‘Star Trek: Picard’ Stars Break Down Episode 3: Is [SPOILER] Really Dead?

After two wild episodes that killed the entire cast, revealed a new Borg Queen, a second new Borg Queen, a broken Q, and a dark alternate timeline, Star Trek: Picard‘s latest episode, titled “Assimilation”, finally got to the big plot for the season. Spoilers past this point, but thanks to a classic slingshot maneuver and some help from that second Borg Queen (Annie Wersching), Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and crew have traveled back in time to 2024 Los Angeles to track down the source of the divergence caused by Q (John de Lancie) that he’s using to teach Picard some sort of mysterious lesson.

Only the trip didn’t come without a cost: Elnor (Evan Evagora), who was grievously injured while trying to escape Seven of Nine’s (Jeri Ryan) alternate timeline husband, died. Or… Did he? His death is certainly Raffi’s (Michelle Hurd) motivating factor, as she’s taking the slim chance that fixing the timeline will bring Elnor back to life, and running with it. And though Evagora was cagey about the possibility, it does sound like we will be seeing Elnor back… Somehow.

“Uh… that’s a really good question I don’t know if I’m allowed to answer it,” Evagora said when Decider prodded him for info on Elnor’s final fate. “I know Elnor appears again, I just can’t say in what capacity or how. But, I don’t even know if I’m allowed to say that, but I did, so there we go!”

One storyline that can be talked about? A big cliffhanger involving Rios (Santiago Cabrera). While the rest of the team transported safely into Los Angeles, Rios was dropped midair on a fire escape, and left bleeding and concussed on the sidewalk. Taken into a hospital and treated by a friendly doctor, he almost immediately lost his communicator, and then in a misguided attempt to help the doctor, was taken into custody by ICE. It’s a surprising move for Star Trek given the usual level of metaphor inherent in the plotlines; but for Cabrera, it felt like a powerful one.

“Star Trek has always tried to be truthful to the reality of the world today,” Cabrera said, “and it was a great opportunity as a Latin-American, as an immigrant to this country. It was a very relevant thing and I think the important thing was to make it truthful to the character and make it specific to who he is and to what his reality is, as opposed to making it just a sort of an idea or a generalization. I think we did that, and I think it was well researched and the way it played out, I was very happy with it in the end. It draws a light to the world today, to what’s going on. And it’s done responsibly, and I think true to Rios and to the circumstances that he suddenly literally and figuratively falls into. Crashes into.”

Whether Rios manages to escape ICE is a question for another episode, as a lingering shot shows his communicator has been left behind in the hospital. But there is one other actor in the whole time travel storyline who is so far completely missing: Isa Briones, who plays androids Dahj, Soji, Jana and Sutra on the show. When she was last seen in the first episode of the season, she was happily helping androids reintegrate into galactic society in the show’s main timeline, before Q changed things up. So where is Briones in all these alternate universe/time travel shenanigans?

“I can’t quite answer specifically, but I can say that you will see me,” Briones said enigmatically. “You will see me. I can’t quite specify to what capacity, as Evan also can’t. But you’re definitely going to see a lot of new character development delving into very different parts of all of our characters, especially in this new reality they’re all thrown into.”

So there you have it: despite being taken in by ICE, being off-screen since Episode 1, and, uh, being dead, we should be seeing big things for Rios, Dahj and Elnor before Season 2 wraps up.

Star Trek: Picard streams Thursdays on Paramount+.

Where to watch Star Trek: Picard