Star Trek: Prodigy just began its first season, and while we’ve been expecting it to run concurrently all through the upcoming fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery, we’ve learned today that Paramount+ is going to give the animated show some more breathing room — but they’re also extending its life into the future.

Announced today by Paramount+, the first season of Prodigy will go on a mid-season break after the season’s fifth episode — after the November 18, 2021 airing — and will return for five more episodes after the holiday season on January 6, 2022.

Following that second five-episode run, the series will return for its next 10 episodes sometime later in 2022 — which Paramount+ is calling “the second half of Season 1” — which means that the full run of Prodigy Season 1 will consist of 20 episodes.

Episodes 1/2: October 28
Episode 3: November 4
Episode 4: November 11
Episode 5: November 18
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Episode 6: January 6
Episode 7: January 13
Episode 8: January 20
Episode 9: January 27
Episode 10: February 3
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Episodes 11-20: Late 2022

In addition, the streamer also announced today that Star Trek: Prodigy has gotten a formal Season 2 renewal — which will extend the USS Protostar’s journey even further past these first 20 episodes. (At this time, Paramount+ has not specified how many episodes will be in Season 2.)

Here’s the formal announcement from Paramount+ on both the scheduling changes, as well as the second-season renewal:

PARAMOUNT+ RENEWS ORIGINAL ANIMATED KIDS’ SERIES
“STAR TREK: PRODIGY” FOR A SECOND SEASON

“Star Trek: Prodigy” Mid-Season One Finale Will Be on Thursday, Nov. 18,
Returning with New Episodes on Thursday, Jan. 6

Nov. 8, 2021 – More adventures await the motley crew of the U.S.S. Protostar. Paramount+, the streaming service from ViacomCBS, today announced that its new animated kids series STAR TREK: PRODIGY has been renewed for a second season.

Produced by the Nickelodeon Animation Studio and CBS Studios’ Eye Animation Production, STAR TREK: PRODIGY is already a hit amongst Paramount+ subscribers, and had the top-performing premiere day out of any original animated kids series on the service.

Season one of STAR TREK: PRODIGY premiered on Thursday, Oct. 28 with a one-hour episode, exclusively for Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S. New episodes of the first half of season one will continue to roll out weekly on Thursdays through Thursday, Nov. 18.

Following a mid-season break, the remaining five episodes of season one’s first half will be available to stream weekly on Thursdays, starting on Thursday, Jan. 6. The 10-episode-long second half of season one will be available on Paramount+ at a later date next year, to be announced.

Way back in 2019, franchise boss Alex Kurtzman and fellow head honcho Heather Kadin told us that Prodigy was green-lit from the beginning with a two-season commitment, so it’s possible that today’s news about the 20-episode length of Season 1 was originally going to be two separate seasons — certainly a lot has changed since that interview two years ago.

Either way, the kids of Star Trek: Prodigy have hit the ground running and they’ve got a long road ahead of them.