Star Trek: Strange New Worlds showrunner teases season 2

The first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been a thrilling ride for fans. With plenty of shocks, departures, and a cliffhanger ending, it seems like there’ll be significant changes for season 2.

The death of Chief Engineer Hemmer (Bruce Horak) during the events of Episode 9, “All Those Who Wander,” disappointed many who wanted the see more of the character. However, while speaking to SYFY WIRE, Strange New Worlds co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers revealed that it was always the production team’s intention that Hemmer would die during the season. Right from the audition stage, the writing team wanted to show that all the new characters were expendable.

“One of our ideas was to make someone that we cared about die. And, for better or for worse, I feel like we didn’t know that Bruce would be so great. We didn’t know that he’d do it so well, and we didn’t know it’d be so heartbreaking,” Myers said. “Sometimes you’re fortunate, and you find the perfect person for the perfect role, and Bruce was that guy. I will say that while Hemmer is dead, it’s not necessarily the last that we will see Bruce on our show.”

Myers also ends speculation that Hemmer is being replaced by Original Series legend Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, despite a brief cameo in the season finale, “A Quality of Mercy.” “We will meet a new chief engineer — it’s not going to be Scotty,” he said. “There will be a new character who I’m excited for you to meet, but I’m not going to tell you who it is. It’s going to be a very different person, a completely different type of engineer.”

Will Number One’s fate be decided in Strange New Worlds season 2?

“A Quality of Mercy” ended on a cliffhanger with Number One (Rebecca Romijn) arrested by Starfleet. That’s something Captain Pike (Anson Mount) had already seen in the future. “The Una piece is absolutely a cliffhanger,” Myers said. “Part of that was because we felt like there was a big chunk of her story that we had yet to tell. We really wanted to dig into it, and we had an idea about how to do a real straight-down-the-middle classic Trek episode in order to tell the next piece of her story, which we get into next season.”

Some fans may be concerned that Number One will join Hemmer and potentially La’an and leave the show early in its run. However, Myers is here to give them a little hope:

"I admit at the time when Akiva and I put that bit in there about Una in the Season 1 finale, we didn’t really know how we get out of it. Sometimes at the end of the season, you want to pull as many threads as possible because you want to leave yourself somewhere to go. But since we’re almost wrapped for Season 2, I do happen to know where we went, and I’m really glad we did because I’m unbelievably proud of the Una arc that came out of it, and I can’t wait for people to see it."

You can watch “A Quality of Mercy” now on Paramount+, along with the rest of the first season. There is no official release date for season 2, but it is expected to premiere in 2023.

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