Star Trek: Remembering Picard and Crusher's Other Son

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 introduced Jack Crusher (Ed Speleers), the son of Jean-Luc Picard and Beverly Crusher. The character's existence pays off the long-simmering romance between Picard and Crusher that Star Trek: The Next Generation never managed to pay off, instead opting to keep Picard available romantically for the movies. Now we know that something happened between Picard and Crusher after Star Trek: Nemesis resulting in Jack's birth. It's unclear why Crusher left Picard's orbit without telling him about the child, leaving him to learn that he is a father decades later.

But this isn't the first time that Star Trek has explored the idea of Picard and Crusher starting a family after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis. They previously had a son name René Jacques Robert Francois Picard.

Picard and Crusher's romantic relationship in Star Trek

Star Trek: The Next Generation established romantic tension between Picard and Crusher. Picard had feelings for Crusher almost immediately, but she married his best friend, Jack Crusher. Thus, he put his feelings aside. After Jack died and Crusher became the Enterprise's chief medical officer, it took years (and a telepathic link) for Picard to open up to Beverly about his feelings. However, their professional relationship, with Picard as her commanding officer, and years of friendship stopped them from pushing forward. That's where things stood after the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies. Picard even pursued another romantic interest in Star Trek: Insurrection (which seems to have gone nowhere).

For years after Star Trek: Nemesis, Pocket Books had a series of novels that continued the story of the Star Trek: The Next Generation characters (as well as characters from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager). The first of these Star Trek: The Next Generation "relaunch" novels was Death in Winter by Michael Jan Friedman, which focused on Picard and Crusher's relationship after Nemesis. It ended with Crusher returning to duty aboard the Enteprirse-E after only recently taking a post with Starfleet Medical, a sign that she wanted to pursue a relationship with Picard.

Star Trek's Picard and Crusher had a son

Picard and Crusher eventually got married, though accounts of the ceremony are described inconsistently between the various stories in this timeline (one says Guinan officiated, while another has Q as the best man). Picard and Crusher continued to serve together aboard the Enterprise-E. By the time of the novel Paths of Disharmony, they have a son, René Jacques Robert Francois Picard, named for Picard's brother, his nephew, and Jack Crusher. Readers didn't get to know René very well since not much passed in the novel's timeline (it takes place entirely between Nemesis and the Romulan supernova that would lead to the creation of the Kelvin Timeline). The events of the Star Trek: Coda trilogy saw him artificially aged, but that didn't last long as Coda was the end of the novel series, erasing the entire timeline and its history from existence. 

His story plays out differently in another Star Trek timeline that continues today. Star Trek Online took cues from the Star Trek novel line during its early years. As such, they wrote René into the game's history. As revealed in the Star Trek Online tie-in novel The Needs of the Many, René took more after the Picard he was named after than his father, choosing to live out his life as a vintner with a vineyard on Mars. However, he did extend the Star Trek: The Next Generation family even further, marrying William Riker and Deanna Troi's daughter (in this non-canon timeline), Natasha, and raising three children.

How to watch Star Trek: Picard

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 premieres new episodes on Thursdays on Paramount+. Star Trek: Picard's first two seasons are already streaming on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Picard streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and on Amazon Prime Video in over 200 countries and territories. In Canada, it airs on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel and streams on Crave.