Paramount has set an endpoint for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The third season will premiere on Paramount+ next month. A fourth season is already in the works. After that, a final fifth season will round out the series.
The A.V. Club says that this fifth season will have six episodes, although I'm not sure if it will have six episodes in its entirety of if that's just the number they've committed to at the moment. So far, every season including the upcoming third has had 10 episode apiece, so it would be a shame to cut that number down for the final run, especially since Strange New Worlds has been well-received by Star Trek fans across the board.
Paramount has pushed hard in the last several years trying to revive the Star Trek franchise on TV, with hits and misses aplenty. Originally, Star Trek: Discovery was their big premiere series; that one also lasted five seasons. Star Trek: Picard brought back cast members from The Next Generation while Star Trek: Lower Decks put a comedic spin on the series. All those shows had their fans, but Strange New Worlds has struck gold by embracing the format of the classic show: the episodes are mostly self-contained and can swing between drama, comedy, and in one instance an all-singing, all-dancing musical. The flexibility has allowed Strange New Worlds to hit a sweet spot not all the other series could.
Strange New Worlds is set before the original Star Trek show; we see how Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) captained the Starship Enterprise before Kirk came along. He's supported by a young Spock (Ethan Peck) and his second-in-command, Number One (Rebecca Romijn). It's unclear how Strange New Worlds will end, but at least Paramount is providing them with lots of runway; I can't imagine it will end feeling like there's something missing, and five seasons is a respectably long time for a show to run.
The third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will premiere on Paramount+ on Thursday, July 17; the first two epsiodes will drop at once with the rest coming out one per week. Beyond that, Paramount only has one other Star Trek show in the hopper: Starfleet Academy, set at the school where young cadets learn what it takes to become a Starfleet officer. It sounds like they're going very hard on that one; they've built a huge set, and big names like Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti are involved. Maybe instead of making several competing Star Trek shows, Paramount just wants to focus on this one big one going forward. We don't have a firm release date set as of yet for Starfleet Academy.
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