Star Trek: Lower Decks brings back an iconic actor and forgotten character for a huge reveal

Star Trek: Lower Decks gives fans a deep cut to reveal the season’s biggest threat.

Star Trek: Lower Decks has spent all season building up to a massive reveal; who was the pilot of the crazed alien ship that was destroying various alien spaceships? Well in Lower Decks’ ninth episode of season four, “Cave” we find out that very answer. Beckett Mariner is whisked away on a simple mission to fix a satellite but as you’d expect, nothing goes according to plan.

Instead, Mariner comes face to face with the person who is wreaking havoc, and it happens to be someone she knows. We find out that Mariner was at Starfleet Academy with the likes of Nova Squad; Cadet First Class Nicholas Locarno, Cadet Second Class Jean Hajar, Cadet Second Class Sito Jaxa, Cadet Third Class Wesley Crusher, and Cadet Joshua Albert.

It was during her time at the academy that she and Sito Jaxa became best friends. So when it came to light that Jaxa had died sometime later, Mariner decided she didn’t want to be the one who was sending her friend to their deaths as a commanding officer.

But in “Cavses”, she finds out that former Nova Squad leader and famed Starfleet Academy flameout, Nicholas Locarno, was in fact the one behind the attacks that have plagued the galaxy in recent weeks.

The two know each other, so when Locarno and Mariner come face to face, he essentially offers her a spot by his side.

Star Trek: Lower Decks brings back former actor for another episode

For those who may remember, Locarno is infamously played by Robert Duncan McNeil, who is most well known to Star Trek fans for playing Tom Paris on Star Trek: Voyager

McNeil has already returned to the world of Trek once before to provide the voice of a Paris hallucination that Brad Bolimer of the USS Cerritos had to deal with.

So bringing McNeil back once again to play another character was a great idea and tied up some loose ends left lingering by The Next Generation, namely what happened to the Nova Squad’s best player.