Star Trek’s Next Movie Could Get a TV Spinoff (but Not All Fans Will Be Happy)

We still have about two months to go before Star Trek: Section 31 premieres on Paramount+, but the cast and crew are already planning for the future. Several cast members accompanied director Olatunde Osunsanmi to New York Comic Con to discuss the new movie, and naturally the question of a sequel came up. Osunsanmi said: “The more you love it, the possibilities are endless.”

The Section 31 panel included stars Omari Hardwick, Kacey Rohl and Robert Kazinsky, with Michelle Yeoh chiming in via video chat from Prague. Osunsanmi was the one to take questions from the audience, and someone asked if this movie could spawn a brand new Star Trek series. When he said “the possibilities are endless,” the live audience let out a thunderous cheer, according to a report by Popverse. Yeoh also had a positive answer. When asked if she’d be available for a follow-up series, she said: “I’ll always be available for Section 31.”

“We’re excited to show you. We hope you guys all love it,” Osunsanmi concluded.

While the live audience was excited, fans online are a little more divided on Section 31. The movie is about a secret division of Starfleet whose mission is to protect the United Federation of Planets – rather than the exploratory missions we usually see in this series. Yeoh stars as Emperor Philippa Georgiou, reprising that role from Star Trek: Discovery. Georgiou comes from the Mirror Universe where she was the leader of the Terran Empire. After jumping to another point on the timeline in the Prime Universe, she opened a nightclub outside of Federation space before joining Starfleet.

The show’s focus will reportedly be on Georgiou grappling with the sins of her past in the context of her new line of work. Yeoh has been pushing for a spinoff like this since her first appearance on Discovery, but it has taken years to get to this point.

Why Some Fans Dislike the Idea of Section 31

One issue fans have with this show is its consistency with other material. The organization Section 31 was first introduced in Deep Space Nine, and from the start many fans felt it was out of place in the generally utopian galactic civilization that Star Trek portrays. The organization is an intelligence agency outside of the usual chain of command. Starting in Discovery, it is depicted as even more secretive, to the point where many characters don’t even know it exists. Writer Alex Kurtzman – a producer on the Section 31 movie – said that it would explore the agency’s evolution into an “underground organization.”

Fans will be able to see for themselves when Star Trek: Section 31 premieres on Paramount+ on January 24, 2025. Most Star Trek movies and series are available to stream there now.