While there’s not an exact release date for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, we suddenly do know a bit more about who will be featured in both the main cast and the supporting cast. Paramount+ has just dropped a series of character portraits for Strange New Worlds Season 3, and in these striking photos, Trekkies can probably do a bit of tea-leaf reading about who’s back, and just how deep we’re doing to dive into the canon of the 2260s this time around.
The new character portraits don’t reveal any spoilers outright, but on some level, you could take these images as confirmation of the continued importance of some folks, as well as the survival of one character who was on the brink of dying in the Season 2 finale.
No spoilers. Speculation follows.
The new character portraits, taken by photographer Pari Dukovic, feature the main cast of the series, including Anson Mount as Captain Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One, Ethan Peck as Spock, Celia Rosa Gooding as Uhura, Jess Bush as Chapel, Melissa Navia as Ortegas, Christina Chong as La’an, and Babs Olusanmokun as Dr. M’Benga. None of these names or faces should come as a surprise. But some of the guest stars, and one new regular cast member, are notable.
In addition to recurring guest stars like Carol Kane as Pelia and, once again, Paul Wesley as James T. Kirk, we’re also getting our first look at Martin Quinn as Scotty.
In the Season 2 finale, “Hegemony,” Scotty’s appearance was a total surprise, and Martin Quinn fascinatingly became the the first actor to play Scotty who is actually Scottish. (James Doohan was Canadian and Simon Pegg was born in Gloucestershire.) The new portraits don’t tell us if Scotty will be taking over chief engineer duties from Pelia this season, but it does seem that he will very much be part of the regular cast. This means, from a canon point of view, Strange New Worlds Season 3 will feature Scotty’s first adventures on the Enterprise.
But for those paying very close attention here, the image of Melanie Scrofano as Captain Batel is perhaps the most telling. In “Hegemony,” following the destruction of the USS Cayuga, Captain Batel was impregnated with Gorn eggs. In previous Strange New Worlds episodes, this was almost certainly fatal — kind of like getting a xenomorph in your belly in an Alien movie.
And yet, here, in the cast portraits, Batel seems alive. Will she survive well into the new season? Or is this portait a tribute to her? We’ll have to wait for Strange New Worlds Season 3 to find out.
