Star Trek has always had the best villains. Throughout the franchise’s history, they’ve given us some of the most charismatic, awe-inspiring and terrifying villains in science fiction history. Everyone from the Borg, and Q to Khan himself, Star Trek villains are always ones that really end up capturing the imagination and get years of mileage within the franchise. With its recent premiere, the latest Star Trek show continues that tradition, potentially with the return of a TOS species. Strange New Worlds season 2 villains might be up there by the time this season ends.
Strange New Worlds Season 2 Starts By Bringing Back Another TOS Classic Villain
Speaking of bad guys, one of the main villains of The Original Series were the Klingons. Throughout the Star Trek franchise, the Klingons started as enemies but then transitioned into frenemies, antagonists, allies and even sometimes, friends of the Federation and Starfleet. Throughout its history, the Klingons have always been visually depicted in different ways. Most glaring is the type of Klingons we saw at the beginning of Star Trek: Discovery.
The look varied the most from the usual Klingons audiences saw before. However, the Strange New Worlds season 2 premiere episode brought back the Klingons, resembling closer to The Next Generation iteration, than any other on-screen version. But the story of the season seemingly doesn’t focus on the Klingons. The Strange New Worlds season 2 villains get a tease at the end of the episode. Potentially.
Strange New Worlds Season 2 Villains Revealed
The episode starts with narration by Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) where he mentions feeling some tension from Starfleet brass. As he narrates this, we see Robert April (Adrian Holmes) and a colleague checking some star maps, with stress on their faces. After the main story of the episode finishes, we cut back to the Starfleet brass discussing the events of the episode. The episode ends on an ominous note as April implies that there is a war coming. The camera pans to the map they were stressing about before. And we get confirmation of a Gorn attack ship on its way. This seemingly confirms that the Gorn might be the main villains of this season. Which is exciting and terrifying in its own way.
Why These Gorn Might Not Be The Ones From TOS
The Gorn have prominently featured in Star Trek: TOS in a classic episode. A fully mature Gorn takes on Captain Kirk (William Shatner) in what is now an iconic scene from the episode titled ‘Arena’. The Gorn we see in season 1 of Strange New Worlds are young hatchlings or adolescent ones. They are a reptilian species, and the hatchlings felt more like the Raptors from Jurassic Park. Another depiction of the Gorn was in Enterprise, where they looked like an anthropomorphized dinosaur, and definitely a lot less terrifying than the hatchlings. Similar to the Klingons, both these depictions are pretty different from their first appearance where they were pretty slow and clumsy.
So I’m excited to see a proper fully mature Gorn, as part of an invasion actually looks and acts. While the young Gorn seems mindless and animalistic, adult Gorn could easily be much more formidable by combining that powerful brute strength with higher intellect and abilities. If the Gorn are indeed the main Strange New Worlds season 2 villains, it should be an interesting dynamic to the more light-hearted series that we’ve come to love. A brutal and scary species of bad guys that are as capable and tactical in space battles, as they are violent and brutal individually— would be very formidable for our Enterprise crew.
Strange New Worlds season 2 will release weekly episodes on Paramount+.
What do you think of the Gorn in this season of Strange New Worlds? Let me know in the comments below. And watch this space for more Strange New Worlds features with every new episode.
