'Star Trek: Picard' rises above COVID delays as production wraps on third and final season

You can't keep Captain Jean-Luc down for very long, folks! Despite a number of pandemic-related delays (including a major COVID-19 outbreak on the set), Paramount+ has wrapped production on the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard.

This news was confirmed on Twitter by supervising producer Christopher Monfette, who wrote: "And that’s a wrap on Season 3 of #StarTrekPicard. As you watch and enjoy Season 2 just know — the next and final chapter in Picard’s story is a truly remarkable thing. Beyond thankful to [executive producer] Terry Matalas, the cast, crew and all our extraordinary writers who made it possible."

Recently speaking with Collider, actor Patrick Stewart (who reprised his fan favorite character from The Next Generation) promised that the series finale will be "unexpected and questionable."

He continued: "I'm thrilled about that because it leaves a question mark hanging over his head. Now I'm not saying in three years’ time or 10 years’ time, there will be another series and I'll be back again tending in my grapes in the vineyard. But I've had some fallings out with some of our people, because they look on this as a closure that is coming up, and I don't."

When talked turned to his potential return as Professor X in the upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Stewart clammed right up. "The world seems to know much more about that than I do," he said, dancing around the question, despite the fact that he pretty much confirmed his arrival in the MCU during a separate interview around the same time.

While chatting with The Guardian, Stewart admitted that he'd take some time to focus on his memoir after wrapping Picard's final season. The title of the autobiography, Are You Anybody? was derived from his early days as a little-known stage performer.

“On my first [Royal Shakespeare Company] opening night at Stratford-on-Avon, I was playing the Earl of somewhere in Henry IV, tiny part," he recalled. "There was a group of autograph-hunters at the stage door, and someone thrust the program at me to sign, then pulled it away again and said, ‘Are you anybody?’ And I said, ‘No, nobody at all,’ and walked away. But the importance of that question has stayed with me ever since.”

The Season 2 premiere of Star Trek: Picard is now streaming on Paramount+. Episode 2 arrives on the service this Thursday (March 10).