The Ending Of Picard Season 2 Episode 7 Explained

Contains spoilers for Picard Season 2 Episode 7, "Monsters"

The stakes for survival are finally coming into focus as the crew of "Star Trek: Picard" find their footing in the year 2024. After last week's extended adventure at the Europa gala culminated with Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) in a coma after getting hit by a car and Jurati wandering into the night while possessed by the Borg Queen, we were left with The Watcher (Orla Brady) about to enter Jean-Luc's mind in a desperate attempt to wake him from his unconscious state.

Season 2, Episode 7, titled "Monsters," is mostly spent inside Picard's head, with The Watcher wading through the Admiral's haunting and repressed childhood memories. Meanwhile, Captain Rios (Santiago Cabrera) gets closer to Doctor Ramirez (Sol Rodriguez) while Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) and Raffi (Michelle Hurd) play hide-and-seek with the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching), now living inside Doctor Jurati (Alison Pill). It's been a consistent pattern this season that most of the plot-progressing action takes place in the third act, and this episode is no different.

Armed with new information about his past, Picard meets up with an old friend for a summoning ritual, but things quickly go sideways. Meanwhile, Jurati has Borg in her brain, but Seven of Nine and Raffi find a lead on her whereabouts. There's a lot packed into the ending of this episode, so let's break it down.

After Doctor Adam Soong (Brent Spiner) hit him with a car in the previous episode, Picard enters a coma, trapped in his own mind with dark memories of his childhood. The Watcher enters his thoughts in an attempt to revive him. Picard has memories of his father (James Callis) as a relentlessly abusive man from whom his mother (Madeline Wise) protected him, but the truth is harder to confront. In reality, his mother suffered from delusions and paranoia brought on by mental illness, and his father tried to save her from herself. Upon his reawakening, The Watcher realizes that these memories are part of Q's (John de Lancie) master plan.

The revelation causes Picard, always the master tactician, to reevaluate Q and the strategy best used to defeat him. "He needs this trial to happen," the Admiral explains. "He's saying it's about me but it's deeply personal and urgent to him." And so, Picard leaves The Watcher to ask a favor of Guinan. More on that in a bit.

One idea "Star Trek: Picard" keeps returning to this season is Picard's inability to form intimate relationships, so his choice here to focus on Q rather than on unlocking the last of his repressed memories may be a sign that the old Admiral is still avoiding his real issues and has more soul-searching to do. On the other hand, aside from his dwindling powers, we have little understanding of Q's motivations. As Picard says, "I always filed Q as unknowable, but here he is, so late in my life, still fixated on me." Perhaps he's got a point.

While The Watcher is occupied inside Picard's mind, Seven of Nine and Raffi search for Jurati, who is now rampaging across the city with the Borg Queen in control of her body. Since Jurati was last seen smashing the windows of a local bar, they start their quest there and are informed she left with a man. "We're witnessing the birth of a new Queen," Seven warns. "She could assimilate every being on this planet. We brought the Borg to Earth before humanity can defend itself."

With a 400-year head start this time around, the Queen could easily make Earth a part of the Borg collective, adding another unfortunate ripple effect to the timeline. It's a possibility that might be inevitable. Back in Episode 1 of this season, we saw a different kind of Borg emerge through a rift in space, headed by a queen who speaks in the voice of Picard's mother. But any chance of explaining how they got there was dashed when he initiated self-destruct for the Starfleet vessels. It seems at least possible that those Borg were the result of the Queen getting this early opportunity to assimilate Earth, and that the rift they came through in the 25th century was a portal to a branching timeline created by Picard's crew going back to 2024. The butterfly effects of time travel are not to be taken lightly, and time is a resource in short supply for the crew of the La Sirena.

If a Borg Queen showing up in the past to conquer Earth sounds familiar to some "Star Trek" fans, that's not just deja vu. This season of "Picard" has been full of references to the movie, "Star Trek: First Contact," and this is no exception. That movie also found Picard and his crew scrambling back in time to prevent a time-traveling Borg Queen from assimilating Earth in the past.

Determined to better understand Q after having his own childhood memories probed by The Watcher, Picard visits Guinan (Ito Aghayere) at her bar and requests to summon him. Guinan reveals that her species, El-Aurians, once fought a long cold war against the Q Continuum and eventually called a truce over a bottle of liquor. Guinan explains that the bottle still contains the essence of that moment, and she drinks from it in an attempt to summon Q like a genie trapped within. The room shakes, glasses shatter and tables topple, but after the chaos concludes, there's no Q to be found.

However, one person does show up: a gentleman who claims to want a quick drink before last call, but swiftly reveals himself to be an FBI agent. It turns out Picard and crew haven't been as careful as they thought about staying hidden, as the agent shows them security camera footage of Picard materializing out of thin air in a transport beam. Multiple agents close in to arrest Guinan and Picard, in what can be considered a potential spanner in the works in the quest to stop Q. The credits roll.

This is the second time this season we've seen a cliffhanger where characters got arrested, the first being when Homeland Security detained Rios at the end of Episode 3. Although it's undoubtedly a nail-biting way to end an episode, it turned out to be a minor detour the first time around and Rios was rescued without major consequences to the plot. Hopefully, this time around, getting arrested again proves to be a simple inconvenience as we head into the last leg of "Star Trek: Picard" Season 2.