Star Trek: Picard Showrunner Explains The Show’s Approach to Sexuality

This week, the first season of Star Trek: Picard on CBS All Access came to its conclusion. The final episode of the season provided Picard with a new lease on life and said goodbye to a fan-favorite character (this time for good). It also brought a fan-favorite character to active Starfleet duty, capping 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 introduced a new same-sex romantic relationship. Speaking to Variety ahead of the finale’s premiere, showrunner Michael Chabon discussed the show’s approach to sexuality.

“Well, the way that people’s identity is constructed with sexuality as a component of it, in my experience, it emerges in a much more organic [way], and not like wearing a t-shirt that says, you know, Queer Power — or the equivalent in the 24th century,” Chabon says. “We get to know these characters the way we get to know real people. It emerges in conversation when it would emerge in conversation… We’re doing it in a different way. We’re doing it in an organic way — what feels organic to me… And it will continue to emerge… I think we’ll have more time for that in the second season than we’ve had in the first season… We just had so many characters and so much story to tell in this first season, that a lot of the sort of more personal aspects of things — including again, like people’s families, and all that stuff — just all got sort of left [behind].”

Star Trek: Picard offered hints about Seven of Nine‘s sexuality earlier in the season. with hints 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 the closing scene of the finale, we see Seven and Raffi Musiker 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, possibly setting up a new relationship to explore in the second season of the CBS All Access series.

Writing is already underway for the second season of the series. Star Trek: Picard will return for Season Two on CBS All Access.