With Star Trek Beyond entering its third weekend in theaters, the sci-fi sequel is faring quite well at the box office, earning $115.5 million domestically and $171.9 million worldwide, although it has yet to open in several international markets like China. Before the release, it was confirmed that this sequel is set within the U.S.S. Enterprise's five-year mission, but, surprisingly, one character was suspiciously absent, Carol Marcus, played by Alice Eve in Star Trek Into Darkness.

2013's Star Trek Into Darkness ended with the U.S.S. Enterprise crew starting their five-year mission, and Carol Marcus was even seen on the ship as the movie headed into credits. However, Alice Eve was never confirmed as part of the cast for Star Trek Beyond, and she was nowhere to be found in this beloved sci-fi sequel. Writer and star Simon Pegg recently appeared on the StarTrek.com podcast, where he was asked why Carol Marcus wasn't a part of this story.

"We thought rather than have Carol Marcus be not used to a reasonable capacity, let's just not include her, have her be alive, in canon, and be ready to come back at any time."

Star Trek 3 made no mention of Carol Marcus whatsoever, but we do know that the story took place within the third year of their five year journey. Perhaps future movies can explain when in fact she left the Enterprise between the end of Star Trek Into Darkness and the beginning of Star Trek Beyond. It's possible that fans may get some answers to her whereabouts in the next installment, since Paramount has already confirmed the sequel.

Paramount announced last month that Star Trek 4 will bring back Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk, the late father of Chris Pine's James Tiberius Kirk. Chris Hemsworth made his feature film debut on Star Trek, and in this new sequel, he will actually meet his son James, although we don't know if that will be achieved through time travel or perhaps some sort of dream sequence. Aside from Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth, no other cast members are confirmed, although Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho and Karl Urban are all expected to return.

It was also recently confirmed that Star Trek 4 will not re-cast the late Anton Yelchin's character Chekov, but no details were revealed about how they plan to honor the late actor and his character in this sequel. J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay will write the screenplay for this new Star Trek sequel, with J.J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber serving as executive producers. Stay tuned for more on the future of this lucrative Star Trek franchise.