Patrick Stewart: Watching the Picard finale was “so emotional”

This week, Star Trek: Picard wrapped up its three-season run on Paramount+ with “The Last Generation.” But it wasn’t just the series finale to Picard. This final season of the show had reunited most of the cast from Star Trek: The Next Generation — including Jonathan Frakes (Riker), Brent Spiner (Data), LeVar Burton (Geordi), Marina Sirtis (Troi), Michael Dorn (Worf) and Gates McFadden (Crusher) — meaning this a send-off to them to, a finale over 30 years in the making.

“It made me so emotional watching the last two episodes,” Stewart told Variety. “Not because we were saying goodbye. But because of the narrative itself, what was happening to these people, who they are — I mean, both the characters and the actors. I love them all. They are a very, very critical part of my life. And that’s the reason why we all continue to socialize and meet and have meals and drinks and laughter. Always laughter.”

Indeed, the final scene is of the lot of these characters joking around as they play poker, something they did a lot back on The Next Generation. Episode director Terry Matalas told Collider that he let the camera run for 45 minutes to capture little moments between friends (expect an extended cut on the Blu-ray release). As for who won, Stewart is pretty sure he knows: “I think I won. I mean, we were being so relaxed about it. [B]ut it was real round of cards.”

Patrick Stewart is still willing to return as Jean-Luc Picard

Was this happy ending planned from the beginning? It sounds like the producers always wanted to keep things light, although Stewart says that they did at least discuss killing off Jean-Luc Picard. “[B]ut not for long,” he qualified. “The mere fact that his name was the title of the series, we had to stay with it. But yeah, it was touch and go at times, wasn’t it? (Laughs) No, they would have had to work a lot harder to kill me off before the end of the show. I would have come back and haunted them all if that would’ve happened.”

So that’s the end of Star Trek: The Next Generation…for now. This third season introduced Picard’s son with Beverly Crusher: Jack Crusher, played by Ed Speleers, whom Picard did not know existed before. Speleers has said he’d be interested in playing Jack again, and Stewart sounds willing to join him in the circumstances are right. “[T]here is a wonderful future for Ed there, I’m sure of it,” he said. “And if I can occasionally crop up to offer a little bit of comedy myself, then I shall be happy to do that.”

All three seasons of Star Trek: Picard are streaming now on Paramount+. You can also check out the bevy of other Star Trek shows available, including Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks and Prodigy. And there’s more on the way:

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