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After 10 packed episodes, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has finished its third season with 'New Life and New Civilizations,' written by Dana Horgan & Davy Perez, and directed by Maja Vrvilo. And boy, does a lot happen in the episode, including major character 'deaths,' a seeming destiny avoided (but not really), and even a bold new five-year mission. So what went down in the Season 3 finale? Well, we’ll tell you, we will.

Major spoilers ahead for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 finale.

The episode loops back to the cliffhanger from Season 3, Episode 5, 'Through the Lens of Time,' where Junior medical officer Dana Gamble (Chris Meyers) was killed while exploring a strange tomb. His body was inhabited by a Vezda, an evil parasite that the tomb was meant to imprison – and in fact was imprisoning hundreds, if not thousands, of others. While Vezda-Gamble was seemingly beaten while fighting Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano), who has been melded with Gorn DNA, Vezda-Gamble (that would be Vezda-Gamble) isn’t quite done yet trying to free his evil comrades.

While Nurse Chapel’s (Jess Bush) boyfriend, archaeologist Roger Korby (Cillian O’Sullivan) investigates a planet that may have cracked the key to immortality, Chapel, M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), and Scotty (Martin Quinn) accidentally discover Vezda-Gamble has been freed from the transporter buffer they trapped him in previously – and he’s on the planet with Korby.

Naturally, the crew heads to the planet to help Korby out and stop Vezda-Gamble, particularly as they discover that the planet Korby is being held on is a direct gateway to the prison that holds the Vezda army. Luckily, the portal that leads to the prison also has some instructions on how to stop the Vezda, specifically of the “eternal battle between good and evil” kind. Vezda-Gamble uses this to lure M’Benga through the portal to the prison, and begins to attack a mysterious crystalline structure – the “Beholder statue” seen in the opening chamber of the prison… Which directly impacts Batel, back on the Enterprise. Huh?

As Chapel discovers, it turns out that somehow Batel is the Beholder statue. And Batel figures the rest out: the Vezda aren’t just evil, they’re the original evil that all other evil is based on. And thanks to the hybrid DNA job the Enterprise did on Batel to save her from being infected by the Gorn, she has become an eternal, time-hopping protector meant to keep the Vezda imprisoned. Sure, that tracks.

Batel heads to the portal with Captain Pike (Anson Mount), but they can’t open it, so Spock (Ethan Peck) and Kirk mind-meld in order to pilot the Enterprise and Kirk’s current ship, the Farragut, at the same time to give the portal enough power to open for Pike and Batel. Again: why not?

They enter the portal, find themselves in the prison… And the final battle begins!

What happens at the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 ending? 

Can you believe there are still 20 more minutes left in the episode at this point? It’s true! But what happens next is both straightforward and, at the same time, insanely complicated.

As Batel gears up her good guy powers to fight VG’s bad guy powers… We suddenly cut to Pike’s cabin on Earth. “Happy anniversary,” he tells Batel. “We made it.” Huh? What???

What follows is an abbreviated version of the Next Generation classic 'The Inner Light,' which found Picard (Patrick Stewart) living through 40 years in a single episode. Instead, we get Batel and Pike living all the way to her death of old age, which includes Pike somehow not getting horribly mangled in an accident that would leave him inside a large metal box, the way we discovered him in the Original Series. It also gives them a daughter, a dog, and full, happy lives.

Naturally, none of this is real… It’s Batel, now the avatar of good, giving them a happy ending before she turns into a statue. She has “the power of space and time” and is able to create for them sort of a pocket universe in their minds, in the moment before her battle with Vezda-Gamble.

“You’ve given me everything I needed, and more than I could have hoped for,” Batel says. “I needed to have this first so I can say goodbye and still remember you. Still remember us.”

And as she 'dies,' we return to the prison, where Vezda-Gamble releases the Dementors – sorry, other Vezda. Batel rips the Vezda out of Gamble’s body, and the two fuse into the Beholder Statue, keeping the ultimate evil imprisoned for all time. Or until the next time someone frees it, because that’s how Star Trek works.

That’s it for Batel and the Vezda, but we do have a few other pieces of business to deal with. Spock and Kirk decide to become friends and discuss perhaps being on a crew together someday. And Corby leaves Chapel with a map of the stars to uncharted planets, which we discover is enough to power a five-year mission. And though the depressed Pike won’t say “hit it,” after seeing a shooting star he suspects is a sign from Batel, the ship heads out to explore the stars anyway.

Were there any Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 finale deaths? 

Not technically? Batel 'died' of old age, but that was a magical scenario happening entirely in her and Pike’s heads. Gamble died before he was even possessed by the Vezda, but his body was destroyed, so RIP Gamble twice, sort of. But that’s it! Not even a Red Shirt killed for good luck. Sad!

What and who are the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 finale big surprises? 

Certainly, Batel turning out to be an immortal avatar of good that then turns into a statue is a big surprise. As many fans pointed out with the earlier Vezda episode, this is the sort of thing that would happen on Stargate all the time, but seems out of left field for Star Trek.

The other surprise is that, while it’s not explicitly stated, Pike seems to have his surety about preserving his dark future, something that has been present since he discovered it on Star Trek: Discovery, shaken. The episode ends with him talking about this being a new future (even if it was all in his head). And while he likely is headed for that metal box, in the final two seasons of the show, it’s possible we might see Pike pushing back against his destiny, instead of just embracing it.

One last surprise, which is also not clearly explicated but heavily hinted: is the map Corby handed to Chapel the five-year mission the Enterprise goes on in The Original Series? Seems likely! 

Are there Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 post-credits scene(s)? 

Nah! The odd end credits scene in the Star Trek: Picard finale aside, Star Trek doesn’t generally do post-credits scenes. Once the Enterprise warps off into space, you can safely flip over to Dexter: Resurrection, the latest episode of South Park, or maybe try going outside and taking a walk for a change. A little exercise won’t kill ya!

Will there be a Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4? 

Yep! Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was renewed for Season 4 in April of 2024, started filming on March 3, 2025, and was expected to finish any day now. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 is expected to run 10 episodes and premiere sometime in 2026 on Paramount+.

But wait, there’s more! The series has also been picked up for a fifth and final season. It has a shortened, six-episode order and is expected to head into production later this year. No premiere date has been announced, but it’s fair to speculate sometime in 2027 on Paramount+.

How does Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 affect the larger Star Trek Universe?

The third season spent a significant amount of time continuing to set up the classic, The Original Series crew led by Captain James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley), including a spotlight episode, 'The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail,' which found Kirk captaining most of the core crew for the first time. And EP and co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman has promised that, “We will take the show to Kirk’s first day of command, which is by the way, not actually The Original Series. The Original Series starts a bit into Kirk’s command.”

That’s somewhere in the future of the real world (see above re: the final season). But one thing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds does not set up, as far as we’re aware, is the next series in the franchise: Starfleet Academy. That series is set in the same timeline as Star Trek: Discovery, which is in the 32nd Century, while Strange New Worlds is set in the 23rd Century. That by no means indicates there won’t be some wild time travel crossover that happens before the end of Strange New Worlds’ run. But as of now, other than existing in the same universe, they’re not connected.

Space may be the final frontier, but there's no end to Popverse's love of the Star Trek universe. Hop aboard the starship Enterprise with our Star Trek watch order, explore strange new worlds with our upcoming Star Trek TV shows and movies list, seek out the new life of the franchise, and boldly go where no Star Trek film has ever gone before - with Quentin Tarantino?