During Monday’s First Contact Day celebration, Paramount+ officially announced the return of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s mischievous troublemaker Q, as fan-favorite Trek alum John de Lancie is set to reprise his role in the upcoming second season of Star Trek: Picard.

After the announcement earlier this week, de Lancie — who also made 1990’s-era appearances in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and games like Star Trek: Borg, in addition to a brief voice cameo in Star Trek: Lower Decks last year — spoke with Variety about being approached to come back for Picard, hesitancy to reprise his character, and once again sharing the screen with Patrick Stewart.

De Lancie — who has already started filming his work for Season 2 —  didn’t expect to get a Star Trek: Picard callback, knowing how long it’s been since he was part of a Star Trek production — his last appearance was in the 2001 Voyager episode “Q2.”

Six months ago…. Terry [Matalas], one of the executive producers, when I met with him, he said, “Oh, of course, you knew you were going to be coming back.” And I said, “You know what, Terry, ‘Star Trek’ has done a lot of movies and other shows without me. So I did not assume that that was going to be the case.”

I just sort of discipline myself as a professional over the years to go, “look, it’s somebody else’s dinner party. You cannot spend your time worrying about whether you’re getting invited. Just take it off the radar. You get invited or you don’t get invited, that’s all.

The actor also spoke about how Q’s role in Star Trek: Picard was pitched to him; in the Monday First Contact Day panel, Patrick Stewart noted that Q’s appearance comes at a “shattering moment” in Picard’s life.

One of the issues that I have is you don’t want to fall into the trap of re-creating. I was obviously a little concerned — very concerned — about the issues having to do with, well, excuse me, this is 20 years later. I’m supposed to be immortal and I certainly look very mortal.

There were issues about all of that. I was flattered. Of course, I said yes. I didn’t have to think about that part. And then I wondered, where are they going to go with this? There was generalized talk [about Q’s role], which intrigued me.

One of the things that’s sort of unusual, having played a character that has had such a long history… I’ve always thought of it as being kind of a diamond in the rough, and having new facets of that stone that’s going to be cut. So here it is, many years later, we’re still cutting that stone.

There will be elements of that stone which have already been cut, and they will simply need to be burnished up. And then there will be elements of this stone that will be newly cut, for which there will be people who go, “Oh I always thought you would go in that direction,” and then others, “Oh, I like him the way he was before!”

It solved one major problem for me, and that is I feel very strongly about the whole thing of, you can never go back…. Here, we are not, in fact, going back. We are taking what we have and we are moving forward. And to me, that’s exciting.

Already at work on Picard Season 2, de Lancie also shared his thoughts about getting to work with Patrick Stewart again — the last time Q and Picard interacted was in the 1994 Next Generation series finale “All Good Things…,” so this makes a 27-year reunion for the two actors.

I have [been filming]. It was fun.

My own issues have always been the same. I have to put in a lot of homework because I’m very dyslexic and I just have to work really hard to get all of that into RAM, as it were. And then once that’s done, I’m there to play. And so it was just fun. That type of preparation has paid off and you’re just ready to rock and roll.

Finally, the actor shared his feelings about the fan response to Q’s return to Star Trek after all these years.

This is thin ice for all of us: There are expectations. In the case of that little announcement, I thought they exceeded expectations on that. It was a really nice little morsel of, “Here he comes!”

What I felt was mostly was, ‘Oh shit!’ [Laughs] The pressure is on! That’s how I feel about it. I find that to be a challenge. I hope that I can match it. I hope that we all can match it, and more to the point, exceed it.

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 is in production now, and is expected to debut sometime in 2022.