Star Trek has never shied away from making political statements or underscoring the fundamental and fatal flaws in humanity and Star Trek: Picard Season 2 is driving that point home in its fourth episode, “Watcher.” While Rios (Santiago Cabrera) is dealing with the cruel and inhumane treatment at an Immigration Detention Center, Picard (Patrick Stewart) is given a crash course about why Guinan (Ito Aghayere) is unwilling to give humanity circa 2024 another chance. The series doesn’t shy away from portraying Customs and Border Protection agents as malicious and vindictive or commenting about how the 21st century traded hoods for business suits. The last two episodes have highlighted homelessness, climate change, and political turmoil that paint both a bleak picture of our own present and the lead-up to what we know will happen in Picard’s future if they aren’t able to stop Q (John de Lancie).
“Watcher” is split into two major storylines; the first being Raffi (Michelle Hurd) and Seven’s (Jeri Ryan) search for Rios, and the second being Picard’s race against time to track down the Watcher before it’s too late. At the start of the episode, Raffi and Seven arrive at the free clinic where they are informed that ICE agents took Rios into custody. They attempt to track him down at the Los Angeles County Police Department, but they are met by complete disinterest by the Deputy at the front desk. Fortunately, someone in the waiting room (Karl T. Wright) is kind enough to inform them that the ICE detainees are taken to the Immigration Detention Center where they are “disappeared.”
With the added pressure that Rios might be taken somewhere that they can’t find him, Raffi decides that the best way to get information about Rios’ location is by breaking into a cop car and stealing a police computer. Seven has her reservations about breaking into a police vehicle, especially since Raffi has smuggled a phaser onto Earth, but in the end, Seven is the one driving the getaway police vehicle. This whole sequence from start to finish allows for a lot of fun quips between the two, including some playful banter from Agnes (Alison Pill) who thinks Raffi and Seven need to learn how to communicate better with each other.
At the Detention Center, Rios parts ways with the doctor (Sol Rodriguez) that he risked his life for and learns the hard way not to get cocky with the Customs and Border Protection agents. He tries to intervene when they’re being mean to another detainee and ends up getting tased. Since he won’t give them his name—and his admission that he is Captain Cristóbal Rios of the USS Stargazer goes over like a lead balloon—he ends up on a bus headed to unknown regions. Hopefully, Raffi and Seven are able to get to him in time in the next episode because they weren’t able to in “Watcher.”
After a brief trip to Château Picard, where Picard reminisces about his childhood and “memories of things that have yet to occur” he decides that he needs to go to the location of the coordinates that the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching) supplied them with, in hopes that he might track down the Watcher before it is too late. When he arrives on Earth he finds himself on a surprisingly familiar street—Forward Avenue, home of Guinan’s 10 Forward bar. However, this isn’t the Guinan that he knows yet. For those who may not be as intimately familiar with Star Trek: The Next Generation, Guinan is from a race of “listeners” known as El-Aurians, and also one of Picard’s oldest and most trusted confidants. But none of that occurs until the 2360s, and in 2024 Guinan wants very little to do with the old man who has walked into her bar.
After a shaky start, Picard finally gets Guinan to talk to him, and she reveals that she is planning to close down 10 Forward and leave Earth for good. With the rampant unrest and hatred, the bigotry, and the Earth’s rapidly declining climate issues, she no longer wants anything to do with humanity. She is giving away all of her worldly possessions to the homeless population, shuttering her bar, and even giving her pitbull Luna away to “Uncle Dale.” Last week Star Trek: Discovery had an unexpected Stacey Abrams cameo and this week Picard brought in Brian “Q” Quinn from Impractical Jokers in a walk-on role as Dale.
Guinan seems largely unphased by Picard’s questions about the Watcher and even shrugs off the fact that she gets time sickness when he quotes back wise words she tells him in the future, but when he reveals that he is Jean Luc Picard everything changes. Guinan reveals that the Watcher is more of a “Supervisor” who oversees the destinies of select individuals—sort of like a guardian angel. But Picard certainly isn’t prepared for the reveal of who his guardian angel is and neither is the audience. Guinan takes Picard to meet the Watcher, and he is escorted by a number of unsuspecting hosts that the Watcher jumps into, before he finally arrives at the end of a tunnel where a woman is waiting for him with her back turned to him. It’s Laris (Orla Brady), the Romulan that Picard sort-of-kind-of had a thing with. The reveal is certainly a surprise, but there are a few lines from Season 1 that, upon further inspection, may have set the groundwork for this. Particularly the moment the two shared where she talked about worrying that Picard had forgotten who he is.
The episode closes out with Q trying to meddle with the mind of a blond woman (Penelope Mitchell) who has dreams of exploring space. Q seems quite disappointed that he can’t just snap his fingers and make things happen the way he wants to—which will undoubtedly lead to more mayhem as the rest of the season unfolds.
Rating: A+
Star Trek: Picard Season 2 is streaming now on Paramount+.