What We Know About Riker and Troi’s Return in Star Trek: Picard (And One Theory)

He’s back, geeks! Sir Pat himself. Jean-Luc Picard. JLP. Mon Capitaine. Ol’ Baldy. (I didn’t make that one up; blame his cast mates). It’s me, your friendly neighborhood Trek Nerd, here with some tea (Earl Gray, hot – obviously) about the highly anticipated new series that premieres on January 23.

There’s way too much happening in the Picard promos to discuss it all in one shot. Trust me, I tried. There’s already discussion online about the new characters and the return of Data and Seven of Nine, so I’m going to focus on what I feel in my heart is most important: Will Riker and Deanna Troi, Picard’s former first officer and ship’s counselor. Big Willy and D-Train. Mama D and Dad Apron. Literal Alien Royalty and Trombone-Playing Goofball.

When last we saw our favorite Imzadi in 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, the newlyweds were fresh off some Shinzon-induced trauma and on their way to negotiate with the Romulans aboard the USS Titan. Trying to reconcile all they just endured. Dodging Lwaxana’s subspace calls about not showing up for their naked Betazoid wedding. Canceling their honeymoon on the Opal Sea. Hopefully getting extensive therapy. It was a rough one.

Everyone’s retired now and honestly they deserve it.

Showrunner (and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist!) Michael Chabon first announced that Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis would appear in Picard in July at San Diego Comic Con. They hadn’t filmed any scenes yet, but Frakes soon revealed that they were still together (I would’ve rioted) and in a “non-military” situation. Domestic bliss in the Fifth House? Sign a girl up.

The “unimaginable” event (as described in this first teaser from May) that causes Admiral Picard to retire from Starfleet is connected with Romulus’s destruction in the Abrams Star Trek film and the evacuation of its people fifteen years prior to the start of the new series. We’ve already seen tensions rising between Starfleet and the Romulans during the evacuations in the Countdown comics leading up to the premiere. If the Titan was still involved with the Romulans at that point, this same event may have influenced Riker and Troi’s retirement as well. They’ve dealt with terrible situations before – the Borg, Wolf 359, Shinzon – and persevered. Something very bad and perhaps very personal must have happened to cause all three of them to leave Starfleet.

We first see Riker and Troi in the New York Comic Con trailer (above) living in a super cool rustic house with their daughter, who inherited the Riker Yell. IMDB lists a character named Kestra (Troi’s deceased sister’s name) played by Lulu Wilson; whether or not she’s their only child remains to be seen. Will’s cooking. Deanna’s gardening. Kestra’s yelling. They’re happy and my heart is full! Then Picard shows up and probably drags them into some nonsense because it’s television and no one can stay happy for long. It’s interesting that Kestra refers to Jean-Luc Picard by his full name, giving the distinct impression that she’s never met him. If the character is the same age as the actor (thirteen), it’s clear that Picard isolated himself even from those closest to him since his retirement fifteen years prior.

Sidebar, we need to talk about this lake house.

So, where are they? There doesn’t seem to be much left for Riker in Alaska, so did the man get to build his log cabin on Betazed? More importantly, is Lwaxana still alive and running the Fifth House? If not, did Deanna ascend to the responsibility? Where’s her younger brother? Did Will Riker start Betazed’s first Little League team and do the kids cheat telepathically? I have so many irrelevant questions.

In real life, their house is on the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot. Yes, it’s on the tour. Both the façade and interiors were built for the John Candy/Dan Aykroyd movie The Great Outdoors. While Picard and the Riker-Trois are trying to discuss serious space business, try not to think about the scene from the film where a bear gets into the house and the old man blasts all the fur off its backside with a lamp made out of a shotgun. (You’re welcome).

It’s perfectly in character for them to live this relatively old-fashioned life after the action-packed careers they’ve had, especially if some catastrophic or traumatic event precipitated their retirement. Will and Deanna always appreciated older things – jazz music, cowboy stories – and while she rocked some impeccable Betazoid fashions while off-duty, Troi never seemed particularly eager to actually live in the aristocratic Fifth House. The trailers project a sense of semi-isolation, of removal from busy society, not completely unlike Picard’s situation. Their surprise at seeing Picard again could be as much about them being hard to find as it is about his withdrawal.

The next time we see them (above), The Queen seems not too happy with JLP and we see part of another room in the house with what look like kids drawings on the wall. Editing makes it seem like Picard brings Dahj (played by Isa Briones) to them for protection, inadvertently bringing his former crew into another dangerous adventure. There’s at least one child involved now, though, and it’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.

This is about all we’ve seen of Riker and Troi so far, but it’s intriguing. The trailers are placing special emphasis on Dahj, whose real identity is a mystery, even to her. Theories abound, however, and people have claimed she’s Lal, Seven/Chakotay’s daughter, Locutus/Borg Queen’s daughter, a new body for the Borg Queen’s consciousness, Shinzon/Sela’s daughter, and even some Shinzon/Deanna Nemesis telepathic assault pseudo-science yikes that I refuse to entertain.

Of course I have a THEORY.

Stop reading now if you’re not into speculation, because here’s mine.

In the first trailer, Dahj (not her real name) doesn’t know who she is, but asks Picard if he knows her like she expects him to and then says, “everything inside of me says that I’m safe with you.” People have used this line to point to a Borg Collective connection, but hear me out – if that isn’t some vague empathic part-Betazoid dialogue, I don’t know what is. We’ve been hearing lines like this since the pilot of TNG.

Isa Briones is the right age for Dahj to be Will and Deanna’s older daughter. She was twenty when the show filmed and the oldest a Riker-Troi child could be is nineteen. If she was on the Titan as a child when the Romulan talks potentially failed and the later evacuations fell apart, it’s possible that something happened to her.

Star Trek has always prided itself on holding a mirror up to society and tackling complex and divisive issues. Jonathan Del Arco (Hugh) has commented on the impact of a real-world situation on his work in the show and we know that Romulan and ex-Borg refugees play a part in the narrative. It’s not a huge stretch to make the connection between these refugees and the issue of the separation of families. It’s exactly the kind of story that would be addressed in the Trek universe.

It’s possible that the Titan and other Federation ships were boarded, crews and their families detained and separated by age or other criteria, and only some of them sent back across the border out of Romulan space. Dahj is a very Romulan-sounding name for a decidedly non-Romulan looking person and the trailer shows her among a group of young people being held by Romulans in an old Borg Cube.

Picard’s guilt then not only stems from the Romulans he couldn’t save from the supernova, but Federation citizens taken or killed in retaliation, including his best friends’ child. If the Admiralty were unable or unwilling to take action to find the missing, it would be a brutal betrayal to a lifer like Will Riker who consistently sacrificed so much for Starfleet. This would undoubtedly eventually send him into the woods to circle the wagons and protect what remains of his family.

Of course Jonathan and Marina’s appearance is a small part of a much larger storyline, but the newest commercial samples Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies,” which Data sang at their wedding and the Starfleet Museum Picard exhibit that traveled between Comic Cons this year featured a photo from the wedding, both of which may underscore their importance to the overall narrative.

Executive producer Heather Kadin said at NYCC that the production was purposefully avoiding fan-service cameos. “We only brought people back if their story really mattered to the story we were telling … each of them has a pivotal, emotional story to tell.” Seven and Hugh’s returns make sense with the ex-Borg connections and Data because of Picard’s fixation on his death. But why are Riker and Troi integral? What’s their story at this point in their lives, what has it been for the past twenty years, and how is it relevant to Picard’s current mission to help this girl?

Are you looking forward to the series? Throw your theories at me in the comments!

Where to watch?

The first episode of Star Trek: Picard arrives on CBS All Access on January 23 in the US with new episodes streaming every Thursday evening. In Canada, Picard will air on CTV and Z and stream on Crave. Amazon Prime will stream the series internationally.