Star Trek Is Going To Blow Fans' Minds With A Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks Crossover

Since May 2022, "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" has been a welcome addition to the expansive world of this nearly 60-year-old franchise. 

"Strange New Worlds" — a spin-off of 2017's "Star Trek: Discovery" – takes place a decade before the events of the original "Star Trek" series, with the USS Enterprise being commanded by Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount). With its 10-episode first season concluding in early July 2022, the show has managed to find acclaim amongst fans and critics alike. On Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds a 99% Tomatometer score, with many finding its classic episodic structure more appealing than the more serialized approach by "Discovery." As Scott Collura wrote in a review on IGN, "'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' first season manages to recapture the joy of classic Trek in a way that perhaps many of us didn't know was missing until we experienced this show." 

The Emmy-nominated show will soon be charging back onto Paramount+ with a second season — in fact, Season 2 was greenlit before the first season officially released, according to Production Weekly — and given the show's title, it's only natural that the show's creators have plans to take the series to even greater heights where no "Star Trek" project has gone before. Sure enough, at San Diego Comic-Con 2022, the cast teased a crossover unlike anything we've seen in the past.

During the "Star Trek" Comic-Con panel on July 23, Anson Mount teased that Season 2 of "Strange New Worlds" will feature a crossover episode. Thankfully, fans weren't left hanging, as Jack Quaid – who voices Brad Boimler on the animated series "Star Trek: Lower Decks," confirmed that Star Trek's live-action and animated worlds were about to meet. 

"The honor falls to me to announce that on Season 2 of 'Strange New Worlds,'" Quaid said, "there will be a crossover episode with 'Lower Decks.'" 

This is a highly unexpected twist: the Easter egg-filled animated series "Star Trek: Lower Decks" follows the supporting crew of one of the least crucial Starfleet ships as they go about their daily duties while dealing with intergalactic misadventures. And when discussing how the episode came about, "Strange New Worlds" writer Henry Alonso Myers said that, "All of us are huge 'Lower Decks' fans on the writing staff of 'Strange New Worlds' and one of our writers [...] said 'hey, wouldn't it be fun if we did a crossover." Coincidentally, around the same time, Myers received a call from one of the creators of "Strange New Worlds," Alex Kurtzman, who also had a crossover idea with the animated series. 

The crossover episode will evidently involve both live-action and animated components, per Entertainment Weekly, and have both Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and Brad joining the crew of the Enterprise. As for when? "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" will probably release its second season in 2023.