Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Renewed for Season 4, Lower Decks to End With Season 5
Paramount+ has renewed one Star Trek series and announced the end of another.
Paramount+ has renewed Star Trek: Strange New Worlds for Season 4 and confirmed that Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 will be the last season of the animated comedy. Star Trek Strange New Worlds, the live-action Star Trek: Discovery spinoff that serves as a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, is now filming its third season in Toronto to debut on Paramount+ in 2025. In a statement, co-showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers and executive producer Alex Kurtzman said, "On behalf of the cast and crew of 'Strange New Worlds' we are thrilled and grateful to continue our voyages together. We can't wait for you to join us and the crew of the Enterprise on another season of exploration and adventure."
Star Trek: Lower Decks' fifth and final season will debut on Paramount+ in the fall. Kurtzman, an executive producer on the series, and creator Mike McMahan released the following statement: "We wanted to let you know that this fall will be the fifth and final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks. While five seasons of any series these days seems like a miracle, it's no exaggeration to say that every second we've spent making this show has been a dream come true. Our incredible cast, crew and artists have given you everything they have because they love the characters they play, they love the world we've built, and more than anything we all love love love Star Trek. We're excited for the world to see our hilarious fifth season which we're working on right now, and the good news is that all previous episodes will remain on Paramount+ so there is still so much to look forward to as we celebrate the Cerritos crew with a big send-off.
"Finally, thank you for always being so creative and joyful, for filling convention halls and chanting LOWER DECKS!" We remain hopeful that even beyond season five, Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford and the whole Cerritos crew will live on with new adventures."
This news comes as Star Trek: Discovery, the series that launched the streaming era of Star Trek television, is airing its fifth and final season. Previously, Paramount+ canceled Star Trek: Prodigy, the first animated Star Trek series aimed at children, despite its second season being in production, and removed the show's released episodes from its library. Prodigy has since found a new home at Netflix, which will debut Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 later this year. Star Trek: Picard also concluded with its third season in 2023.
Paramount+ recently wrapped filming on its first straight-to-streaming Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Section 31, and is developing another Star Trek: Discovery spinoff, Starfleet Academy. ComicBook.com had the opportunity to speak to Kurtzman, who oversees the Star Trek television franchise, about the future of the franchise as its first wave of streaming shows begin coming to their end.
"I think that contrary to what some people think, we're not really in the volume business," Kurtzman said. "It's not about turning out lots of shows, it's about turning out shows that mean something. So for me, I think I'm looking for every show to be different than the one that came before it. That's really the only thing that matters. I'm not looking at this as, 'Okay I'm planning out the next 20 years, what are we going to do?' I'm really thinking more, 'What's a story we haven't told, a crew we haven't met yet, and an adventure we haven't gone on?' That is really the qualification."
He added, "What I don't want is for you to feel like, 'Well, I don't really need to watch this show because I've already watched that show, so I've gotten my fill of Star Trek.' I want each show to feel individualized and specific. And a lot of that has to do with trusting different voices and different showrunners to come in and give their read on Star Trek, and tell their version of a story that's interesting to them. And that's the way you keep it fresh."
