Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 Does Not Feel Like the "End," Says Showrunner

Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan believes there's more story to tell after Season 5 on Paramount+.

By Jamie Lovett

Star Trek: Lower Decks is headed toward its final season on Paramount+, but it doesn't feel like the end for series creator Mike McMahan. In April, Paramount+ announced that Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 will be the final season of the animated comedy series set in the Star Trek universe. Fans (including Star Trek: Lower Decks star Jack Quaid) immediately began campaigning for another streaming service to rescue Star Trek: Lower Decks from its fate (having had similar success with Star Trek: Prodigy, now on Netflix after its cancellation and removal from Paramount+). For his part, McMahan tells Awards Radar he was never thinking about the end of Star Trek: Lower Decks, and instead hoped to continue making the show indefinitely.

"For me, it's like, I'm greedy," McMahan says. "I would have kept making this show forever, but getting five seasons is such a miracle. It's insane that this show even existed. Every season I felt like was a miracle. There are grand stories I'm telling for the characters in Lower Decks. So season five feels like an amazing sendoff. It feels like the end of a chapter, but not the end of a series. I had enough time to know that it had to be special."

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 2 Special Screening & Block Party
(Photo:

"Star Trek: Lower Decks Season Two Special Screening & Block Party" -- Mike McMahan celebrates with the cast and crew of Star Trek: Lower Decks, who gathered on August 4, 2021 at the CBS Studio Center in Los Angeles, CA., for the Star Trek: Lower Decks Season Two Special Screening & Block Party. Photo: Sarah Coulter/Paramount+©2021 Paramount+. All Rights Reserved.

- SARAH COULTER)

What's next for Star Trek: Lower Decks?

While Star Trek: Lower Decks is ending, assuming it doesn't find a new streaming home, Star Trek fans know that the end of a Star Trek television show isn't always the end of that crew's adventures. The ends of Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation led to movies starring the casts of those shows. With Paramount+ entering the Star Trek movie business with the straight-to-streaming Star Trek: Section 31 movie and rumors of another Jean-Luc Picard adventure, the idea of a Star Trek: Lower Decks movie isn't out of the question. In 2023, McMahan told ComicBook that he had ideas along those lines.

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"I have an idea for an animated Lower Decks movie," McMahan said. "I have ideas for live-action Lower Decks movies. And I have ideas for brand new, totally original Star Trek movies that don't tie into anything we've seen before. I think Star Trek is an amazing genre to think about. I love the idea of not micro but small-budget Star Trek movies, where you get the bigness of a movie set, but you get to tell a Star Trek story that drives across a moment instead of a thing that has to be dealt with, like a Khan."

The first four seasons of Star Trek: Lower Decks are streaming now on Paramount+. Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 does not have a premiere date.

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