Lower Decks‘ grand finale this week was less of a goodbye and more of a reminder that chapters begin and end in Star Trek all the time—but it still took a while for the cast and crew behind the show to really accept that the fifth season was going to be its last. That process was apparently reflected in early drafts of the final episode, which didn’t really feel “final” at all… until realizations began to sink in.
“Making that episode was really interesting. It felt like there was a little bit of like, ‘Is this really ending?’ Because we kept re-recording it. Mike [McMahan, Lower Decks‘ showrunner] kept rewriting it,” Tawny Newsome, who played Beckett Mariner on the show, recently told Variety. According to the actress, early recording passes for the finale episode, “The New Next Generation” did not include Mariner’s climactic reflection on how far she and her friends have come in their years together aboard the Cerritos.
“I remember the first time I recorded the episode way back, you know, 13 months ago or whenever, the scene in the bar did not exist. I remember saying in the session, ‘If this is the end, we’re not ending with a big send out,’” Newsome continued. “It just felt like the end of a season. I think there was a little [feeling of], like, ‘Well, maybe it’s not, so maybe we’re just not going to really end it that way.’”
Alas, the closer it got to the realization that this, indeed, would be it, more material was written to give Lower Decks a more solid sendoff. But, as Newsome also notes, Lower Decks doesn’t exactly definitively close the books on itself. In a suitably Star Trek-ian way, the show’s final message is that these adventures will continue, regardless of whether or not we get to see them. “Mike wrote that really lovely speech for Mariner at the end, and I was like, ‘Okay, this feels like an appropriate pause to the story. It’s an end of a chapter,’” Newsome concluded. “It could go on. But I was glad that he that gave us a little button, in case this is the last we see of them.”
Part of that farewell, of course, is that the finale concludes with both Mariner and Boimler getting a promotion, acting as shared First Officer candidates under the Cerritos‘ newly minted Captain Ransom. “It’s perfect harmony to make them share this position,” Newsome added of the ending. “We’re a true duo, so giving us a shared role at the end—one that Boimer has been dreaming of forever and one that Mariner has resisted for so long—feels like a pretty poignant move.”
Fingers crossed this isn’t the last we’ll see of them, but if it is? It’s a pretty great way for the show to go out. Star Trek: Lower Decks is now streaming in its entirety on Paramount+.
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