Picard boss on final season's big twist: 'It wasn't something to be taken lightly'

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Star Trek: Picard season 3, episode 2.

It's not a coincidence that a show heavily influenced by Star Trek: The Next Generation is grappling with the next generation of Star Trek.

Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Picard got quite the shocker in the second episode of Star Trek: Picard's third and final season: Ed Speleers' Jack Crusher, son of his former flame Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), is also his child.

Complicating the situation is Captain Vadic (Amanda Plummer), a mysterious figure who's after Jack. She claims to want the bounty on his head, only a bounty hunter wouldn't come packed with a warship, which makes her motives shady.

The reveal comes as Jack is preparing to turn himself over to Vadic in order to save his mother, who's on the mend in a medically induced sleep. William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) wakes Crusher and walks her to the bridge. She and Picard lock eyes, and in this emotional, silent moment, everything comes into focus. "He is my son," Picard tells Captain Liam Shaw (Todd Stashwick).

"We wanted to, certainly, protect the big twist of the season and make the audience truly understand it, that it wasn't something to be taken lightly," Terry Matalas, the showrunner of the season, tells EW.

Matalas says "from the first minute" the ethos of season 3 was the next generation and the idea of children. Even before the premiere dropped on Paramount+, fans knew to expect the daughters of Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton), played by Mica Burton (Critical Role) and Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut (Cruel Summer).

"I felt like this had to be not only a passing the torch to the next generation, but a look-back at the last generation and an introspective look at what they viewed as the sins of their pasts," he explains. "As the season goes on and you see what it's all about, there are great regrets for all of them, but also a celebration of their triumphs that these are things that they could only overcome by coming together as this family. Showing that to a new generation, that just seems obvious. That should be the story."

Matalas also confirms the reveal of Picard and Crusher's son involved many conversations with McFadden. The former chief medical officer of the Enterprise "had great chemistry" with her captain in the Star Trek: The Next Generation era, he remarked in a previous interview with EW.

"It always felt like 'will they, won't they?' It feels like, 'Why didn't they for decades?'" he said. "It felt like it should have gone there in a feature film. Now that you're here at the end, wouldn't it be great to see, 'Oh, they went there alright.' And now we get to see the fallout of that and a kind of coming together."

Star Trek: Picard season 3 episodes arrive weekly every Thursday on Paramount+.

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