played by the great John De Lancie. But his return isn't even the one that's bound to get tongues wagging. Instead, that honor goes to a certain pointy-eared villain we've been thinking about ever since Season 1.

You remember our old pal Sybok, don't you? Back in the "Strange New Worlds" episode "The Serene Squall," Ethan Peck's Spock thwarts an attempt to free his estranged half brother from rehabilitation — a consequence of Sybok's choice to spurn logic and embrace the notably un-Vulcan-like worldview of chaos and mischief. At the end of the episode, we actually glimpse Sybok from behind, but this tease mostly left fans wondering when he'd pop up again.

That finally happens in Season 4, Episode 7. As we know from the "Star Trek" movies, Sybok is destined to plague Spock as the main antagonist in 1989's "The Final Frontier," played by Laurence Luckinbill. Here, however, Sybok undergoes a bit of a makeover befitting the episode's stylistic approach. Played by Peck in a gloriously silly wig and a chest-baring shirt, Spock's half brother is back and as ridiculous as ever ... sort of.

As with much of Season 4 of "Strange New Worlds" to this point, this week's edition of the Paramount+ series truly has it all — punctuated by Ethan Peck as Sybok hamming it up like a male lead straight out of a cheesy romance novel. The reveal early on in Episode 7 comes as La'an (Christina Chong) travels back to the Enterprise, toting the criminal Vulcan as her prisoner. With everyone believing that Spock is near certain death, only his genetically similar sibling will suffice to clone his heart, undergo a transplant, and bring him back ... but that's only the beginning of how weird things are about to get.

After all, this Sybok is quite different from the one Trekkies know. For one thing, the two Vulcans aren't actually twins (as Spock clarifies at the end of the hour). For another, there's obviously no such thing as a "living heart transplant" in the first place. But Trelane's reality-tampering antics do expose one actual truth: the emotions our crew members feel are real, and this is clearly La'an's way of processing her recent breakup with Spock. For those of us invested in the Spock/La'an of it all, their parting scene is as heartbreaking as it gets. The fact that this subplot uses the "return" of Sybok is a neat bit of fan-service — nothing more.

Viewers may have wanted a more substantial payoff to that Season 1 tease, but this may be the closest we'll ever get to that. As much as "Strange New Worlds" enjoys messing with canon, Sybok's appearance in "The Final Frontier" likely precludes its writers from retconning anything more than they already have. New episodes of "Strange New Worlds" stream on Paramount+ every Thursday.