The third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finally started this week, and its opener, “Hegemony, Part II,” picked up right where the last season left off. But along the way, it surprisingly ended up taking the Gorn—a Trek mainstay and the show’s longest-running threat—off the board.
In the episode itself, the Enterprise crew stop Captain Batel from Gorn infection, prevent their invasion of the Federation, and rescue their crew members captured by the Gorn at the end of last season. You’d think, after they were all sent back into hibernation, they’d served their purpose, but that’s not the case. Co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman plainly told TrekMovie, “You will see more of the Gorn” before Strange New Worlds ends its five-season run.
“They’re not gone, but they’re not the primary adversary for season three,” Goldsman continued. When asked about linking the show up with the original Star Trek canon, he explained the writers weren’t attempting to connect the “Hegemony” duology with “Arena,” the Original Series episode where the Gorn first debuted. Or rather, that wasn’t the plan “yet,” as he noted, adding the team tries to connect the two shows “whenever possible.”
If and when Strange New Worlds gets around to bringing back the Gorn, Goldsman said they want to do it in a way that “could make ‘Arena’ feel brand new by the time we get there.” The seeds, of course, are already being planted: attentive viewers probably noted the planet Cestus showed up on the map in Pike’s office as part of an outline about the Gorn hegemony. To that, co-showrunner Henry Alonso Meyers simply said the production crew “don’t do accidents.”
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