[EDITORS NOTE: This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Episode 5, "Imposters."]Episode 5 of Star Trek: Picard Season 3 saw the unexpected and emotional return of Picard's (Patrick Stewart) prodigal daughter Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes) as Starfleet arrived to deal with Picard and Riker's (Jonathan Frakes) insubordination aboard the Titan. What ensues is a stunningly intimate thriller of an episode with Picard and Ro addressing the shambled state that their relationship was left in after she departed Starfleet to join the Maquis in the penultimate episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Ahead of the latest episode, Collider's own Maggie Lovitt sat down with Picard Season 3 showrunner Terry Matalas to unpack this turning point in the Next Gen journey. During their conversation, Lovitt mentioned what a perfect choice it was to bring back Ro Laren for this emotionally weighty plot point and asked if this was always the plan for the season or if Matalas and the Season 3 writers ever had any other characters in mind for this moment. But Matalas revealed that what played out is what was always meant to be, he said, "No, this story was always Ro Laren."
Matalas told Collider that the pitch for this episode was a "paranoia thriller" with someone whom you share a lot of emotional baggage with. He explained how it was always going to be Ro Laren as long as they could get Forbes to return and convince the studio that this was a story worth telling.
"This story was always– the pitch that I had for it was, "How great would it be to do a paranoia thriller with someone that you have all this baggage with?" The only way to be sure you're sitting across from the person that you hope you're sitting across from is to get through your trauma with them. I thought that if we could pull that off, we'd have a really interesting episode of television. But that required us getting Michelle Forbes and convincing the studio and the network it was the right idea, and educating a lot of people on who Ro Laren [was]."
Who Is Ro Laren?
Ro Laren was introduced in the fifth season of The Next Generation as a strong-willed and oft-argumentative Bajoran Starfleet officer who joined the Enterprise as a last resort alternative to going to prison following a court martial. She and Picard often butted heads on the Enterprise in her early days, but by the end of her tenure there they had developed a father-daughter-esque relationship with him expressing great pride at how much she'd grown during her time on the Enterprise. However, the last time we saw these two on screen together, Ro tore a rather irreparable rift between herself and Picard by joining the Maquis (a rebel militia group fighting the Cardassians—an alien species that occupied Bajor killing 15 million Bajorans) and following her heart.
When Ro Laren appears as a Section 31 spy investigating the Changelings' infiltration of Starfleet, she and Picard must work through their shared trauma in order to get to the truth and stop an enemy bent on the destruction of the Federation. Ro is the perfect person to tell this story, and her background in espionage—in addition to her emotional connection to Picard—lends itself to the hear-pounding thriller that unfolds in "Imposters."
As Matalas said, "there was never anyone else other than that. It was Ro Laren or bust. It had to be her." No one else could've delivered the information needed to further this story in such an emotionally satisfying way, bringing closure to a story that has felt somewhat unfinished for nearly 30 years.
New episodes of Star Trek: Picard Season 3 are available every Thursday on Paramount+. Be sure to check out Lovitt's full conversation with Matalas on Episode 5 when it goes live, and you can watch our previous chat with the showrunner on creating a satisfying conclusion down below: