Star Trek Reveals a New LGBTQ+ Romance

This week, the first season of Star Trek: Picard on CBS All Access came to an end. The finale episode gave Picard a new lease on life as it said goodbye to a fan-favorite character (this time for good). It also brought another fan-favorite character back to active duty and capped off a season of great moments, some of which will reshape the Star Trek universe for the foreseeable future. Among all of those other stand out moments, the season finale episode also offered an understated hint that two of the show’s characters have entered into a same-sex romantic relationship.

Star Trek: Picard offered hints about Seven of Nine‘s sexuality earlier in the season. Though she had feelings for Chakotay in Star Trek: Voyager, the episode “Stardust City Rag” suggested that her relationship with Freecloud’s Bjayzl had been romantic before Bjayzl sold out the location of Seven’s surrogate son, Icheb. The final episode seems to confirm that Seven is attracted to women.

In this case, it’s Raffi Musiker, the former Starfleet Intelligence officer who was Picard’s first officer aboard the USS Verity during the Romulan rescue mission. Prior to this, all we knew about Raffi’s romantic life is that she has a son and that her relationship with that son and his father deteriorated as a result of her work with Picard and subsequent obsession with conspiracy theories about the attack on Mars.

But in the closing scene of the finale, we see Seven and Raffi talking in the ship’s galley. They touch hands and soon their fingers interlock. Seven and Raffi haven’t known each other very long, but it seems they’ve taken a liking to each other. This could be a new relationship further explored in the second season of the CBS All Access series.

Picard‘s Season One showrunner Michael Chabon discussed a bit about what the second season of the series could entail. “It’s going to be different in some way,” Chabon he said. “It’s definitely going to go in directions that we didn’t see in Season 1. I think we’ve been emboldened in many ways by the popularity of the show. I’ve only done this once, but I would imagine it’s probably true for a lot of television shows especially in this era: Season 1 was in many respects about learning how to make Star Trek: Picard. Both in a production sense, but also in terms of storytelling and who our cast is, how these characters end up forming surprising links and attachments to each other.”

Star Trek: Picard will return for Season Two on CBS All Access.