Star Trek: Picard has ended its strong, focused second season, having tossed the principal characters first into a dark alternate timeline and then several centuries into the past, all thanks to Jean-Luc Picard’s (Patrick Stewart) trickster-god nemesis, Q (John DeLancie). The major Season 1 characters returned: Captain Rios (Santiago Cabrera) now commands a new version of Picard’s old ship the Stargazer; Raffi (Michelle Hurd) and Elnor (Evan Evagora) now serve together on a new Excelsior, and Seven of Nine is once again a Fenris Ranger and caretaker of Rios’ beloved La Sirena.
Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill) is another returning character, and for most of this second season, it seemed like the show did not know what to do with her. Then, at about the halfway mark, Jurati’s fate intertwines with one other character, who Star Trek fans haven’t seen in a long time: the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching). So who is the Borg Queen? Let’s take a look at her legacy and her current incarnation.
The One Who Is Many
1997’s Star Trek: First Contact establishes several updates to the Borg which carried over into later series, including Picard. They have the ability to assimilate via retractable cybernetic tentacles, and while we knew they were a decentralized collective, First Contact reveals the singular entity controlling this collective: the Borg Queen, played in that film by Alice Krige.
Krige would go on to portray the character in several episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, including the series finale. Susanna Thompson stepped in to play the Queen in the crucial "Unimatrix Zero" two-parter, setting up a strange mystery that to date has not been directly addressed. At the end of First Contact, the Queen is killed by Captain Picard, who severs her cybernetic spinal cord after Data (Brent Spiner) is able to destroy her organic components. The crew of the Voyager encounter the Borg and the Queen in the Delta Quadrant, and the show does not attempt to explain how the Queen can be alive following the events of First Contact.
The Voyager crew encounter the Borg many times during the show’s run, with the series finale centering around a future Janeway (Kathryn Mulgrew), who travels back in time to guide her younger self in battle against the Borg. Future Janeway knows that a Borg transwarp hub can propel the ship back to the Alpha Quadrant, and sacrifices herself to poison the Borg Queen and clear the way for Voyager’s return.
The Borg Slayer
Fast forward to the second season of Picard, which deposits the admiral and company into a dark alternate timeline. Picard himself is a galactically-feared conqueror of countless alien species, and is set to exterminate yet another: the Borg Queen.
In Season 1 of Picard, former Borg drone and Voyager crew member Seven of Nine accessed a Queencell in the massive, abandoned Borg cube known as the Artifact. The concept of a chamber in each Borg cube which could only be accessed by the Queen was made canon. Seven of Nine then relinked herself to the rest of the collective, taking control of them all and allowing the La Sirena crew chance to escape.
The Season 2 premiere ends with a version of the Borg Queen appearing on the bridge of Rios’s Stargazer. Drawn to yet another massive spatial anomaly, Picard’s presence has been requested by an unknown species looking to formally join the United Federation of Planets. This turns out to be a previously-unknown Borg Queen, and as her massive cybernetic tentacles bury themselves in the Stargazer’s consoles and take over her systems, Picard orders the ship to self-destruct.
Jump ahead to this alternate timeline. As the main characters adjust to their surroundings, we learn that Seven was never assimilated by the Borg here. This Annika Hansen has no implants and is in fact the President of the Federation. She is about to honor Picard with the title “Borg Slayer” as he executes the Borg Queen before presumably the entire galaxy.
Echoing Timelines
The misplaced crew quickly comes together, and they learn that they're path back home runs right through the Borg Queen. In this timeline, Agnes Jurati is a scientist working for the Dark Federation and has access to the Queen, who is held in some kind of storage unit. We learn that the Borg have some kind of extrasensory perception of alternate timelines. This Borg Queen understands that the timeline has shifted, and knows who they all are and what they're doing.
Given Seven's reveal that the Queencells were not necessarily created for any one Borg Queen, the notion of a time-shift-sensitive Queen suggests that the Borg Queen could perhaps split her consciousness into many different avatars at once, allowing her to exist as simultaneous incarnations of herself. This could also explain her ability to inhabit the consciousness of Dr. Agnes Jurati. The Queen infiltrates Jurait's mind and in short order finds herself loose on the streets of L.A. in the early 21st century. The Queen needs a certain amount of elements and endorphins to grow her strength, and soon Jurati and the Queen are locked in a battle for control of Jurati's body.
The Star Gazer
The survival of our main characters depends on an internal debate which Jurati eventually wins. She convinces the Borg Queen that no matter the timeline, the Borg are always eventually defeated, whether by "a lone Borg slayer or United Federation." She convinces the Borg Queen that she and her drones will never able to overcome and achieve the perfection she seeks.
Before the season's ultimate dénouement, we watch Jurati and the Borg Queen find a common ground. Borg Queen Jurati then takes off in La Sirena, theoretically giving the Borg a 400-year head start on assimilating the galaxy. Picard and company wrap up their business in the past, repairing the timeline. With what is presumably the equivalent of his final breath, Q sends everyone save Rios (who elects to stay in the past) back to the bridge of the Stargazer, where all of this started.
Picard orders the bridge crew to stand down, cancels the self-destruct sequence, and waits. Borg Queen Jurati reveals herself, and the entire narrative comes full circle. The Borg now openly offer species the opportunity to assimilate. The Borg's request to join the Federation may not have been a ruse, after all. The finale reveal, Borg Queen Jurati tells Picard that there is a much bigger threat out there, one that will necessitate the Federation and the Borg working together. With the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation all officially returning for Season 3, we can expect the ramifications of Picard's continuity-breaking overhaul fo the Borg to become the focal point of the show's third and final season.