Mike McMahan brings Star Trek: Lower Decks to an action-packed, poignant, ensemble of a close in “The New Next Generation,” a series finale worthy of the Cerritos that provides a ton of satisfying character moments. Across a super-sized episode, “The New Next Generation” is a big celebration of five seasons of Lower Decks and gives the Cerritos its chance to save the universe — which they accomplish with aplomb.
 
Star Trek series finales fall into one of two buckets: episodes like “All Good Things…” which provide a big final television adventure for the crew (but set them up for continued adventures), and “What You Leave Behind,” which provides a more definitive end to the story (as the crew splits up and moves on to new chapters of their lives). “The New Next Generation” fits pretty comfortably in between those archetypes — it does change the status quo for the Cerritos, but in many ways it keeps the core characters together and sends them off on new adventures.
 

It certainly sets Star Trek: Lower Decks up for a next chapter someday — whether that picks up shortly after the events of “The New Next Generation” or further down the line — that recaptures the same ensemble magic of the show in its current form. And the ways in which the show shifts the Star Trek universe’s status quo also set up plenty of fodder for new stories.

There’s a ton to unpack across this episode’s 34-minute runtime, but the piece that resonated mostly strongly with me was how well it centered the Cerritos crew and our core four characters. After last week’s grand adventure across the Star Trek multiverse, this episode brings it back home to the Cerritos.

There’s plenty for Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Boimler (Jack Quaid), Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), Tendi (Noel Wells), and T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) to do, but this episode finds moments for many of the Cerritos’s wider ensemble to get a final bow. In a lot of ways, this episode reminds me of one of my other favorite season finales for the series, “First First Contact,” where the crew all work together to step up and help address a crisis. The same happens here, with even larger stakes and three more seasons of fun side characters to get a look in.

It’s a lot, but “The New Next Generation” also doesn’t feel overstuffed. It only lightly grazes into cranking up the Star Trek lever just because it can — the ship briefly shifting states into other familiar starships like a Sovereign-class and a Galaxy-class, for example — but it keeps the action focused on Lower Decks’ crew and family. Notably, the Enterprise-E does appear! But only for half a second in an establishing shot where the Cerritos is front and center, without any legacy cast cameos… exactly how it should be.

And in addition to the strong focus on the Cerritos and its crew, the episode does expand a bit to capture a wider part of the Lower Decks ensemble. The return of Ma’ah (Jon Curry) and his brother Malor (Sam Witwer) and having the villain be a sister of the cursed (and dead) Dorg and Bargh, totally works. Lower Decks is keeping its finale in the family, and Ma’ah is one of its most successful characters outside of the core five. It’s such a nice arc from “wej Duj” through “The Inner Fight” and “Farewell to Farms,” that while it risks the episode feeling a little burdened by its own legacy, it all works.

The decision to move Captain Freeman (Dawnn Lewis) to Starbase 80 overseeing extra-dimensional exploration, and Jack Ransom’s (Jerry O’Connell) elevation to captain, was a nice way to end the series. Ransom has always been a favorite character of mine, and despite his buffoonish exterior he has proved over and over again that he’s a great Starfleet officer. Here again this week, his taking heat away from the captain and allowing her to play by the rules and do the right thing was inspired.

Lower Decks was such a joy of a show across five seasons, and so it is totally fitting that its series finale feels like a joy. It has its emotional moments to be sure, but they’re all joyful in the way they bring the series to a close. I am devastated that we won’t be getting more of this show, but I am so happy that it exists and that from “Second Contact” to “The New Next Generation” the series kept its quality high and was an absolute delight.

TREK TROPE TRIBUTES

• Relga is an extension of the Dorg and Bargh trope of Klingons oftentimes being evil and not very honorable, and the fact that Dorg has so many relatives who keep appearing to trouble Ma’ah is a great callback to the Duras family and their unending parade of siblings and relatives.
• Another Star Trek trope (that I love) is when someone not from the crew tells a story or provides a metaphor that gives our more technologically sophisticated Starfleet crew an idea about how to save the day — as Malor does here with the story about damming the river.

CANON CONNECTIONS

• The brief appearance of a Star Trek: Discovery Klingon — when the soliton anomaly alters the look of a “regular” Klingon — is the first time that 2017-era design has been seen outside of Discovery‘s first two seasons.
• The anomaly temporarily transforms the California-class Cerritos into Freedom-class, Sovereign-class, Galaxy-class, Oberth-class, and Miranda-class designs.
• This is the first in-dialogue reference to the Freedom-class and its one nacelle, a design established in the destroyed Starfleet armada in “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II” — though Tendi is cut off before she can explain how a one-nacelled ship can generate a warp bubble!

• The ancient Klingon sailing barge shares a resemblance to the ship that carries dishonored Klingons to Gre’thor, as seen in “Barge of the Dead.”
• Relga’s crew transform into the proto-Klingons that Worf became when he de-evolved in “Genesis.”
• The Enterprise-E appears briefly stationed next to the rift; this is the ship’s first chronological appearance after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis.
• Lower Decks never quite got a Mirror Universe episode, but we do get to see what the ISS Cerritos looks like, complete with its amazing weapons!
• The officer who falls from the glowing portal in Sickbay is Lieutenant O’Connor, who ascended to the Koala back in Season 1’s “Moist Vessel” — he’s even missing his shoes when he reappears, having left his uniform boots behind at the end of the Season 1 episode.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• Relga’s Bird of Prey is a new ship design for the Klingons, though as Doctor T’Ana so aptly points out “Klingons hardly ever update their ship designs. They always want their ships to look like big stupid birds.”
• The cadet Mariner shouts at in the bar bears a striking resemblance to Phil Murphy, one of the lead animators on Lower Decks.
• It was a really nice touch that Freeman just immediately trusted Mariner and Boimler’s crazy story about the end of the universe.
• With Ransom’s “Engage the core!” catchphrase also being a workout joke, we’ve hit the absolute pinnacle of hilarity of the “starship captains must have a catchphrase” that’s cropped up in Trek over the last couple of years — and it can now be retired.
• Mariner’s speech at the end had me crying. It was so good.

When Star Trek: Lower Decks was announced, I was one of the many fans who made a lot of throat-clearing noises about how we weren’t sure a concept like this could ever work for Star Trek; that adult animated Star Trek comedy wouldn’t be for us; that we were skeptical about the whole endeavor.

Lower Decks proved me wrong on that from the very first episode, and kept proving me wrong across the last five years. This series is just as Star Trek as any other, and more Star Trek than some. Mike McMahan and the whole team have given the fans such a gift. Paramount should do everything in its power to keep a talent like his as close to the franchise as possible.

The Star Trek franchise continues in 2025 when the Michelle Yeoh-led Star Trek: Section 31 movies premieres January 24 on Paramount+.