WARNING: This article covers a MAJOR SPOILER for the season 2 finale of Star Trek: Picard. Last month when it was announced that Wil Wheaton wouldn't be returning as Wesley Crusher in the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard, Trekkies were outraged. In response to the outrage, Wheaton showed off his acting chops and played along, expressing that he "shared in the sadness" of his fans but was looking forward to talking to his Star Trek: The Next Generation castmates in The Ready Room. So no one suspected Wheaton's surprise appearance as Wesley Crusher in the season finale of Picard, released for streaming on Paramount+ on Thursday, May 5th, 2022!
Wesley Crusher was last seen in the seventh season of The Next Generation. So what’s the deal with his mysterious reappearance, and where has he been all this time? Wesley’s journey to the position we see him occupying (as a Traveler) in the second season finale of Picard began way back in TNG's first season sixth episode, “Where No One Has Gone Before.” In that story, the Enterprise-D was flung to the far corner of the known universe due to an experimental engine modification.
Fortunately, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and his crew are able to handle the situation more quickly than the crew on Star Trek: Voyager, thanks to the help of an extraterrestrial entity known as the Traveler. In this episode, the Traveler tells Picard that Wesley is destined for something unprecedented, comparing him to Mozart.
The Traveler reappears in the fifth episode of the fourth season of TNG, “Remember Me.” In that episode, Wesley’s mother, Doctor Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden), becomes entrapped in a pocket universe, and it’s up to Wesley and the Traveler to help rescue her (spoiler: they do).
The Traveler appears a third time in the seventh and final season of TNG, in the twentieth episode, “Journeys End.” In that episode, in a plot point that has not aged very well, the Traveler (played by a white man) disguises himself as an Indigenous spirit guide before revealing his true identity to Wesley. At the conclusion of the episode, Wesley departs with the Traveler, and the Traveler tells Wesley that he’ll be going where no human has gone before – including realms where thought and matter interact like he never imagined.
Wesley Crusher Appears in Star Trek: Picard Season 2
In the Picard season two finale, we finally get to check in Wesley after he’s been honing his skills (and having experiences that may have had century-spanning consequences, but presumably, that’s a tale for another series – or at least another season). Wesley shows up at the end of the final episode with an offer for Kore (Isa Briones): Kore too can be a Traveler of space and time, and join the supervisor ranks to ensure the "proper flow of time."
Wesley has made one other appearance on Star Trek since he became a Traveler. It was a small cameo appearance that bears mentioning for completion’s sake: when the character can be seen sitting at the wedding party’s table at the wedding of William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), which would have made more sense if a longer scene explaining his presence there was not cut from the movie. Given the context we now have from the second season finale of Picard, however, it seems likely that he simply choose to exercise his Traveler abilities and ensure he was able to be present at the important moment for his former crewmates.
And speaking of Wesley’s former crewmates, the third and final season of Picard will feature the return of not only Frakes, Sirtis, and McFadden, but also Brent Spiner as Data the android, Michael Dorn as Worf the Klingon, and LeVar Burton as Geordi LaForge. While there is no word whether Wheaton, whose return as Wesley in the season finale was a closely guarded secret, will return for season three of Picard, it seems extremely likely that we’ll be seeing more of the character on one of the upcoming Star Trek shows on Paramount+. Kore and Wesley spin-off series, please?
You can stream Star Trek: Picard on Paramount+.