Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 Finale Review: A Near-Perfect Finale That Will Enrage You
STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS SEASON 2 FINALE REVIEW SCORE
The Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 finale, “Hegemony,” brings back the merciless Gorn while delivering the most exciting season ending in the franchise for years. The bad news? “Hegemony” ends on a massive cliffhanger — the likes of which Trek fans haven’t endured since Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I” — and with the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike still holding strong, it’s a cliffhanger we likely won’t see resolved for well over a year.
The events of “Hegemony” leave Captain Pike utterly lost, in a way that we’ve rarely — if ever — seen another Trek captain.
The Strange New Worlds Season 2 finale leaves behind the gleeful song and dance of “Subspace Rhapsody” for darker and bloodier fare. Captain Pike (Anson Mount) finds himself facing not only the return of the Gorn, but what appears to be the violent death of his lover Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano) as well as that of Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush), who were both in the area when the reptilian Gorn came calling.
Ordered to keep on one side of a Gorn-decreed demarcation line, Pike of course disobeys and leads a covert mission to the surface of the Gorn-invaded Parnassus Beta to rescue any survivors. Meanwhile, on the Enterprise Una (Rebecca Romijn), Spock (Ethan Peck), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and Pelia (Carol Kane) fight to find a way around the Gorn dampener that’s cut off all of their transporters and communication.
As impressive as Mount’s performances have been in both Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Discovery, he’s never shined more than in the Season 2 finale. The events of “Hegemony” leave Captain Pike utterly lost, in a way that we’ve rarely — if ever — seen another Trek captain.
“Hegemony” ends on a massive cliffhanger – the likes of which Trek fans haven’t endured since Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I” – and with the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike still holding strong, it’s a cliffhanger we likely won’t see resolved for well over a year.
When the Season 2 finale ends, it will remind you of the final moments of TNG‘s “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I,” except that episode finishes with Jonathan Frakes‘s Will Riker uttering a decisive “Fire,” even though he believes it will mean the death of Picard (Patrick Stewart). But as Pike’s crew call out to him for orders at the end of “Hegemony,” he has no answer and you know he isn’t even close to one.
It’s a wonderfully humanizing moment for Pike, and it’s refreshing to see Trek let one of its captains’ flaws show so clearly. Unfortunately with the actors’ and writers’ strikes raging, we probably won’t get to see the other side of this powerful moment until late 2024 at the earliest — perhaps not even until 2025.
Besides Pike’s vulnerability, the best thing about the Strange New Worlds Season 2 finale speaks more to the series as a whole — how it’s masterfully handled the Gorn. Regardless of whatever else comes in this series, you have to give it up to the creators for taking the aliens known best for perhaps the single most embarrassing fight scene in Star Trek: The Original Series and molding them into recurring antagonists more terrifying than the Borg.
More Gorn appear in the Strange New Worlds Season 2 finale than we’ve seen in any previous episode of the decades-old franchise — including the first Nu-Trek-era rendering of an adult Gorn. “Hegemony” isn’t as nearly as gory as either of the Season 1 appearances of the reptiles, and the episode begins and ends with the aliens largely shrouded in mystery.
The Strange New Worlds Season 2 finale even gives us little hints that the heroes might somehow manage something like the idealized Trek shiny, happy resolution with the Gorn. In an early conversation with Pike and Admiral April (Adrian Holmes) and later with the Gorn-traumatized La’an (Christina Chong), we get hints of peace, but ultimately the lizards remain one of the few recurring Trek antagonists where phaser fire is the best solution.
Regardless of whatever else comes in this series, you have to give it up to the creators for taking the aliens known best for perhaps the single most embarrassing fight scene in Star Trek: The Original Series and molding them into recurring antagonists more terrifying than the Borg.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention a minor half-spoiler — that the Strange New Worlds Season 2 finale introduces the new version of a classic Trek hero. To say much more would spoil. Suffice to say, I don’t think fans will be disappointed.
Probably the biggest weakness of “Hegemony” is that the very nature of Strange New Worlds dulls the teeth of the Season 2 finale’s huge cliffhanger.
Again, without wanting to spoil too much, “Hegemony” ends with a whole lot of the Strange New Worlds heroes in grave jeopardy, and that’s not even counting the ones under attack aboard the Enterprise.
But you wind up sitting not quite so much on the edge of your seat when you remember canon decrees many of those heroes simply cannot die yet. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), for example, has to survive long enough to make a couple of recurring appearances on The Original Series. Likewise, George Kirk (Dan Jeannotte) has to live long enough to die in The Original Series episode “Operation — Annihilate!”
Once again bringing up “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I” cliffhanger comparison: even Patrick Stewart has said the way that episode ended, he wasn’t sure if he’d have a job in Season 4 of TNG.
Regardless, Strange New Worlds gives us an explosive, mesmerizing finale to cap a masterful second season. Whenever we finally do get to see what Pike decides, we should have a little faith it will be worth the wait. If you haven’t yet, you can watch “Hegemony” now on Paramount+.
