Star Trek: Lower Decks is coming to an end, but creator Mike McMahan is hinting that there could be spinoffs.
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McMahan did an interview on the Extended ‘Verse! podcast, where he discussed how the ending of Star Trek: Lower Decks also comes with setups for new series that could follow it:
“The ending of season 5 it is the ending of a chapter that I knew I wanted to do. There are things that happen in it… I’m being very careful… that are sort of setting up spinoffs and setting up backdoor pilots,” McMahan explained. “There’s characters I’m introducing that you’ll see clearly I wanted to do more with.”
Star Trek: Lower Decks has turned out to be a major pioneer for what Star Trek content can be. Lower Decks at once opened lanes to Star Trek having comedic content; animated content, and more adult-oriented content, all at once. The series has also gotten a much warmer welcome than many of the other new Star Trek series that have debuted on Paramount+ (Discovery, Picard). Star Trek Prodigy continued to expand one of those lanes with kid-friendly animated content, but Lower Decks still stands apart as a one-of-a-kind Star Trek experience.
More importantly, Lower Decks and its cast of B-level (C-level) Starfleet officers have become fan favorites. In fact, two Lower Decks characters (Jack Quaid’s Ensign Boimier and Tawny Newsome’s Ensign Mariner) have already made the jump from animation to live-action, as part of a crossover Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
So, when Mike McMahan says there are characters that could be exported into a spinoff series of Lower Decks, he’s not kidding. As Paramount+ is entering the Star Trek movie business with the straight-to-streaming Star Trek: Section 31 and rumors of another Jean-Luc Picard adventure, McMahan hasn’t ruled out the idea of a Star Trek: Lower Decks movie happening:
“I have an idea for an animated Lower Decks movie,” McMahan told ComicBook. “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.”
Star Trek: Lower Decks is streaming now on Paramount+. Season 5 does not have a premiere date but is expected to be 10-episodes long and will be released in late 2024.
