Star Trek: Lower Decks Cast Tease the Trekiest Easter Eggs and What to Expect in Season 2

08/11/2021 03:53 pm EDT

Star Trek: Lower Decks is back this week with the first episode of its second season. It'll continue to adventures of the lower deckers aboard the USS Cerritos, but those characters didn't all end the first season on the best terms. Ensign Boimler took a promotion and a new posting aboard the USS Titan working for Capt. Will Riker. He didn't even let his "mentor," Ensign Mariner, know about it before he left. We know that Boimler and Mariner will reunite in Star Trek: Lower Decks Season Two. Speaking via Zoom, we asked Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid, who voice the characters, what their relationship will be like when they meet up again.

"Boimler left in a wild way. He didn't say goodbye. He took a promotion, which Mariner is famously anti-ranking up," Newsome says. "So that was like a double hit, and as you can imagine, Mariner is pretty hurt, feels pretty abandoned. So in the interactions that they do have, that's going to come out, of course, by her being aggressive, because that's what does."

"I think deep down inside of him, [Boimler] regrets leaving the way that he did, but that's his main goal, basically," Quaid adds. "He wants to rank up. He wants to one day be in the captain's chair. So when that opportunity came about, he jumped at the chance and I think he wasn't even thinking. He just went for it. You definitely get to see them discuss that once they actually do finally see each other again. It doesn't go great, but we'll see where they end up by the end of this. I think they're two characters that are best friends but won't admit it, and you're definitely going to see that relationship take on new shapes this season."

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 Easter Eggs

While the characters that populate the Cerritos' Lower Decks are the at the center of the series, they're surrounded by Easter eggs referencing every conceivable corner of the Star Trek canon. Discussing what kinds of Easter eggs lie in store for fans in season two, Newsome points to the Cerritos' new Tamarian security officer.

"That is one of my favorite episodes of form all of Trek," Newsome says, referring to "Darmok," the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that introduced the alien race that speaks only in metaphor. "It spoke to theater kid in me. How do people communicate when they can't communicate? So having that be portrayed by my friend, fell goofy-ass improviser Carl Tart, who people might know from Comedy Bang Bang or other podcasts like that, I think is such a perfect pairing of goofy voice to a very revered and critically-acclaimed episode, and I think that's what Lower Decks does best. It takes the thing that we love so much and that we have such fond memories for and it pairs a weirdo with it to voice it to expose what's funny about it."

We also spoke to Eugene Cordero and Noël Wells, the voices of Ensigns Rutherford and Tendi, to see what Easter eggs stood out to them. For them, it's all about seeing alien creatures brought to life in animation.

"I was talking about how much I like the big, white, hairy beasts that appear in the second season," Cordero says, referring to Mugato, "because it gives me the kaiju vibes that happened every once in a while in The Original Series that would happen with somebody dress up in a big suit that we get to enjoy in animated form now. That stuff we're getting to play with is really awesome, because the way they used to have to do things in the original, and even the way they had to deal with stuff in TNG and everything, when it's animated and they can put the details in the drawing and really have fun with the movement of all of these other beings is really cool. That's the stuff that I get excited for. Every time I see even the templates of what is getting drawn, I get excited for that stuff."

What do you think? Let us know in the comments. Star Trek: Lower Decks returns for its second season on Paramount+ on August 12th.

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