Star Trek: Prodigy fans were caught off-guard last week when the animated series’ complete second season suddenly appeared on France’s Okoo FranceTV streaming platform without a warning to the rest of the world.
 
The Okoo debut came as a surprise to those of us who have been eagerly awaiting the Protostar crew’s return — and was a shock to the creators of the series itself, along with CBS Studios, it seems. Prodigy Season 2 is still unscheduled in all other global regions, where the show now lives on Netflix after its departure from Paramount+ last summer; the show was originally set to return to P+ for Season 2 in late 2023.
 

CBS Studios has been known for their strict embargoes on press screeners, and have kept their actors and creatives tight-lipped about anything even close to a spoiler in their general management of the Star Trek Universe over the last several years, so a ‘surprise’ Season 2 unveiling without the slightest bit of studio-backed fanfare is unusual, to say the least.

(We can also share that initial inquiries to CBS about the matter resulted in a request that press outlets “hold on reporting… spoilers or storyline information” while they reviewed the situation with their international distribution team.)

Even the show’s creators, Kevin and Dan Hageman, initially reacted to the Okoo release as a “leak” in a now-deleted post on Twitter/X — indicating they had not foreknowledge of the France release — requesting one fan site “help not spreading” attention to the situation.

TrekCore and much of the Trek and genre news community held even making reference to the situation until some kind of clarity from the studio behind Prodigy was available — especially after the Hagemans continued to express their confusion about why the season was made public ahead of a global wide release.

The Prodigy episodes on Okoo are dubbed in French only — no English-language audio or subtitle track is available — but the surprise availability of these episodes immediately became an explosive source for major spoilers about the next year of Protostar crew adventures. And though it seemed apparent that this was a properly-licensed acquisition of the show, the March 22 release of all 20 episodes of fully-unaired and unannounced content seemed like it had to be some kind of mistake.

Following an inquiry made by French Star Trek fan podcast Le Quadrant Pop, FranceTV shared a statement where they acknowledged that their Prodigy streaming was — as assumed — a licensed presentation for their region, however they did not comment on if the release date was coordinated with CBS Studios in any way.

(Typically, even licensed releases of new content are planned with alignment on broadcasting dates called “windowing,” to coordinate for maximum impact on publicity and viewing numbers across platforms.)

For a show that has had surprise mid-season delays, a year between half-season releases, and a cancellation that caused the show to disappear for months, Prodigy has really been through the ringer — and any chance for a Season 3 renewal depends on how well Season 2 of the series does on its new Netflix home, so this “early” release in France has many concerned over a potential impact to those needed viewing numbers.

Now, after almost a week of confusion — and a week of waiting for CBS Studios to release some kind of statement about the situation — the Hageman brothers followed up with their own social post earlier Friday evening, noting a “miscommunication” surrounding the whole mess.

UPDATE: Yes, the obvious is true, it was not a leak. For a show about communication, it’s unfortunate there was some miscommunication. Though it has sold to other foreign markets (YAY!) rest assured #StarTrekProdigy S2 will drop next on Netflix at a TBD date.

— Dan & Kevin Hageman (@brothershageman) March 28, 2024

All that said, we do still have some additional information about the situation: you can ignore the list of Prodigy Season 2 episode titles that have been floating around for the past week.

Episode titles are often changed for international markets where English is not the primary language — the reported titles for Season 2’s French episodes may have been translated back to English, but we’ve confirmed with CBS Studios that they are not the final titles for Prodigy Season 2’s episodes.

Until the season is officially released on Netflix — where the Hagemans’ comment promises will be the next place Season 2 will debut — fans have been asked to keep spoilers to a minimum to keep the planned story and surprises a secret until the entire world gets to see Prodigy’s next year of adventures. While there has been little other ‘official’ communication from the show’s cast and crew, voice actor Bonnie Gordon asked fans to keep spoilers to a minimum until the worldwide release.

We’ll also be maintaining a strict no-spoilers rule here at TrekCore for any of the Season 2 content currently available in France, so be aware that any article comments linking to or discussing Prodigy spoilers will be deleted without warning.

As soon as CBS Studios releases their own statement about the status of Prodigy Season 2, or they announce additional scheduling information for the worldwide Netflix release, we’ll be sure to let you know.

In the meantime, let us know your SPOILER-FREE thoughts about this unusual situation in the comments below.