What to Expect from Season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

The highly anticipated return of the critically acclaimed original series is finally here (July 17 on Paramount+ and ).

In Season 3, when we reconnect with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, still under the command of Captain Pike, they face the conclusion of . But new life and civilizations await, including a villain that will test our characters' grit and resolve. An exciting twist on classic Star Trek, Season 3 takes characters both new and beloved to new heights, and dives into thrilling adventures of faith, duty, romance, comedy, and mystery, with varying genres never before seen on any other Star Trek. If you need a quick refresher, !

Ahead of the series return, StarTrek.com had the opportunity to speak with the series stars Anson Mount (Christopher Pike), Rebecca Romijn (Una Chin-Riley), Ethan Peck (Spock), Jess Bush (Christine Chapel), Christina Chong (La’An Noonien-Singh), Celia Rose Gooding (Nyota Uhura), Melissa Navia (Erica Ortegas), Babs Olusanmokun (Joseph M’Benga), and Martin Quinn (Montgomery 'Scotty' Scott); series guest stars Carol Kane (Pelia) and Cillian O'Sullivan (Dr. Roger Korby), and with executive producers Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers. With their help, here's what you need to know about their characters this season!

And Now the Conclusion...

The third season of Strange New Worlds will immediately address the nail-biting cliffhanger we left off in "" with the season opener "Hegemony, Part II."

As Jess Bush reminds us, "The Gorn are a foot. Beware and stay vigilant."

"They're in peril," states Ethan Peck. "They're in a perilous situation that hasn't been resolved yet."

Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers their love of the Gorn, Star Trek's history with two-parters, and more.

During the junket, Myers stresses, "We try very hard to make a show that anyone can watch and there is very little that you have to have watched to watch our show. We try to make it open for everyone. For people who've seen the show before, there's a lot of great treats in there for you, but for people who've never seen Star Trek before, they could watch it just as well."

These Are The Voyages...

The cast is beyond thrilled for fans to see the adventures in store for them this season.

"I'm excited for fans to see all the new worlds we discover, all the genres we play in," remarks Celia Rose Gooding. "I'm excited for fans to see a different side of Uhura, a more playful, flirtatious, excited side of her. We are so excited for fans to get back into this world. It's been two and a half years since we had a season come out, so for fans, we get to return in this world that they love."

"Our show is planet of the week, big idea of the week," Anson Mount tells StarTrek.com. "And I think if we're doing one thing right, it's that. The episodic nature of Star Trek is what allows it to breathe, and I hope people keep tuning into that. That's why I tuned in when I was a kid."

"There's going to be shocking changes," Myers teases, with Goldsman adding, "More hijinks, more romance, and we're trying to dig deeper into the relationships as well as solve and face some old villains, figure out what to do with them, and maybe meet some new ones."

"There's some shocking moments of horror," states Myers. "There's some surprising revelations about the humanity. There's some episodes where we do a couple of things that you've never seen on Star Trek before, and there is some stuff about the Gorn that you will be surprised by."

New Temperaments

In the second season, Una Chin-Riley had her Starfleet career face jeopardy as her Illyrian heritage was exposed.

Speaking to that, Rebecca Romijn tells StarTrek.com, "That Una no longer has to hide the fact that she's an Illyrian, that she got cleared in that '' courtroom episode, she is now able to live her authentic life."

Romijn also notes, "In Season 3, we get to see several instances where Una, we get to see her in command. We see who she might potentially be as captain, what kind of captain she could potentially be, as she takes over for Pike when he's doing whatever he's doing."

As for La'An Noonien-Singh, Christina Chong states, "At the end of Season 2, La'An comes across her greatest enemy and her greatest fear, the Gorn, who start attacking her new family, her only family now. In the midst of the battle, we're all [hanging on] by the skin of our teeth, some of us."

This season, "La'An can relax a little bit," reveals Chong. "She knows if this happens again, she's got this, and so does her team. This opens up a story for La'An, a love story, and a story where she can start to be a lighter version of herself. Well, I guess because La'An now is opening up to romance, there's that fear of being rejected; I don't think she's really ever been able to fully do that. She's putting her heart on her sleeve for the first time."

It's not all good changes for the crew. Peck reminds us, "He's still struggling with his humanness," and on top of that, "He's just had a breakup with Nurse Chapel, and she's gone away on her fellowship."

"Something that fans would do well to remember is Uhura is just now realizing her place on the Enterprise," notes Gooding. "In the musical episode, we see her finally really accept her role in her crew and celebrate it in a way that she really hasn't had an opportunity to yet. She's growing into her own, she's becoming very confident. Some fans have already seen pieces of that in her in the first couple of seasons, but we're just continuing to expand on that. So remember, she's still growing up. She's very much a young girl figuring it out and she will take her time."

Gooding says, "Uhura has passed an incredibly important checkpoint in her career in Starfleet, and what's most pressing to her is her future, getting her family back from near death."

New Dynamics

For Martin Quinn, he believes that Scotty "has got to learn to trust other people," while Bush shares, "The most pressing thing for Chapel [this season] is what does she need from a partner."

As Scotty acclimates to a new ship, he now has to serve under his former professor at the Academy, Chief Engineer Pelia. "It's so irritating for Scotty that he's back almost in the classroom with her just as he's trying to find his own and fit with a new crew," explains Quinn. "He's just getting watched over by this teacher who's already got ideas about who he is. But he's got a lot to learn, and so, whether he likes it or not, he's going to have to listen to her sometimes."

"[Quinn] has been a gift to all of us," Carol Kane raves about her new scene partner to StarTrek.com. "He's so professional for his part, and we became friends. He's very committed to the role and I love that."

"In much the same way we met Uhura when she was really beginning her career, we've gotten to meet [Scotty] at a younger state," exclaims Myers. "He still has things to learn and change and discover about himself. Part of the thing that we love on the show is that no one actually knows what their future holds. They only know what they live in the moment for. And so for them, they don't know who they're going to become and each day is a journey for them to get to that person. And part of it is by showing the audience things that we find surprising that we didn't think would be an issue for them. That's part of the fun of it."

As for Captain Pike, he discovers at the end of the second season that his partner Captain Batel has been infected with Gorn eggs.

Goldsman assures us that this predicament "won't pull him away from his duty per se," but will "create a significant extra dimension to his character. It's a journey that actor and that character get to have, which is uncharacteristic of Star Trek, where typically a seasonal romance is not something that we see. And so we were thrilled by the opportunity to be able to do that."

At the end of Season 2, Chapel decides to take a fellowship with Dr. Roger Korby, played by Cillian O'Sullivan, who viewers get to meet at the start of this new season.

Goldsman remarks, "Obviously this is a tremendous complication to Spock and Chapel's romance. 'Complication' is a kind word, and that propels things at a character-level and at a romantic-level for other folks. And it's our attempt to try to figure out how Christine Chapel married that Roger Korby that we meet in TOS who is not the pick of the litter. So we'd like to believe that the Korby character started out as something more desirable than maybe how he ended up."

For Bush, she shares, "The dynamic between Chapel and Korby is one that feels very easy and exciting in the beginning because they both are so adventurous and value freedom of movement and free-spiritedness and not being tied down anywhere. That's really refreshing for her to find someone who feels the same way about life. But then, that also presents some difficulties that comes with it. To be with someone who's adventurous and free-spirited, you have to be okay with them not always being around and wanting to follow their own path. The dynamic is one that feels, in terms of connection, very easy and exciting, but, in terms of logistics, maybe a little tricky."

And for his part, O'Sullivan jokes that fans will "discover that Spock has a mean right hook" this season.

On his scene partners, O'Sullivan says, "Jess is an incredible actor, so it was amazing to see how she operates. And I mean, Ethan was so incredibly welcoming, so was Jess. I had actually gotten to know Jess before we started shooting because I had done the audition process."

"The part hadn't been officially offered, but I got to know Jess because we'd done a chemistry and things like that," explains O'Sullivan. "But when I arrived on the set in Toronto, Ethan just reached out just to say hello and just made me feel welcome. I developed a good friendship with Ethan out in Toronto and I just had a great time and it was such a good cast to get to know."

New Challenges

As for our pilot, Melissa Navia reveals, "Ortegas is finding Ortegas again. There's this great scene where she's watching her friends dancing and they're all having such a wonderful time. She is happy for them because she loves them, but she can't join in and she wants to be able to."

"And what we saw in Seasons 1 and 2 is an Ortegas that everybody loves to hang out with," Navia explains. "And because of that, they also work really well together. She has to find that again. And I think she's scared truly that she might not find that again. Who is she going to become in the aftermath of her experience [with the Gorn] that's left her a little bit broken? I have high hopes for her, but let's see what happens in Season 3."

For M'Benga, he has several pressing issues related to events in the second season, including tending to the crew who sustained injuries while under Gorn captivity.

"He's trying to get Ortegas saved and get everybody back safely to the Enterprise," states Olusanmokun. "And then he'll go back to dealing with his demons and his trauma."

Olusanmokun follows that up with M'Benga's primary concern, "Is Pike going to snitch on me?"

Then we have the Farragut's James T. Kirk, which Myers reveals to us, "The biggest thing he learns is he gets a chance to be in the chair and have a challenge against him that he would not see coming."

"He gets to work with people who he's never worked with before, who set up things for the series and I think have some surprises in it," Myers teases. "And he develops his relationship with Spock in a deeper and more thoughtful way."