Star Trek: Strange New Worlds ends its fourth season with an episode first written as a farewell

The facts

On 24 September 2026, Paramount+ released “Tomorrow’s Enterprise”, the tenth and final episode of season 4 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which began on 23 July. According to the official synopsis, a disruption in time damages the Enterprise and forces young Uhura and her older self to work together to repair the timeline. Celia Rose Gooding plays both versions of the lieutenant, alongside Ethan Peck (Spock) among others. The episode is written by Henry Alonso Myers and Robbie Thompson, and directed by Chris Fisher.

In an interview published on 27 September by the website Inverse, the two showrunners, Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers, explain that they built this episode as a possible series finale: the renewal came while it was being written. “We wrote the ‘goodbye’ episode. We got to change it to the ‘see you later’ episode,” Goldsman sums up. According to him, the initial plan was to wrap up with a two-hour film; the two producers felt this was not enough and negotiated a proper season with CBS.

Season 5, the last, will have six episodes, according to Paramount+’s announcement of June 2025; AlloCiné places it in 2027.

In France, season 4 is available on Paramount+ at the same pace as in the United States: launched on 23 July, it ended on 24 September, according to AlloCiné and Superpouvoir.

The story so far

Spoiler

Strange New Worlds, launched in 2022, is a prequel: it tells of the years when Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) commanded the USS Enterprise, before Captain Kirk and the original series. It now numbers forty episodes.

In the finale, an anomaly linked to a white hole brings Uhura into contact with a version of herself from a year in the future. Among other things, the two Uhuras must save engineer Scotty from certain death. Paul Wesley plays James T. Kirk, and the episode hints that he will succeed Pike.

The title refers to “Yesterday’s Enterprise”, an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation broadcast in 1990, in which a temporal rift brings the Enterprise-D face to face with its predecessor. The idea of information passed from one era to another also recalls “All Good Things…”, the final episode of that same series.

Why it matters

The series now has to connect its crew to the one viewers discovered with Kirk, in just six episodes. Akiva Goldsman, quoted by Space.com, promises that by the end of season 5, every question about the characters’ fates will have been answered. A whole season rather than a two-hour film at least leaves room to tell the story of this handover.

Archive note

• Episode 10 of season 4, released on 24 September 2026 on Paramount+.
• Written as a possible series finale, before the renewal for a season 5.
• Season 5, the last, with six episodes, expected in 2027.