Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Finale Reveals the Dark Fate of the Borg

Star Trek: Picard Season 3 brings with it the latest and possibly final showdown between Jean-Luc Picard and the Borg. SPOILERS for the Star Trek: Picard Season 3 finale episode, "The Last Generation," follows. In Star Trek: Picard Season 3's penultimate episode, Deanna Toi opened the red door in Jack Crusher's mind, discovering the Borg behind it. In despair after learning he inherited the Borg's biological technology from his father, Jack fled the Titan and found the Borg Queen. Aboard the rebuilt USS Enterprise-D, Picard and the rest of his crew follow Jack to the Borg transwarp conduit. Once Picard finds Jack, he sees the surprising state of the Borg Collective.

The Borg queen is a withering shell of her former senses, protruding from the conduit's interior walls. The many drones that should be at work are instead asleep or dead, their organic material being consumed to sustain the queen. The Borg, as they were, are no more, which is why they set about their plan to assimilate the youngest members of Starfleet.

What happened to the Borg?

The Borg's weakened state is the result of Voyager's final mission in the Delta Quadrant. Janeway, with the help of her future self, destroyed one of the Borg's transwarp hubs and infected the collective with a pathogen that disrupted the hive mind. The pathogen was believed to have killed the Borg Queen, but it apparently left her in the diminished state we see in the Star Trek: Picard Season 3 finale.

As the Borg Queen tells Picard, Janeway's infection cut off the hive, leaving her in silence. She and what remained of her collective, with no worlds to assimilate, were left to starve to death until they somehow made contact with Vadic's Changeling faction and enacted their plans to infiltrate Starfleet.

Wait, didn't Picard make friends with the Borg in Season 2?

Some fans have been confused about why the Borg are attacking Starfleet after seeming to ask for Federation membership in Star Trek: Picard Season 2. To clarify, these are two different factions of Borg. The Borg that are in Star Trek: Picard Season 3 are the Borg Starfleet knew and feared throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.

The Borg in Star Trek: Picard Season 2, as showrunner Terry Matalas explained in a tweet, are a different faction of Borg, born from an alternate timeline. It is they, led by Agnes Jurati, who requested Federation membership independent from the previous Borg Queen's collective. 

That was an alternate faction of the Borg from an alt timeline. History was not rewritten. The Real Borg were still in the Delta Quadrant after poisoned by Janeway. Agnes Nice Borg are distracted guarding a trans warp conduit across the galaxy. Shaw explains this in 304. https://t.co/mG0mZ8am1p

— Terry Matalas (@TerryMatalas) April 14, 2023

How to watch Star Trek: Picard

The Star Trek: Picard Season 3 finale is streaming now on Paramount+. All previous Star Trek: Picard episodes (as well as all episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and every other episode of Star Trek television) are streaming now 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.