This superlative season of Star Trek comes to a close with the satisfying two part finale, “Ouroboros.” It has everything you’ve come to expect from Prodigy: exciting action, cool sci-fi concepts, gorgeous animation, heartfelt character moments, deep-cut Trek references.
But this finale stands out even beyond that, as our rag-tag brunch of misfits from “Lost and Found” come full circle and earn their growth and journey. This finale deepens every episode that came before it and holds the promise of great things for the future of these magnificent characters, whether we get to see it or not.
As the finale begins, Asencia (Jameela Jamil) is enraged that there is resistance all over Solum. The people want peace with the Federation. So with her back against the wall, she picks the nuclear option and opens as many rifts as she can, targeting dozens of Federation locations all at once with her impressively-terrifying weapon.
Her weapon is impressive looking as well and crackles with electricity exactly the way you would expect from the invention of a villain gone mad. As the electricity branches off into space and forms the various wormholes, it’s sheer beauty mutes the danger underneath.
But this is what Wesley (Wil Wheaton) was waiting for, and our science genius Rok (Rylee Alazraqui) explains why. The plan is to combine the energies from all the wormholes into one that can move in space and time back to where and when the Protostar needs to be on Tars Lamora. Between Rok, Maj’el (Michaela Dietz) and Zero (Angus Imrie), there’s enough explanation here that everyone can follow along, making a complicated idea accessible to all viewers. They will assist Wesley in making the calculations.
Unfortunately, the data needs to be entered manually into the top of Asencia’s research spire. Cool objective, and Dal (Brett Gray), Gwyn (Ella Purnell), Jankom (Jason Mantzoukas), and Murf (Dee Bradley Baker) will handle that part. Chakotay (Robert Beltran) is prepping the Protostar for it’s final voyage, and Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) on the Voyager-A is giving them time by trying to hold off Asencia’s invasion fleet.
So many fantastic little touches as everyone gets into place. We get a “Take us in!” from Janeway (chills!). There’s a fun Maquis name drop on the Protostar as Chakotay uses an old remodulated shields trick. Dal sweetly chooses his old Protostar-style combadge “for good luck.” Rok’s quick “Love you!” as she beams down the away team shows what a beautiful family they all have become over these two seasons.
Weaving back and forth between the four fronts keeps the action flowing and adds to the suspense. The Solum contingent has to climb 20 stories to the top of the tower, avoiding enemy fire, while the science crew reasons out the wormhole situation. Meanwhile, Janeway can do this all day! On the Protostar, Holo-Janeway is having a tough time with the fact that if they return the Protostar to Tars Lamora exactly how they found it the first time, that will include her — with her memory erased.
She and Chakotay talk about their time together on the island, the implications of which I’ve been purposely trying to avoid thinking about since “The Last Flight of the Protostar” and will continue to try to do so. I’m happy for whatever happened on Ysida to stay on Ysida!
Our resident geniuses work on the wormhole problem, and as they talk through it, we are treated to a wonderful recap of the Star Trek: Prodigy timeline as a whole, told in glorious flashbacks. This show in general — and this episode in particular — does a magnificent job of not leaving any viewer behind. Skillfully retelling and rewording concepts without it interfering with the rhythm of the show at all.
I did lose the thread a little bit during the long run of technobabble where they figure out that they themselves created the initial wormhole that Chakotay sent the Protostar back through, but my kids and I understood the concept and I’m sure the math checks out. And anyway, their excitement is contagious. Hugs and hoot-hoots all around!
Back on Solum, Asencia has fried the console they were planning on using to input the coordinates. They have to climb even higher now to manually override the system. Gwyn stays behind to deal with the Vindicator. Fantastic to get another round of Gwyn vs. Asencia. They are exciting to watch as evenly-matched polar opposites. Also, they have unfinished business from the last round: Gwyn needs her heirloom back.
We get another great matchup, as security officer Murf takes on a bugged-out Drednok (Jimmi Simpson). This fight features two unique character designs so it was incredibly interesting to watch and a surprisingly fair fight.
Eventually, Drednok points his weapon at Dal, and hero Murf grabs onto his head to stop him and pulls him back — all the way off the edge of the tower. My youngest daughter gasped and shouted “Murf-y!” I told her he would be ok falling as he doesn’t have any bones, but I was reassuring myself just as much as her. Luckily, Murf was even better than ok, as he emerged from the bottom wielding Drednok’s head as a trophy. Cute and deadly! What a fantastic combination.
Murf has bought them time and Jankom uses it to input the data. But the array does not engage, as a connection has come loose. In a perfect Back to the Future riff, Dal climbs up and manages to connect the two cables just in time. Like the Doc before him, he gets hit by the electric current. Dal falls from the tower. “Dal has bones!” my daughter yelled as he slow-mos off the top. Stretchy Murf grabs him before we can worry for too long though. Phew!
After some more exciting fighting action, Asencia appears to have gotten the better of Gwyn. She holds the heirloom weapon to her throat and Gwyn has just enough strength to hold it and keep it from piercing her. Ilthuran (John Noble), young Asencia, the counsel members, and other Vau N’Akat offer their “will” to Gwyn, which gives her the strength she needs to fight off Asencia.
The Vau N’Akat have been an unexpected highlight of the show and seeing yet another aspect of their mysterious power was delightful. And Gwyn looks incredible as the combined blue power glows even through her eyes. Asencia tries to use her own mind power to fight back and, while it’s not completely clear to me what happens to her, it appears that she overloads her mind and she collapses.
Part I ends with the arrival of the Loom, which is an exciting wrinkle in their plan to get the Protostar back through that wormhole. And while it is too little too late, it’s a nice touch that as Asencia is being hauled away she has a moment of clarity as she sees the Loom arrive: “What have I done?”
The plan is to pilot the Protostar through the Loom-infested wormhole to the past in Tars Lamora. The Voyager-A will follow and will beam back the crew once autopilot can take over the Protostar landing. Admiral Janeway is doing what she can to support the plan from the A, and she delivers more wonderful command-speak, as among other fantastic lines she orders her ship to “Remodulate phasers to match the Loom’s quantum variance…and set weapons to maximum.” Every second getting to be with this character again is such a gift.
The ships move boldly through the swarm of Loom to cross the threshold of the wormhole. Janeway utilizes her full crew compliment, as when all other navigation systems are lost, she calls on Cetacean Ops to “plot us a course through that stormy weather.” Decades of dreams fulfilled to get to see this department in action. The animation is spectacular, as we see Gillian swimming through the ship aquarium using LCARS projections to make her calculations and then seeing the ship from the outside move accordingly.
I don’t know what I would have expected to see with the actual mechanics of Cetacean Ops, but this is handled the way the best science-fiction ideas are, with just enough plausible details that can spark your imagination into filling in the rest of the pieces. Just delightful.
They are now fully inside the wormhole and it’s serene and beautiful. The animation of the temporal echoes of the Protostar as the timeline repairs itself is really special, giving off the air of an ethereal sentience to the phantom ships as they swim by. The autopilot set, it’s time for the crew to beam back over to the Voyager-A. But not everyone is heading back.
Holo-Janeway, the hero who sacrificed herself last season to save the Federation — and who will do so again — will remain behind. But while her program was too big to copy at the end of last season, now they are equipped with an EMH backup module (a lovely callback to “Living Witness”), so she gets to stay with her crew and maintain her memories while also fulfilling her destiny. Fantastic! Holo-Janeway is such a special part of the crew. I’m glad they were able to tie that bow.
One last final touch, as Dal leaves behind his Protostar combadge for Rok to find in the past. What a beautiful, poignant detail. They have truly come full circle. I love that they are setting themselves on the path that changed their lives. This is the best part about the entire time loop storyline, that they made their own destiny. What an incredible arc!
With everything exactly as is should be, the episode takes the time for a montage reliving the story of Star Trek: Prodigy. Of our Protostar crew’s journey with their found ship. The clips and sound bites are chosen so specifically with love and care. I’m a sucker for a great edit like this. It honestly brought tears to my eyes to see how far these kids have come. It also was a great reminder of how much fantastic Star Trek this show has given us.
Janeway delivers an Admiral’s log that contains a lot of Star Trek potpourri as it wraps up for our legacy characters. She begins with an incredibility deep cut quote from an “old friend” which is actually something Picard said in a deleted scene from Star Trek: Nemesis. As Asencia’s technology gets disassembled, it gets put into boxes marked with the Daystrom Institute logo. Could this be what led to the stolen portal technology seen in Star Trek: Picard Season 3?
The Picard references roll on as Wesley Crusher makes a long overdue visit to Beverly (Gates McFadden) and meets his baby brother, Jack. Unexpected connections to the wider universe! Meanwhile, the EMH has finished a new novel, Chakotay is helming the Voyager-A, and Janeway herself has taken an early retirement to a farm in what I assume is Indiana.
And our Protostar crew? They are finally at Starfleet Academy just like they and us have hoped for. Dal has graduated from Temporal Mechanics 101 to 201. My kids thought the joke about throwing away the book was funny and relatable. “It’s like when I thought I was done with Algebra and then had to take Algebra II!”, my oldest reminisced.
Our gang sits on campus near the Golden Gate bridge. Zero and Maj’el share a Vulcan-style public display of affection as they touch fingers and I’ve never seen anything cuter. Behind them, a banner in the sky reads “Happy First Contact Day” and I was taken aback and thought to myself, “No. they wouldn’t go there, right? It’s just an Easter Egg from ‘Children of Mars.’“
The conversation they have is so distinctly normal. They talk about what track they want to do and how their adventure has bought them a certain amount of cache on campus. And then everyone gets the alert about the Mars attack. And it turns out it wasn’t just an Easter Egg — this is the day that Mars is attacked by rogue synthetics, seen both in that Short Trek and in Picard Season 1.
This was obviously something my kids had no reference for, but they could tell something was really wrong based on the look on my face just as much as the explanation on screen. They had the same reaction as Rok who asked “What’s happening? What’s this mean?”.
I never in a million years would have expected this finale to take such a turn. This season has made reference to the time period it exists in several times, mentioning the Romulan evacuation in particular, but I would never have guessed it would so explicitly insert itself into the events of the live action show of this time period.
I love how much this bold choice “legitimizes” Prodigy by placing it so centrally within the greater Star Trek timeline. It’s a pretty heavy concept to introduce 5 minutes before the end of the show’s finale, but Prodigy has never been a show to shy away from making an interesting choice just to avoid complication.
Janeway’s retirement is not going to stick as Chakotay comes to tell her the news. The Admirals meet to discuss Starfleet retreating from its stated mission of exploration to focus on protection. Just a side note that I adore the design of the Picard-era uniforms shown here and Janeway in particular looks amazing in it.
The crew gets the further bad news that classes have been canceled until further notice. This specific disappointment is something my COVID-generation kids can relate to. They don’t need to understand the details of what a Synth attack is to empathize with how events beyond their control can have a huge impact on them. This little scene with our young crew commiserating about how unfair (and illogical!) it all is really hit home for my kids.
They lost their school, too. I think this shared experience, more than anything else, made my kids feel like they were part of the crew. The show really felt like it was speaking right to the unique experience of their generation here.
Bringing in “Children of Mars” and Picard was a big swing, and a risk that really paid off. They took something very complicated from the newer canon and found a way to make it resonate with both seasoned Trek fans and the actual intended audience of the next, next generation. It’s one of my favorite creative decisions of the whole series, and a template that the new live action shows should look to when thinking of ways of uniting all the different incarnations of Star Trek.
And this all makes the grand finale so rewarding. Janeway, Chakotay, and the EMH beaming at our crew as they get their ensign pips. I feel as proud as our legacy characters look here. Janeway introduces the gorgeous new Protostar-class USS Prodigy (Variable geometry nacelles! This ship is gorgeous!). Starfleet was ready to scrap it, but thanks to Janeway, the ship will go out on a mission of exploration, maintaining the ideals of the Federation and Starfleet at this time of closing ranks.
I love that for our crew, but I also love that for this time period in the Star Trek Universe. Knowing this crew is out there doing good is such a comforting thought. It’s also earned enough that I can believe in the premise, knowing what Starfleet is currently going through.
The ending makes the whole series feel like what’s past is prologue. This is the true start of the show, right? These young people, this young crew — this young Starfleet crew — out exploring strange new worlds, the way Star Trek is meant to be.
Janeway says: “Somehow, somewhere, you are going to make a great difference,” and I wish we could be there to see it. A third season of Prodigy is unlikely, and that’s such a missed opportunity for some more fantastic Star Trek. Ending it here is leaving endless possibilities on the table. My kids’ final thoughts were summed up when my daughter said: “They have to make more now! They set it up so perfectly!”
But that’s probably not in the cards. So I am grateful for what we did get. Two seasons, 40 episodes, of a fantastic show that can stand toe-to-toe with any other version of Star Trek. Gorgeous animation, thrilling adventures, worthwhile returns of beloved characters, new characters that are now also beloved, looking at Star Trek in new ways and adding even more richness and depth to the canon.
And to get to share all this with my kids? Incredible. For old fans and new fans alike, Star Trek: Prodigy is truly a treasure and a gift.
Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 is available to stream now on Netflix globally (excluding-Canada, Nordics, CEE, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Belarus, and Mainland China). The show can also be viewed on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Central and Eastern Europe.