Strange New Worlds’ season 2 finale would make ’90s Star Trek proud

polygon.com:

The promise of Star Trek: Strange New Worldswas that episodic television — specifically, the episodic adventures of the starship Enterprise — could still captivate audiences in the age of single-day full-season drops and movie-like “television events.”

With the close of its second season, Strange New Worlds is a fantastic reminder that when you combine the traditional self-contained episode format with a crew that knows they’re getting renewed, you can get great television drama.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ season 2 finale, “Hegemony.”]

That is to say, you can get a cliffhanger in which half the cast is teleported to who-knows-where by the Gorn. It’s a great reminder that this sort of thing used to be Star Trek’s bread and butter.

Back in 1990, The Next Generation’s season 3 cliffhanger, “The Best of Both Worlds Part I,” showed Riker taking control of the Enterprise after Captain Picard was captured by the Borg and transformed into the chilling entity called Locutus. The final shot of that episode is an electrifying slow pan over Riker’s face as he does the unthinkable, ordering the Enterprise to fire on its own captain. The summer of 1990 was an uncertain one for Star Trek fans, who had to wait from June’s finale to September’s season 4 premiere to find out what happened next.

Is “Hegemony” as shocking as “The Best of Both Worlds Part I”? Nah, you can’t put that kind of lightning in a bottle twice. But it’s still classic Trek shenanigans.

Yes! This March, Paramount Plus announced Strange New Worlds would return for a third season on the streaming service. Production on Strange New Worlds season 2 wrapped in July, so the folks behind this cliffhanger were confident