The Borg Queen closes in on her power plans, but will Agnes be suitable to purpose an indispensable path for the Borg?
The penultimate episode of Star Trek Picard’s alternate season delivers on the action, thrills, and drama as the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) makes moves to seize control of La Sirena with her army of recently assimilated dogfaces and take over the world centuries before the Borg first spoke of futile resistance. In the midst of all of this chaos, Picard (Patrick Stewart) continues to reuse the trauma that he endured as a child, opening new doors to the corridors of his backstory that haven’t been explored ahead.
Aboard La Sirena, Rios (Santiago Cabrera), Teresa (Sol Rodriguez), and Ricardo (Steve Gutierrez) are forced to make a hasty escape when the Queen and her cronies beam aboard, ready to fight. The snappily reunite with Picard, Tallinn (Orla Brady), Raffi (Michelle Hurd), and Seven (Jerri Ryan) outside of the château and make their plan of attack. Unfortunately, they're no match for the assimilated dogfaces — order. Soong (Brent Spiner), who's leading them — and they're pushed into the château as the trouble closes in. Rios ends up getting shot and, fortunately, it was a lot less serious than it could have been. He has spent all season getting banged up and hurt, so he’s really lucky that he met a doctor in history.
Inside the château, Picard asks Tallinn to beam Rios, Teresa, and Ricardo out of the fray, and despite being injured Rios vows to come back and help them fight the Borg. Picard also instructs Tallinn to disable the device so that Rios can’t come back. Picard assumes that they're about to engage in the last stage, and he’s hopeful that at least someone will survive the attack. It also plays into Rios’ former commentary about seeing Picard as a father figure. Whatever doubts that he may have had about whether that sentiment was recompensed were verified by this action. Picard recognizes that Rios is the heroic type, and he knows that he has to intermediate to keep him from getting hurt worse.
Teresa really is one of the stylish new characters to be introduced in Picard. She isn’t entirely put off by the situation she’s been thrust into, she adapts to the alien technology she’s asked to handle, and she seems agitated to diverge from the day-to-day life she had been living before Rios’ appearance. In a lot of ways, she’s embracing the fun homilies that make out-of-time loves so important fun. She's all of us if we got dropped in the middle of a Star Trek occasion. Perhaps it’s because I’m a hopeless romantic at heart, but I adored the fact that she tried to move Rios to stay in 2024 with her. She made some valid points — there is a plenitude of icons out there, so why does he have to be the one? While Rios does eventually decide to go back and join the fight, his decision isn’t without some vacillation. He surely considered her suggestion and this plotline doesn’t feel like it’s run its course yet.
The Borg Queen’s plans hit a slight hitch when Agnes (Alison Pill) manages to take back a little control and launch a hologram of Elnor (Evan Evagora) to play keep-away from the Borg Queen and her strain. Picard has planted really ingenious ways to keep cherished characters from the first season — Elnor and Daj (Isa Briones) — involved in the alternate season, indeed though their characters’ places have been lowered. It also provides an ample occasion for Raffi to defy her grief and get some answers about what Elnor was allowing before he failed.
Raffi and Seven go up against the Borg Queen and Seven sustain enough serious injury that threatens to make her the alternate person to bleed out in front of Raffi this season. In last-gutter trouble to save Seven, Agnes fights for control of her mind and pushes the Borg Queen to review how the Borg operates. After decades of the Borg wreaking annihilation across three series, I suppose this is the first time someone has gone, “ Hey, what if you actually try to be good.” With Seven as the illustration of a perfect Borg — someone who uses both her humanity and her connection to the collaboration to help the world — the Queen actually considers Agnes’ suggestion. In exchange for La Sirena, the Borg Queen agrees to save Seven by reassimilating her.
Dr. Soong pursues Picard and Tallinn further into the château, which forces Picard to relive the last time he was in one particular room. After weeks (and actually two seasons) of teasing Picard’s recollections of his mama, we eventually learned what happed to her. While caught in the fray of one of her internal health occurrences, Picard’s mama hung herself, and he bore substantiation to her hanging from the rafters. As a child, he'd locked that memory down as a trauma response, and now he has clarity on this point of pain. What’s so fascinating about him exploring these recollections while being in the history, is that he's basically fighting to save a future where this horrible thing happens to him.
Picard, Tallinn, Seven, Raffi, and Rios regroup outside the château and watch as the Borg Queen takes off with La Sirena. While there are still a lot of liars to explore, “ Hide and Seek” ended with a further check than was anticipated, setting the scene for the coming week’s home stretch to be filled with surprises. With La Sirena in the Borg Queen’s hands, the crew is left stranded in 2024 with no way to get back to their own timeline, Q is still out there poking with the history, and Dr. Soong didn’t feel done with his power play. It was blazoned that for the third and final season of Picard, several cast members from Star Trek The Next Generation would be joining Stewart — signaling that the ramifications of this season must warrant a reunion. Will the coming week lay the root? I guess we'll just have to stay and see.
At least now Rios can go back and see Teresa again since they’re not going back to the unborn anytime soon.
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Star Trek Picard Season 2 is streaming now on Paramount.