Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 Is Bringing Back Riker and the USS Titan

Capt. William Riker and the USS Titan will be back in Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ second season. Star Trek: Lower Decks‘ first season finale surprised fans by having Riker show up to save the day in the ship he took command of after leaving the Enterprise in Star Trek: Nemesis. The season ended with Ensign Brad Boimler taking a promotion and a post aboard the Titan, leaving his friends from the USS Cerritos behind. What does this mean for Star Trek: Lower Decks going forward? Series creator Mike McMahan confirms that it means the Titan and Capt. Riker will be back as the series tells stories about Riker’s relationship with Boimler.

“Yep. We’ll see the Titan next season because Boimler is off the Cerritos, and we’ll be seeing Capt. Riker again as well,” McMahan tells Variety. “Boimler has been talking about moving on to bigger and better all first season, and now we’re going to see what happens when he gets what he wants.”

In addition to Jonathan Frakes reprising his role as Riker, the Lower Decks season finale also brought back Marina Sirtis as Cmdr. Deanna Troi. Unfortunately, Lower Decks‘ second season isn’t incorporating Troi into the mix.

“The stories that are on Titan are really more revolving around Riker and Boimler,” McMahan says. “However, I loved Marina and we loved working with her first season. The stories didn’t go that way, but I definitely need to get her back, because she was a blast to work with.”

In an interview conducted prior to the series debut, McMahan explained to ComicBook.com how Lower Decks approaches Star Trek canon. “The more you reference Star Trek stuff, the more to a new fan it’s just going to sound like sci-fi stuff,” McMahan says. “There’s nothing in a Lower Decks episode that will keep a new audience member from understanding what the emotional stories are and what the sci-fi story is if they don’t know the term that you’re using that reflects back on an existing Star Trek episode. That being said, nine times out of 10, when we’re doing a sci-fi thing, we come up with the story we want to tell, and then we’re like, ‘All right, well hold on, is there anything in Star Trek canon that this could just be that we can be careful with?’ And luckily, there’s quite a few Star Trek episodes and movies out there to pull from.”

The second season of Star Trek: Lower Decks is already in development.