Star Trek: Prodigy warps to its new streaming home on Netflix on Christmas Day, and executive producers and showrunners Kevin and Dan Hageman are hopeful and excited that their beloved animated series will find a new and bigger audience.
A tumultuous 2023 saw Paramount+ abruptly cancel Star Trek: Prodigy, which galvanized fans worldwide to campaign to #SaveStarTrekProdigy. This helped the happy result of Prodigy jumping to Netflix, where all 20 season 1 episodes will premiere on December 25. Meanwhile, the Hagemans and their team completed Star Trek: Prodigy season 2’s 20-episode order and all of those brand-new episodes will premiere on Netflix in 2024.
Everything We Know About Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2
Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 will stream on Netflix after the animated series was canceled by Paramount+, with 20 brand new episodes coming in 2024.
Screen Rant had the pleasure of chatting with Kevin and Dan Hageman about not losing hope as Star Trek: Prodigy searched for its new streaming home, their hopes for finding an audience on Netflix, and Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 being even bigger than season 1.
Kevin & Dan Hageman Discuss Star Trek: Prodigy’s Jump To Netflix & Their Hopes For Season 2 And Beyond
Screen Rant: Congratulations, Kevin & Dan! When we last saw each other in Vegas back in August, where were you guys in Netflix negotiations? Because all you said was you were 99% sure you had a new home.
Kevin Hageman: There was a period of time when there were early talks from the higher-ups that there is interest, and there was talks, but, it [took] a while. It’s a very complicated matter. It’s not just, ‘Here, you can air our show.’ So there was a period where there was hope that we’d be hearing good news, but it wasn’t officially signed.
Dan Hageman: I remember, we had to sit on it, and we couldn’t tell anyone for a couple of weeks. And that just killed us. We were watching #SaveStar TrekProdigy, and we were like, ‘Oh my gosh, oh, my gosh, I can’t wait for this news to come out.’
Kevin Hageman: We’re so glad to be back in this place where we’re able to talk about it.
Looking back, after everything that happened in this crazy year, would you say it was all a blessing in disguise?
Kevin Hageman: Well, it depends. What if we don’t get the viewers on Netflix?
Dan Hageman: Oh, I think we’re innately optimistic and hopeful people so that every time, if you give us a shred of hope, we’re going to grasp on to it and ride that star as far as it can go. Originally, when we were told the news that we were gonna be taken off Paramount+, we were like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is horrible.’ But [Alex] Kurtzman and some people over at CBS Studios talked about it, and they wanted to spend the money to finish season 2. And we’re like, ‘We’re not going to write finish season 2 and not show it.’ So that gave us hope.
Kevin Hageman: And we know how good season 2 is. And we know how good season 1 is. Our show is too good for this news. And so, I think we were very confident and extremely hopeful that we would find a new home somewhere, but it was still utterly terrifying. As confident as you are, it’s [scary] when you’re in that unknown. And when the show’s pulled off [Paramount+], and then suddenly, I’ll even go on YouTube, and I can’t find any trailers. It was just like our show doesn’t exist all of a sudden.
Does going to Netflix feel like a new beginning for the show?
Dan Hageman: Yeah. I think Netflix is an amazing place for animation. I feel like they have much more animation options. No offense to Paramount+, but Paramount + is a younger streamer. And so, I think having a place where someone who just likes our thumbnail, doesn’t know anything about Star Trek, can find it and start understanding that this is an on-ramp for a massive IP series. And it doesn’t talk down to you. If anything, I feel like we’re going to find new Star Trek fans out there who don’t even know they want to watch Star Trek.
Kevin Hageman: And you see animation in the top 10 shows on Netflix. My Blue-Eyed Samurai is something that I love right now. And that’s making the top 10. That’s an animated series, so people are watching.
Yeah, an animated show I watched was Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, which ran four seasons and got its own spinoff. So Netflix is definitely a great place for a show like yours. The #SaveStarTrekProdigy fan campaign, the airplane stunt, how much did that help you get the Netflix deal?
Kevin Hageman: I like to hope, and think, and believe that it totally helped. I definitely believe that because they were so loud. It was really… all of us on Star Trek: Prodigy were like, ‘Wow!’ We were so excited to see the response by fans
Dan Hageman: For our crew, there was a lot of disappointment with what’s what was going on with Paramount+ but to see the fan support everyday. The fans’ support of the show really gave them something to fight for. It meant so much to our crew.
Kevin Hageman: I still have to hope that quality matters in entertainment. If something is good, it doesn’t deserve to be killed and buried.
And I think that was the core of the fan response to what happened. Because your show is so good, it made no sense whatsoever that all of a sudden it vanished in the blink of an eye. And since Star Trek in the 1960s, it was the greatest organized fan campaign to save a Star Trek show.
Kevin Hageman: Our show, it’s Star Trek. It’s designed for young and old. So I’m hoping it will find a new audience and give us a second chance at life.
Netflix’s audience is massive and potentially, Star Trek: Prodigy, if you find your audience, could become the most widely seen of the current Star Trek shows. That would be a fitting about-face of circumstance.
Kevin Hageman: Yeah, someone once said that Netflix could become our Lucille Ball. I liked hearing that.
With that in mind, did that affect your production of season 2 in any way? Going to Netflix, does that change anything?
Kevin Hageman: No, we’ve been given word they love what we’re doing and keep finishing it out the same way. We don’t know anything about the distribution plan for season 2 yet. But with season 1, our show, just like Trollhunters, it’s designed to be watched all together and watched in big chunks. And so, I’m really excited that we’ll have all 20 out together for people to watch.
Dan Hageman: It’s an interesting relationship because there’s no animosity to Paramount+. I mean, if anything, they’ve been massive supporters.
Kevin Hageman: They love the show. They love the show.
If it was your call, what do you think is the ideal way to release season 2? Would it be once a week? Two episodes at a time? Like season one, broken up into halves? What would you prefer?
Kevin Hageman: We felt in hindsight, one a week was just hard because it’s 22 minutes. It’s such a little morsel. Three episodes together, that’s like a one-hour episode of television, pretty much. But also, on the flip side, if Netflix dropped out all 20 at once… I would wish, maybe it was like 10 and 10 or something, just to spread out the love and let people find it and get into it and talk about it.
Dan Hageman: The show was written in the same form as Trollhunters. It was written to be binged. It was written that one episode would bleed into the next, and the next, and the next. So, in that sense, coming back to Netflix, I love it, it feels like coming back home.
Back in August, you guys won STLV. You dropped four minutes of footage that had The Doctor (Robert Picardo), that had Voyager-A, it blew everybody away. And that was just four minutes of season 2.
Kevin Hageman: We were fighting for our lives at that point. I mean, the fans were coming out and flying their stuff. And we’re asking CBS Studios, ‘Please, let us show them something.’ We were like, ‘We can’t give up.’
Dan Hageman: They only wanted to give us two minutes, but we weren’t able to get Picardo and the Voyager-A in the two minutes. We were like ‘Let’s show ’em both.’
Kevin Hageman: Give us four minutes!
Just from that drop, season 2 already seems that much bigger. Is that safe to say?
Dan Hageman: Yeah, it’s much bigger.
Kevin Hageman: Much, much bigger.
Dan Hageman: Season 1 was kids on a little ship. This is kids on a big ship.
Kevin Hageman: It’s a grand adventure, but I think when you watch all 20 of season 2, you’re gonna feel like season 1 and season 2 is a 40-episode saga.
About Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2
Admiral Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) recruits the young ragtag former crew of the USS Protostar on a new mission aboard the USS Voyager-A to travel into an alternate future and rescue her dear friend, Captain Chakotay (Robert Beltran).
Check out our interview with Star Trek: Prodigy executive producer Aaron J. Waltke.
Star Trek: Prodigy
Star Trek: Prodigy is the first TV series in the Star Trek franchise marketed toward children, and one of the few animated series in the franchise. The story follows a group of young aliens who find a stolen Starfleet ship and use it to escape from the Tars Lamora prison colony where they are all held captive. Working together with the help of a holographic Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew), the new crew of the USS Protostar must find their way back to the Alpha Quadrant to warn the Federation of the deadly threat that is pursuing them.
- Release Date
- October 28, 2021
- Cast
- Brett Gray , Kate Mulgrew , Ella Purnell
- Genres
- Sci-Fi , Adventure , Drama
- Seasons
- 1
- Season List
- Star Trek: Prodigy – Season 1
- Story By
- Dan Hageman
- Writers
- Dan Hageman
- Network
- Paramount
- Streaming Service(s)
- Paramount+
- Franchise(s)
- Star Trek
- Directors
- Dan Hageman
- Showrunner
- Dan Hageman
