LeVar Burton speaks very highly of Star Trek: Picard season 3

Levar Burton speaks very fondly of Star Trek: Picard’s last season.

2023 will see the first of the Alex Kurtzman era series end, with Star Trek: Picard finishing its tale after three seasons. The season will say goodbye to Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, with the veteran actor portraying the character for the last time in his career. To help celebrate this, the last two seasons have been the last hurrah of classic characters from The Next Generation. LeVar Burton, a former castmate of Stewart’s from that series, will reprise his character of Geordi La Forge for Picard’s last year.

Burton will join the rest of his castmates from The Next Generation in a “reunion” of sorts for season three and will continue the tradition of bringing in past actors from those shows. With the likes of Brent Spiner, Whoopi Goldberg, John de Lancie, and Wil Wheaton all returning to their classic Trek roles for Picard.

Season three will be the last go for many of these actors, Burton seems to think that this season is a good way to send off that crew.

LeVar Burton calls season three a ‘love poem’ to The Next Generation

Speaking to Yahoo (Via TrekMovike.com), Burton gushes about the experience of filming Picard, saying;

"We’re all done now and it was an absolute blast. It was so good to be together. I mean, we’re all very, very close anyway. We try to get together once a year for Christmas, but during COVID we weren’t able to do that, so being able to get together at the end of last year and the beginning of this year was really cool for us."

He later goes on to say that this is a proper send-off to The Next Generation.

"And then to put on our space suits and play these characters again! We all thought the ship had sailed on a conscious goodbye. When me made our last movie, Nemesis in 2002, we expected there to be another one, and then things changed. So this was a great gift to us. This season of Picard is a love poem to Next Generation and we get to see these people that we grew to know and even love at this new point in their lives."

The last time this group was together was for 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, a film many hated. The villain of the film, Tom Hardy, was depressed after the film due to how much the fans hated it. Marina Sirtis recently spoke out and said she and the cast felt discarded after the film ended.

While it was the last film in the Next Generation series, it wasn’t supposed to be. There were plans for more, but the film franchise just lost its luster. So their run ended a bit prematurely. This seems to be a trend in Star Trek.

Hopefully, the third season of Picard is everything the cast and crew want it to be and that the fans are more receptive to it than the past two seasons.