Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard Season 2, Episode 2 – “Penance”
When Q (John de Lancie) changed Star Trek: Picard season 2’s timeline, he actually changed all of Star Trek history instead of creating an alternate timeline. At the end of Star Trek: Picard‘s season 2 premiere, the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) nearly assimilated an entire Starfleet armada including the new USS Stargazer which was built with Borg technology from the Artifact. This forced Admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) to initiate the Stargazer’s self-destruct, which wiped out himself and the Starfleet ships. But Q intervened so that Picard awoke in a new reality where the United Federation of Planets is now the authoritarian and xenophobic Confederation of Earth.
Star Trek’s history, including every Star Trek TV series and the 10 movies not produced by J.J. Abrams, take place in the Prime Universe. However, Star Trek: The Original Series quickly established the existence of the Mirror Universe, an alternate timeline ruled by the fascist Terran Empire instead of the Federation. Yet the Mirror Universe is an alternate timeline that runs parallel to the Prime Universe. J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek 2009 then created the Kelvin Timeline, which is another Star Trek timeline that also runs parallel to the Prime Universe. The Kelvin Timeline is an alternate reality that contains multiple changes and different versions of Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto), and the crew of the 23rd-century Starship Enterprise. In Star Trek: Discovery season 4, Dr. Ruon Tarka (Shawn Doyle) confirmed the existence of the Multiverse, which means there are untold branching Star Trek timelines that exist alongside the Prime Universe, which includes then Mirror Universe and Kelvin Timeline.
However, Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 2, “Penance,” establishes that the Confederation reality isn’t an alternate timeline like the Kelvin and Mirror Universes. Rather, it is actually Star Trek’s Prime Universe completely rewritten so that nothing happened in any Star Trek TV show or movie as audiences remember. Instead, by going back in time to 2o24 Los Angeles, Q created a divergence in time that changed all of Star Trek going forward. This is verified by the Borg Queen, who is a broken prisoner of the Confederation but retains her cross-temporal awareness and memories of the original Prime Universe, just as Picard and his motley crew do. Once he realized this Picard confirmed the Borg Queen’s theory: “This is not another reality. This is our reality!”
For reasons likely having to do with Picard passing his newest “trial,” Q made sure that Jean-Luc, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd), Cristobal Rios (Santiago Cabrera), Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), and Elnor (Evan Evagora) retain all of their memories of the Prime Universe and their original personalities. Q “dropped” their Prime universe minds into their Confederation reality bodies. As such, Picard and his motley crew are horrified at the changes to reality, such as the Earth mired in a perpetual climate catastrophe, the Confederation at war with the Vulcans after eradicating the Cardassians, Romulans, Klingons, and the Borg, and even Seven of Nine as President of the Confederation who is married to the Magistrate (Jon Jon Briones).
Because Q’s divergence in time happened in 2024, it means First Contact between Zephram Cochrane (James Cromwell) and the Vulcans on April 5, 2063, as seen in Star Trek: First Contact never happened, and all of Star Trek history occurred differently going forward. Thanks to Q’s meddling, the Prime Universe has been altered top-to-bottom as a result. However, Q blames Jean-Luc Picard and warns that the aged Starfleet Admiral is the one truly responsible for the new Star Trek reality because he “refuses to change.” What Q ultimately means will be revealed in Star Trek: Picard season 2, but from what Jean-Luc understands, his mission now is to travel to 2024 Los Angeles and find “the watcher” who can help him set Star Trek history back the way it was.
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.
