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Casting a new Next Generation
To make this crossover truly work, the film needs a fresh but credible Next Generation cast; actors who can carry their own films after Chris Pine and company bow out. The twist is that we initially meet them as Mirror versions, only to tease their “Prime” Kelvin counterparts later. Here’s one lineup that could both sell tickets and feel right:
- Ralph Fiennes as an older world-weary Jean-Luc Picard, a cunning imperial strategist with charisma.
- John Krasinski as William Riker, Mirror Picard's smiling knife in the Mirror Universe but a Prime timeline first officer you'd follow into a bar fight or Borg cube.
- Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Beverly Crusher, a caring doctor and bioweapon-wielding scientist.
- Rami Malek as Data, compassionate and curious in Prime, but brutally clinical when he treats life as something to be dissected.
- Winston Duke plays Worf, a Klingon commander who betrayed his people to survive in the Terran hierarchy in the Mirror Universe.
- Caleb McLaughlin as Geordi La Forge, a young engineering prodigy who becomes the engine room's heart or a ruthless weaponizer.
- Ana de Armas as Deanna Troi, a Prime counselor who comforts and understands but an empathic interrogator who breaks people apart for the Empire.
These choices allow the movie to highlight the central Mirror question: what do these people become if the Federation's values are taken away? The audience will immediately want to meet their non-Mirror versions, and that anticipation is the key to the “torch passing” ending.