“I regret that when I look back on some of the roles I played”: Star Trek Gave Patrick Stewart a Lifelong Regret He Will Never be Able to Recover From

With the deal between Paramount Global and Skydance Media officially dead, the future of Star Trek is at its bleakest yet. The former’s streaming platform Paramount+ was colloquially called the Home of Star Trek, but after dumping almost a dozen of the franchise’s movies from the streamer, it was anything but. With an insecure fate ahead and nothing better to do, the sci-fi IP remains caught up in the nostalgia of the past.

However, it is not simply the fans who have retained their abiding connection to the franchise. Veteran actors like Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes keep coming back to conversations surrounding a potential return, whether in a spin-off or a continuation of their Next Gen saga.

Star Trek Veteran Sir Patrick Stewart Makes Himself Heard

The last time Sir Patrick Stewart graced the big screen was in Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002. Since then, it has been by the grace of Paramount+ that Star Trek: Picard could bring his beloved Captain Jean-Luc back within the episodic television format. However, memories of the character’s original saga in The Next Generation films make it hard to let go of the IP, both for the audience as well as the actor.

As such, Stewart has not only expressed a vested interest in reprising the role one more time but also claimed it was necessary to properly serve the character’s final arc in the franchise. After Picard reunited the original Next Gen cast in Season 3, a follow-up feature film with the core cast could serve as the final swan song for the character in a similar vein as Hugh Jackman‘s Logan.

With fan interest at an all-time high and Paramount still causing anxiety over its Kelvin-timeline project, it seems as though a Next Generation movie is too big an ask from the studio. But with the original cast still very interested in a final reunion and Jonathan Frakes pitching himself as the director, the only element lacking is the script and the studio’s go-ahead. One can only hope that Paramount is willing to do right by the fans after a 7-year-long wait.

Sir Patrick Stewart Needs to Return as Picard One More Time

Despite the fan clamoring surrounding the next Star Trek project, one can hardly argue with the novelty of witnessing The Next Generation cast in its final victory lap. But, nostalgia is not the only reason behind Sir Patrick Stewart’s need to reprise the role of Jean-Luc Picard. A bittersweet process of healing his childhood trauma had a big role to play in Stewart’s decision, too.

In a Wired interview, the inimitable actor revealed how the show has helped him heal the repressed memories of his abusive childhood and open him up as an actor in ways he never thought possible:

Both Star Trek and therapy have been responsible for that. Having to open the doors into my childhood in order to be an actor became utterly intriguing to me in a way that it never had been before. And I regret that when I look back on some of the roles I played, what I might have brought to them if I just released myself a little bit more.

Moreover, Sir Patrick Stewart mentioned how an emotionally vulnerable and “fearful” arc for his character can actually make Jean-Luc Picard “an interesting study for one more movie.” 

If Paramount fails to resolve its merger negotiations, the Star Trek franchise’s future will remain in limbo with no resolution for either a Next Generation reunion or the much-awaited Kelvin-timeline movie, Star Trek 4. Speculated to be a spin-off based on Chris Hemsworth‘s George Kirk and Chris Pine‘s James T. Kirk, the J.J. Abrams film could potentially revive the franchise after spending 7 years in development hell.

Star Trek: The Next Generation is currently available to stream on Netflix and Prime Video.