John de Lancie Promises His Q Will Keep Doing An Important Thing To Picard
What will John de Lancie's character be up to in Picard season 2? The actor has made fans promises.
We aren’t going to be seeing season two of Picard until 2022, but that hasn’t stopped Paramount+ from giving us a teaser trailer. It promised fans that this coming season is going to be all about time. It was fitting and natural then that Q is going to be in the mix. Perhaps Paramount+ felt it was imperative they give us the teaser trailer so early because they knew that actor John de Lancie was not going to be able to stop himself from gushing with fans about how excited he is to be back on Star Trek. He updates his social media frequently with “back!”, which is just the kind of enthusiasm Star Trek fans want to see.
John de Lancie couldn’t be happier to be back in the role. He does Cameo fan message videos and in them he has been updating his fans on what he’s been up to on the set for Picard. Most importantly? He’s annoying Picard to no end.
He promised this in a Cameo video for Stacy where he said: “By the way, you are going to be seeing more of me. I am on Picard. I guess they really needed someone to come in and really annoy the sh*t out of Picard and that is exactly what I have been doing for the last month. I’ve been making his life very unpleasant. I’m really proud of that.” Naturally, John de Lancie chuckled after that. The actor’s delight is probably part of what makes him so great as Q.
The character known simply as Q first appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation, where he popped up and caused a great deal of trouble. There’s something particularly satisfying about seeing the often uptight Jean-Luc Picard completely flustered by Q causing trouble. The character has control over time, space, reality, and the laws of physics, which is a powerful combination with his penchant for mischief. There’s no end to how fun and how important his character could be as Jean-Luc Picard navigates his new reality in season two.
If you look at IMDb, you might think that John de Lancie is only going to be appearing in one episode of Star Trek: Picard. That wouldn’t be much, considering that he is so prominently featured in that teaser. In the short clip, we listen to Jean-Luc Picard talk about the importance of time and then see the rest of a playing card melt away, leaving the Q on the table. It could not be more apt to think of Q as a playing card, since he’s definitely a game player. We then hear John de Lancie do a voiceover, just in case you weren’t clear that he was doing to be on the show.
Filming for Picard started back in February 2021, but according to John de Lancie’s Cameo fan messages, he only arrived on set recently. He’s been there for over a month and is still filming new things. It sounds like they are probably consolidating scenes where they need particular actors, due to COVID-19 safety regulations, and so are filming things out of order. The actor has already confirmed that he is in the first and second episodes of the season. He has also confirmed that he has scenes with Whoopi Goldberg, who plays Guinan. Surely, he’ll be annoying her as well. It’s what he does best.
