Season 3 of Picard is finally here. Two episodes in and I must admit, it’s far better than the first two seasons already. Being better than the first two is an easy mark to hit though. Both of the first two seasons had such great expectations, but then imploded quite quickly. But, here again for the third and final season, hype is high for what looks to be a sort of TNG reunion.

Of course spoilers may creep in, but I usually keep them vague enough.

So much speculation on which, if any, surprise, unannounced characters will be joining, and of course, who won’t live through the season. And the sheer amount of Easter eggs in these first two episodes cant help but ratchet up the theories from small to gigantic.

It all.sound pretty good on paper, and is great to see the old faces.. but the very forced plot directions and subtexts are bordering on embarrassing.

I think we all knew what was going to happen at about 4 minutes into this season. They weren’t even really trying to hide that elephant. (I think I shall call this plot A)

But is this just a ruse or part of an elaborate plot twist? Are we going to be completely surprised at a masterfully crafted script?

Sure it could be…but when was the last time we saw something like that in Paramount’s Trek?

It’s not like plot A is surprising, it just happened about 30 later than we expected.

But being tricked is not completely out of the question, as we see in “plot B”.  Lets just say that Pacifism must mean something else to some other people. But I gotta say that I was caught off guard at how/when this character made their entrance. 

So here we are at the end of episode 2 and I’m already getting worried about how the rest of the season will unfold. It seems that the art of the reveal is more important than moving a story along. I get that these mini plots need to develop, but after two episodes we have had only 3 of the major returning characters unveiled. We are running out of real estate in getting everyone in and getting any decent plot development. Especially when the plots and characters in each plot do not seems to have any connections just yet. 

I am enjoying Picard season 3 so far,, but keeping myself prepared for the crash and burn that usually happens about now. And the very real path of opening new plot points that are either unresolvable or rushed to completion in the allotted time is now glowing white hot.