Star Trek: Picard reveals its final villain and they missed the mark

Star Trek: Picard’s final season will have a villain that has to live up to impossible expectations.

You can’t promise the final season of a show and the final outing of an icon like Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard and deliver a villain that fans were left saying “who” to. The final season of Star Trek: Picard will see the insanely talented Amanda Plummer (Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction) star as the new series villain, Vadic.

The name alone is a real downer, as it instanatly makes me think of Vecna from Stranger Things. The overall look of the villain is pretty generic and the aliens she rolls up with reek of Bad Robot designs. All in all, for some epic trailer, the villain reveal was middling at best. It would be better if Vadic was just some new character, but apparenlty she’s targetting Picard now because of his time on the Enterprise, leaving many to wonder why she didn’t make her move decades earlier.

It would’ve made more sense to bring back a villain to cap of Picard’s run on Star Trek. Even if they had to do some time travel, alternate reality nonesense to bring them back. Instead, we have a brand new villain, who may very well be entertaining, but ultimatley we’re left disappointed by the reveal.

Star Trek: Picard has an uphil battle with the new villain

The new villain is going to be a hard sell on a show that is pretty maligned right now. Not all Nu Trek is bad but fans have not taken to Picard (and Discovery) at all. They have their fans, fair, but most don’t like the show.

Introducing a new villain, in a season of reunions, kind of feels like they’re serving two masters. Nostaliga and progression. You can’t do both at the same time. Either you’re catering to what was, or you’re catering to what will be.

You can’t change what was without angering fans and you can’t limit what will be by playing up the past. Picard is now trying to do both things, and it will ultimately fail. Having a villain with some secret, long-term history with Picard who randomly shows up one day?

Come on. That’s just dumb.

You can say “It’s just a trailer, let it play out” but I don’t have to. Wanna know why? The point of the trailer is to sell me on the product, the characters and the story. This trailer wiffed and wiffed hard at making me interested. We’re supposed to elieve that a character with 40 years of history with Pciard was never mentioned or seen once? What was she, some off-screen character who had no impact on the show?

Then why use her? Why not find another character who did have an impact on the show? An evil Reginald Barclay would have made more sense then Miss Random Pants Magee over here.