Star Trek: Picard - Denise Crosby's Tasha Yar Return Explained
"Star Trek: Picard" brought back a whole host of characters for its final season. In a couple of cases — that of Data (Brent Spiner) and of Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) — a bit of fancy footwork had to be applied as both shuffle off the mortal coil on their home shows. In Tasha's case, she doesn't return as a clone or even a flesh-and-blood version of herself — but as a hologram kept by Data to remind him of her, one that he first created back on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as a memorial to his fallen comrade, who dies during "The Skin of Evil" in Season 1. The footage in "Picard" appears to be recycled from this appearance.
While "Star Trek" fans are likely quite disappointed that Denise Crosby didn't appear in the program, she had previously hinted that Tasha would make an appearance on Picard, saying during an appearance at the 56-Year Mission Star Trek convention in 2022, she said "Oh. I don't want to give away too much. But I'm going to tell you that you will see Tasha Yar, but I'm not going to tell you how. You've got to watch" (per TrekMovie).
While she still hasn't stepped into Tasha's shoes since the character was unceremoniously killed off, Crosby has reappeared in the franchise in several fascinating ways. After all, she — and variations and relations of Tasha — have already returned to the program in previous iterations.
Tasha Yar has lived many different lives across many different realities
This isn't the first time the "Star Trek" world has reexplored what might have happened to Tasha Yar under different circumstances. During Season 5's "Redemption II," Denise Crosby returns to the show to play Tasha's lookalike daughter, Sela. It's revealed that in the universe from which Sela emanates, Tasha was taken prisoner with fellow members of the Enterprise-C when it crash-landed. The leader of the Romulan soldiers who takes the crew hostage grows enamored with Tasha; she agrees to become his concubine in exchange for the release of her comrades. But when Tasha tries to escape with a four-year-old Sela, the child cries out, and Tasha is discovered, captured, and executed. Sela grows up to be a Romulan military commander, and the Enterprise-C's unstuck-in-time crew soon becomes entangled in a battle for supremacy between the Romulans and Klingon empires.
In a third timeline, established during Season 3's "Yesterday's Enterprise," a change made to the flow of the timestream results in Tasha's survival. When she learns from Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) that she died a meaningless death in his timeline, she becomes determined to change that fate. The end result is her attaining a meaningful death — one which closes a breach in time forever more.