The ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Season 2 Finale Was the Culmination of the Entire Franchise

For decades now, there’s been a clear divide: Star Wars is the heart franchise, Star Trek is the head franchise. Where Star Wars often barrels head first into spectacle, Star Trek — while leaving room for plenty of heart itself — always makes sure there is time for logic, that things make (pseudo) scientific sense. But that line has been blurring for the past decade, and perhaps longer, leading to tonight’s Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 finale, which was the biggest, boldest thing the franchise has ever done… A finale that not only pushed things forward, but also looped back to the beginning, working as a culmination of everything Star Trek from the past 53 years.

Trek has never been adverse to action. The series has its roots in old-fashioned movie serial fisticuffs, and time and again Captain Kirk (William Shatner) would lose his shirt while boxing an alien. But Gene Roddenberry’s creation always had a little more on its mind. The Federation was hopeful, speculative science fiction, not fantasy like George Lucas’ creation. It was meant to provoke thought, and stir conversation. That’s continued through every generation of the TV series and movies — even in blockbusters like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Things changed a bit with Star Trek: First Contact, though, which was a popcorn flick that brought one of the more heady entries in the series (that would be Next Generation) crashing into present movie language. The other movies followed suit (though less successfully), and on TV more complicated space action was attempted on entries like Deep Space Nine.

Then came director J.J. Abrams’ rejuvenation of Star Trek with the 2009 feature film. Focused on adventure to a fault, in retrospect the feature plays like an audition reel for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But you can draw a direct line between the 2009 flick and Star Trek: Discovery, a rollicking entry in the canon which channels action movie tropes while never losing sight of the hopefulness that makes Trek special.

That line, by the way, is named Alex Kurtzman. The insanely prolific producer and writer worked on Star Trek (2009), the sequel Star Trek: Into Darkness, and through a series of promotions and behind the scenes circumstances has become the architect behind CBS All Access’ burgeoning Star Trek universe of TV shows. I wrote before the premiere about how Kurtzman’s fingerprints were all over Season 2, gifting Discovery a scale to the action and sets that had never really been seen in the franchise outside of the more recent feature films.

…and then they blew that all away in the Season 2 finale, which is nearly an hour of non-stop action on a scale that wouldn’t be possible in most feature films, only taking brief moments for emotional beats before the end of the episode (which we’ll get to in a second).

Spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2” past this point.

The set-up is… Complicated. But the short version is, an evil artificial intelligence called Control wants to destroy all sentient life in the universe. Standing between him/it and total annihilation are two ships: the Discovery, and the Enterprise. The only thing left Control needs is data that’s been fused with Discovery‘s computer. If Control gets the data, it’s all over, so the two crews come up with a simple plan to hide Discovery approximately 950 years in the future. As one does.

To do this, they need to build a new Red Angel suit (a device capable of traveling through time) and essentially use it as a tugboat, sucking Discovery through a wormhole. And in order to do that, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) needs to wear the suit solo and get a safe distance away so the blast she causes when she rips through time doesn’t destroy the Enterprise.

So there’s a lot that needs to be done in this episode, and everything happens all at the same time. Control has thirty ships, so the Federation starships pump out a few hundred solo ships to attack back. Then Control reveals it has thousands of ships. Meanwhile, they’re trying to fabricate the suit, get Burnham to a safe distance, and figure out how they’re going to travel through time at all.

I’m describing maybe 10% of what happens in the episode (which also includes a ticking time bomb photon torpedo, a zero gravity fight in a shuttle dock, failing shields, and Burnham jumping through time to close the season’s main plotline) because oh my god, the main battle in the episode pummels your senses for nearly the entire runtime and does not let up, at all. Beams are flying everywhere, Burnham is jumping through space surrounded by enemy fighters and friendly ships protecting her (including Ethan Peck’s Spock following her in a shuttle), and just when all hope is lost… The Klingon fleet arrives to save them, piloted by L’Rell (Mary Chieffo) and Ash Tyler (Shazad Latif). And they’ve brought along Saru’s (Doug Jones) sister with a massive warship in order to hold back Control.

Pardon my language, but it is all fucking insane. It’s like the Furious 7 of Star Trek episodes, and for fans who have lamented that more of Discovery isn’t spent quoting philosophy and sitting on chairs the wrong way, I’m sure this is not what they asked for. But as the culmination of a season of television that piled on the mythology at an alarming rate, this was a welcome change of speed. Personally, I felt drained after watching this episode, because it’s so relentlessly entertaining for your eyeballs that when you get emotionally charged scenes like Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Culver (Wilson Cruz) finally reconcile their differences, I half expected one of them to explode into a fireball and the other one to start shooting lasers out of his eyes.

The good news is there’s so much to take care of it feels less like business (as it has the fast few episodes) than plot that gets pushed aside in favor of spectacle. Burnham set the seven signals in order to lead herself and the Discovery to this very moment in order to have the tools they need to stop Control? Cool. Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) melts Control in the reaction cube, ending the threat (which turned out not to be the Borg, as some fans had theorized)? Fine. The Enterprise gets totally trashed in the battle which is why, after a makeover, it finally looks the way it did in The Original Series? Why not.

It’s that last bit where things calm down, and we truly do get an ending of sorts to the entire Star Trek franchise, by looping back to the beginning. Viewers have speculated intensely about why nobody has ever mentioned Discovery‘s revolutionary spore drive, and why Spock never bothered to mention his adopted sister Michael. We get those answers, which is that Spock, Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Number One (Rebecca Romijn) and Ash Tyler keep the secret that Discovery did, in fact, escape to the future. They say the ship is destroyed and everyone is dead, so there’s no chance that a future Control will have records that could let it pursue the ship. They close the loop, down to Spock shaving and putting on his classic Star Trek uniform. Heck, once Discovery heads to the future, we don’t even see them anymore! They’re gone! the end of the episode is all Enterprise, all the time.

What’s most fascinating about this sequence is that it slows to the pace of original Trek, everyone speaking more evenly and calmly, the camera taking its time. Gone are the swooping, dizzying shots of Burnham hurtling through a battlefield; instead we’re on the classic deck of the Enterprise (though perhaps a little more shiny) and people are ready to think, and explore. The Enterprise, under the command of Pike (Kirk will join about a decade down the road), sets off to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!

This is the beginning of the Star Trek universe, but it’s also the beginning of the next phase of the franchise. Discovery the ship is gone, trapped nearly a thousand years past its beginnings as it heads into Season 3. CBS All Access, meanwhile, is prepping multiple spinoffs including a series focusing on Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), an animated series, and even one — interestingly, given the events of this season — focused on Yeoh’s Georgiou, and the organization Section 31 that ultimately spawned Control.

It’s been 10 years since Star Trek reinvented itself on the big-screen — and with this finale, it’s ready to head into the future, once again. Punch it.

Stream Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access