Jean-Luc Picard and his time-traveling friends have played fast-and-loose with history in Star Trek: Picard season 2 - and these are their worst temporal infractions. Thanks to the return of John de Lancie's meddlesome Q, Star Trek's timeline has become a dystopian nightmare, with the Federation morphing into the evil Confederation, and Jean-Luc himself becoming a bloodthirsty, coffee-drinking warlord. To preserve the sanctity of time (and his precious Earl Grey), Picard takes Rios, Raffi, Seven, and Jurati back to 2024 - the year Q messed everything up.
Before disembarking from La Sirena, the Star Trek: Picard team warn each other about the potentially devastating consequences of stepping on butterflies. One wrong move in 2024, and a future far worse than the Confederation could materialize. And because the gang is currently situated before Q's point of divergence, any changes made here will affect Star Trek's prime history, not the Confederation history they're trying to delete. Picard's crew take caution to avoid any potential changes to history... for all of 2 minutes. Before long, they're leaving a Starfleet-shaped stamp on 2024 Los Angeles, and treading on birds because they've run out of butterflies.
The following are all the major time crimes committed by Picard and friends across Star Trek: Picard season 2. We'll give them some leeway by omitting innocuous interactions such as Raffi and Seven's Markridge Tower security guard, or Jurati's impromptu singing performance. Picard even gets away with talking to his own ancestor, since these involvements can all be feasibly explained without raising suspicion. The same can't be said for other moments from Star Trek: Picard season 2's 2024 field trip...
Rios Gets Arrested By ICE Agents
After a brief period of treading lightly, Star Trek: Picard's heroes throw caution to the temporal winds, and their first infraction is, predictably, credited to Santiago Cabrera's Cristóbal Rios. The transporter malfunction that leads to Rios losing a fight with a balcony is pure misfortune, and the injured Stargazer captain is at least savvy enough to avoid a regular hospital, receiving treatment at a clinic for undocumented immigrants (which, in a manner of speaking, Rios currently is). While the accident and clinic are forgivable, what happens next absolutely isn't. Rather than slipping quietly out the clinic's back door, Rios insists on helping Dr. Teresa Ramirez handle an ICE raid, duly getting himself arrested in the process. A time traveler from the 25th century is now listed on a 21st century law enforcement database. Can this day get any worse...?
Rios Admits He's A Time Traveler To An ICE Agent
It certainly can. In a moment of sarcastic defiance, Rios tells an ICE agent the truth about time travel, the future, Starfleet, and much more besides. He gives them his true name, mentions the Stargazer, admits the year he traveled from, and even references the Borg. Of course, Rios is aware that no law enforcement officer would believe such a wild story and, sure enough, his words are paid little heed. Alas, Star Trek Picard season 2 later reveals how Rios' statement - despite being made tongue-in-cheek and immediately discounted - found its way into FBI hands. There's obviously an official record of his comments somewhere in 2024's IT labyrinth, and even if the digital copy is scrubbed, how many people did the ICE agent tell about his "crazy prisoner?"
Raffi & Seven's Wild Car Chase
In their efforts to rescue Rios from his butterfly-squishing ICE excursion, Raffi Musiker (Michelle Herd) and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) make things much, much worse. With Raffi still grieving the loss of Elnor and Seven high from Borg implant liberation, neither is thinking clearly, and this becomes apparent during their wild car chase through the streets of LA. A high-speed pursuit is problematic enough, but Seven and Raffi's real time crime is transporting mere meters in front of an LAPD officer. The stunned cop orders the fleeing criminals to exit the vehicle and raises her gun, looking straight toward them but, courtesy of Agnes Jurati back on La Sirena, Seven and Raffi disappear before her eyes. That's a whole bunch of cops who must now make official statements declaring they either chased an empty car, or the driver and her passenger vanished into thin air. Not ideal.
Breaking Rios (& Others) Free
Few could argue that liberating Rios' fellow ICE prisoners wasn't the right course of action, morally speaking. Whether doing so was conducive to the health of Star Trek's timeline is another matter. Seven and Raffi decide transporting Rios to safety is too risky (ironic, given the above entry), so they EMP the bus driving him toward an unknown fate, then beat up the guards old-fashioned style. Without phasers or transporters, the escape successfully avoids causing suspicion about visitors from the future. The act of releasing a whole bus full of prisoners, on the other hand, could have major ramifications. Sad though their situation undoubtedly is, Rios and his futuristic friends have now altered the destinies of these people. Any one of them could go on to change human history in a profound way. As Star Trek: The Original Series' Captain Kirk knows all too well, preserving the timeline sometimes means making hard and unfair choices.
Borg Queen Agnes Is Caught Smashing Up A Bar
Though Picard's crew can't be blamed for any time-altering acts committed by Q, the Borg Queen doesn't get away so lightly. It was, after all, Picard who brought the cybernetic Star Trek villain to 2024 in the first place, and Alison Pill's Agnes Jurati who made herself the Queen's reluctant human vessel. Under Borg influence, Jurati's first attack on established history comes when she smashes the front glass of a bar with her bare hands. While the owner neglects to press charges (fortunately for Star Trek: Picard's time-hoppers), Agnes is caught on CCTV - her unnatural strength and unflinching alien demeanor obvious even in this grainy footage.
Borg Queen Agnes Kills A Man
Breaking glass soon becomes breaking people, as the Borg Queen drives Agnes Jurati to murder a man she encountered at the bar from before. Star Trek: Picard sort-of implies this stranger was taking advantage of a woman he believed was mentally unwell, so her victim probably wasn't destined to bring about world peace or end hunger. Nevertheless, travelling back in time and killing anyone can easily have major ramifications upon the future.
Picard Tells Agent Wells The Truth
Until Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 8, Picard keeps his nose relatively clean in terms of disrupting the timeline, but when he does commit a temporal offence, it's arguably the worst of the bunch. Picard is arrested by the FBI's Agent Wells, who has obtained CCTV footage of the Starfleet Admiral materializing on Forward Avenue out of thin air. Determined to prove Picard and Guinan are alien invaders, Wells refuses to let the pair go, forcing Jean-Luc to admit the truth. Understanding the importance of their mission, Wells releases Picard and agrees to cover for him, meaning the CCTV footage gets binned. One might also argue that since Wells already met Vulcans as a child, he's exempt from the usual rules of time travel interactions. Regardless, a man from the 21st century now possesses detailed knowledge of the future, Starfleet, mind-melds, and more. What he'll do with that knowledge is anyone's guess...
Agnes Exposes Adam Soong To The Borg
By this point in Star Trek: Picard season 2, Q has already informed Adam Soong about Jean-Luc's arrival from the future - but it's the assimilated Agnes Jurati who exposes the geneticist to Borg-kind. In a joint effort to halt Admiral Picard's meddling, the Borg Queen and Adam Soong forge an alliance, and the scientist takes off on a hunt with assimilated mercenaries by his side. A scientist of Adam Soong's sinister brilliance should certainly not be given advanced knowledge of the Borg in 2024. Even without a full understanding of the technology, his genius intellect is no doubt already whirring in the presence of such advanced cybernetics. Given the Soong family's future in robotics and AI, it'll be interesting to see whether Adam's discoveries in Star Trek: Picard season 2 influence his family's later work on androids such as Data.
Rios Brings Teresa & Her Son Aboard La Sirena
Not to be outdone by Jean-Luc Picard's revealing admission to Agent Wells, Rios makes a colossal time-goof by inviting Dr. Teresa Ramirez and her son, Ricardo, aboard La Sirena. They learn pretty much every secret Rios has to tell, before experiencing the futuristic delights of transporters and replicators first hand. Rios is taking a huge risk entrusting Teresa and Ricardo with such extensive knowledge of the future. Can they both be relied upon to keep these forbidden experiences to themselves? And will Rios give into temptation and either stay behind in 2024, or bring Teresa and Ricardo to the 25th century? Neither sounds especially in-line with the time traveler's code of conduct.
The Dead Mercenaries In Star Trek: Picard Season 2, Episode 9
The elite team of soldiers recruited by Adam Soong in Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 9 are first assimilated by the Borg Queen, then gunned down by Seven, Raffi and the others - and you have to ponder how this could potentially affect the Star Trek timeline. Though the battle itself fortunately happens far from onlookers, none of these soldiers will return to their families and friends afterwards, which could trigger a colossal ripple effect - not just on the soldiers themselves, but upon those left to grieve their deaths. Star Trek: Picard lets viewers assume folks in this line of work are "ghosts" who can easily disappear without a trace, but that's a big and bold assumption to rely on when the fabric of time is at stake.
Agnes Takes A New Breed Of Borg To The Delta Quadrant
The mental wrestling match between Agnes Jurati and the Borg Queen ends in a tie, and the two personalities begin merging into something entirely new. Commandeering La Sirena and plotting a course for the Delta Quadrant, Borg-Jurati now has a solid 400 years to create an entirely different species of Borg. The effects likely won't be felt on Earth, but the development of the Borg and any worlds they assimilate may be significantly altered by this new, Agnes-shaped addition to Collective history. Reassuringly, however, the Borg Queen who landed on the Stargazer in Star Trek: Picard's season 2 premiere is now very likely to be Agnes herself. If so, that would mean the future is already written, and whatever Jean-Luc and pals do in 2024 has, in a sense, already happened.
Star Trek: Picard continues Thursday on Paramount+.