“Farewell” is the tenth episode of the second season of the TV show “Star Trek: Picard”, it follows “Hide and Seek” and it’s the second season finale. It’s available in the USA on the Paramount+ streaming platform and in many other countries on Amazon Prime Video.
Note. This article contains some spoilers about “Farewell”.
The travelers and Tallinn (Orla Brady) must try to save Renée Picard (Penelope Mitchell) and the Europa mission but Adam Soong (Brent Spiner) seems willing to do anything to prevent the launch. Everyone must make crucial choices for their future.
The second season finale reflects its strengths and especially its flaws. It has some scenes that work thanks to the characters and the actors’ performances but others are a mess and waste, this time for good (for bad?) the potential of various subplots.
Coming to terms with one’s past marked the whole show and in the second season, it was the central theme with all the important characters forced to make choices that decide their future. Their stories are built around these journeys which are first of all inner without thinking about consistency and using various interesting themes in a superficial and hasty way.
The subplot about Renée Picard ended rather quickly with Adam Soong looking in disgrace a few episodes ago while he looks curiously powerful in this ending. His story was badly wasted with a character who embodies the tritest traits of the megalomaniac scientist and the final link with Star Trek’s history isn’t enough to save him. The presence of his daughter Kore (Isa Briones) makes some sense for the only real surprise of the episode came from the appearance of the Traveler.
Not even the extensive use of fanservice, present in “Farewell” as well, is enough to save a season that lost steam episode after episode. Perhaps the lack of attention to anything that didn’t directly concern the characters’ problems and their relationships created the greatest damage. Weak subplots led to scenes that all too often felt like fillers.
If nothing else, being “Star Trek: Picard”, most of the best moments of this season finale benefited from Patrick Stewart’s performances. The scenes between Picard and Q (John de Lancie) will remain among the most significant moments not only in this show. It seems to me that they managed to build something passable between 7 of 9 (Jeri Ryan) and Raffi Musiker (Michelle Hurd).
The season ends with the introduction of what we can expect to be the plot of the third season, the final one of “Star Trek: Picard” which will also give a sort of farewell to the cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. We must hope that they went beyond the fanservice because it’s useless to use Star Trek characters if the plot is based on very trite clichés even at the soap opera level.
