Star Trek: Lower Decks’ fifth season won’t serve as a series ender

Mike McMahan is not writing Star Trek: Lower Decks’ fifth season as a series-ending season.

Star Trek: Lower Decks is nearing the end of its fourth season, and with a fifth season order placed prior to the start of the fourth season, many are optimistic about the show’s longevity. Mike McMahan, series creator and head writer, seems to share that optimism to some degree, despite recent claims that he’s worried about the show’s future.

With writing season five back underway with the conclusion of the Writer’s Strike, McMahan has taken to telling people that he has far more grandiose plans than whatever season four’s ending and season five may hold.

Speaking to TrekMovie.com, McMahan went on to reassure fans that Lower Decks’ fifth season is not being written as a finale for the show, saying;

"They always want me to make sure that I’m writing something that feels like a new viewer can understand it and that the finales feel finale-y, so if it doesn’t continue or if there’s going to be a gap it doesn’t feel like when ALF originally ended and he got surrounded by FBI agents pulling their gun on him, and that was the last episode and you’re like, ‘No!’ But as much as they want me to feel like I’m writing [season] finales that are series finales, I just don’t think I’m ever going do it, because you want to feel like these characters are going to keep going.…For me, I want you to be satisfied at the end of the season and I want you to want more."

Star Trek: Lower Decks not having a true ending makes sense

When you think of the shows around Star Trek, the only show that shoehorned a true “ending” in was Deep Space Nine, where Benjamin Sisko and Gul Dukat both seemingly disappear into another reality. Voyager brought their journey to a close, but the characters continued on. And while Enterprise’s series finale is just bad, it left the door open for more stories there as well. Really, only Deep Space Nine shut the book on any new stories.

So it makes sense that Lower Decks goes the route that The Next Generation, Picard, Voyager, and others have taken; leaving the ending open so more stories can be told.