Lower Decks’ Finale May Not Be the End, Says Tawny Newsome

SPOILER WARNING: This story includes plot developments of the series finale of “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” currently streaming on Paramount+.

When “Star Trek: Lower Decks” premiered during the height of the pandemic in August 2020, it was seen as a somewhat radical experiment: It was the first animated “Trek” show since the 1970s. It was the first “Trek” comedy ever. And it was the first time a “Trek” show focused on the junior officers aboard a Starfleet vessel: ne’er-do-well genius Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), anxious tryhard Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), Orion science officer D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells) and cybernetically enhanced engineer Sam Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), all serving aboard the minor league starship the U.S.S. Cerritos.

Five seasons later, “Lower Decks” has more than proven itself as a worthy addition to the vast “Star Trek” galaxy, by marrying fast-paced satire with the creative freedom of animation to pay loving homage to every previous iteration of “Trek” — including a crossover episode with “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” in which Newsome and Quaid played their characters in live action. In the final season, the core quartet — who’ve all earned promotions to lieutenant junior grade — confront a series of rifts in the space-time continuum that link to different realities, which allowed the writers, led by executive producer and showrunner Mike McMahan, to further explore the possible paths the characters could have taken.

The series finale, titled “The New Next Generation,” takes that multiversal conceit and literally explodes it, with a massive fissure threatening to destroy the show’s main universe. Mariner, Boimler and the rest of the Cerritos crew manage to repair the rift by making it a stable, permanent aperture between different realities, thereby opening up an entire new field of inter-dimensional exploration. The Cerritos’ captain and Mariner’s mother, Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), is reassigned to oversee the exploration of the multiverse on Starbase 80; her first officer, Jack Ransom (Jerry O’Connell), is promoted to captain; and Ransom promptly ruins Mariner and Boimler’s lives by making them his provisional co-first officers.

“It’s perfect harmony to make them share this position,” Newsome tells Variety about the finale. “We’re a true duo, so giving us a shared role at the end — one that Boimer has been dreaming of forever and one that Mariner has resisted for so long — feels like a pretty poignant move.”

It’s a momentous way to conclude the show — but it may not wind up being the last we see of these characters. Newsome spoke with Variety about how the episode evolved, which past “Lower Decks” episodes are her favorite, the latest on the live-action “Star Trek” comedy she’s been developing, and whether she believes whether we’ve seen the last of “Lower Decks.”

How did it feel to record the series finale?

Making that episode was really interesting. It felt like there was a little bit of like, “Is this really ending?” Because we kept re-recording it. Mike kept rewriting it, especially the ending scene in the bar. I remember the first time I recorded the episode way back, you know, 13 months ago or whenever, the scene in the bar did not exist. I remember saying in the session, “If this is the end, we’re not ending with a big send out.” It just felt like the end of a season. I think there was a little [feeling of], like, “Well, maybe it’s not, so maybe we’re just not going to really end it that way.” Then the rewrites started coming in that seemed like everyone was grappling with reality of it more. Then finally, Mike wrote that really lovely speech for Mariner at the end, and I was like, “Okay, this feels like an appropriate pause to the story. It’s an end of a chapter. It could go on. But I was glad that he that gave us a little button, in case this is the last we see of them.

My overall read of “Lower Decks” — and the final episodes really reinforced it for me — is that this was a show about what it means to be a “Star Trek” fan. Was that your experience of making it?

Yeah, I think so. I haven’t heard it put that way, but it definitely feels like an exploration and celebration of fandom. I guess I would extend that to “community.” I think it’s an examination of what it means to buy into the culture of community that you really believe in and that you are a fan of. I’ve had similar experiences: I came from the Second City, and that is a community. We have our own lore, we have our own heroes that we look up to, and we reference their works all the time. And it’s so insular and people outside of that community maybe don’t have the same level of granular referencing that we do. This show reminded me of that. 

When you think back, what storylines really rise to the top for you?

I love Episode 509, “Fissure Quest,” the penultimate episode, the multiverse one. We got to see so many beloved characters that I’ve been dying to see, but because they’re from alternate universes, we’re not fucking with the canon too much. So [“Deep Space Nine” characters] Garrick and Bashir, making them a couple, has been something that the fans have been speculating about, doing fan fic about, drawing fan art for this, like it kind of imagined couple for so long. But I know that there’s also a section of the fandom that would say, “No, this is an example of a really beautiful platonic friendship. We want to keep it that way.” I love that in an alternate universe, we get to have our cake and eat it too. We get to see them as a couple, but it doesn’t actually change the Garrick and Bashir relationship that we saw for so many years. As two of my all-time favorite [“Trek”] characters, I was just so thrilled to see and hear them, and they sound exactly like they did in 1995. That was great.

You know, I’ve always enjoyed that the show never tried to make Mariner and Boimler a couple; they’ve always remained totally platonic.

I agree with you. Television loves a love story, and we love to take two people of opposite genders and shove their faces together at the end of a season. I don’t want to take away from any of the fans who want that pairing to exist, especially in their fan-fics and their fan art. It’s cute. I could see an alternate universe relationship for them. But in this one, I love that it’s platonic. I have so many deep, loving, platonic friendships — Jack Quaid included — that are just so important to me. As a woman who doesn’t have children, who’s not trying to have children, I so value community. It exists best when we can get outside of the binary of like, these are people you sleep with and these are just friends who you go to the movies with. We really need the full spectrum of what love can look like. That’s what is gonna keep me company in my old age, I think, and that’s very much the type of friend I try to be, no matter what gender people are. We need more more examples of it.

Was there a Beckett episode that you’ve especially enjoyed?

I really enjoyed Episode 301, which was an homage to “First Contact” — that’s my favorite “Trek” movie. We left the end of Season 2 with this big cliffhanger of Carol being carted off to jail and Beckett’s like, “I’m going to get her exonerated, I don’t trust the Starfleet brass to do it themselves.” She and her little merry band of weirdos steal a ship and go to Bozeman, Montana, and meet the hologram of Zephram Cochrane. They have this whole little adventure, and at the end, what actually happened is Starfleet just did due process and had a normal trial, and Carol was cleared. I just thought that was a really beautiful stop along her journey to help to quell some of her saviorism. Episode 409, where we learned about her backstory with Sito Jaxa [a “Next Generation” character who died in the episode “Lower Decks”], that one really always tugs at my heartstrings. It felt like a really nice way to talk about why she resists authority and ambition.

At Comic-Con last July, you announced that you were developing a live-action “Star Trek” comedy series with Justin Simien. What can you tell me about where the show is now? 

I am imminently on my way to a work session with Justin right after I get done with you. It’s funny, because as an actor, when I accidentally spoil shit, somebody calls my manager and slaps my hand. But with writing, I truly feel like I will be fired and nothing will be greenlit if I fuck this up. But the other thing is that we’re changing so much as we go. Having so much support with Secret Hideout and the studio just being like, “We love ‘Trek,’ let’s take it in this new direction” has been as good as development can go. But finding a way to do “Trek” in a workplace comedy-type tone — it’s new. “Lower Decks” proved that we can do it in half hour. We can do it very big and fun and funny and still make it feel like “Trek.” But animation just gives you some tonal permissions that we’re figuring out for live action. Justin and I are die-hard Trekkies. We are not trying to mess with the “Trek” of it all, but we’re also hardcore comedy people. The sanctity of the workplace comedy is really important to me too, so making sure both of those things can really live together is my primary concern. That means that the premise that everyone heard at Comic-Con may be shifting a little bit.

The logline — “Federation outsiders serving a gleaming resort planet find out their day-to-day exploits are being broadcast to the entire quadrant” — made many fans think it was set on the hedonistic planet of Risa. Was that correct?

It was never Risa, but it is still an outside-of-the-Federation world that we’re dealing with. I think it’s going to answer some questions about what non-Federation [worlds] look like. That’s an area of canon we haven’t explored a ton. But it’s clay being currently molded.

I know you were a “Star Trek” fan well before you were cast on “Lower Decks,” and along with your new show, you’ve also written on the upcoming “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.” What has it meant for you to pass through that threshold into creating the thing that you’ve loved?

It’s just deepened my fandom. In 2019, when I booked “Lower Decks,” I was like, “Oh, I’m a pretty big ‘Star Trek’ fan.” I knew some random deep cuts, but I had not seen every single episode of everything, and a lot of things I’d only seen once. Getting that job and wanting to understand every single reference pointed me towards re-watching and deep diving. It just rounded out my fandom in a way that I think only comes if you have an extreme, hyper-fixation quality to your personality, which I do, and/or you’re being paid for it, which I am. That combination of elements has made it so that I’ve built a pretty exhaustive understanding of the world. There’s still stuff that I don’t know super, super well, but I know who to text within the franchise to immediately get an answer. That means I can make, I can just like, keep making more in this world.

Getting to create canon must be fun — the “Lower Decks” finale even ends with a major new creation of the permanent inter-dimensional rift. 

I like what it sets up for potential future adventures. Yeah, Mike took some big swings, with the Ferengi culture, the Orion culture. He and the writers expanded canon in a lot of areas. It’s surprising that our 22 minute cartoon is the one that is delving into it. As someone currently trying to squeeze all of what “Star Trek” is into 25 pages, it is damn hard to get that much story and heart and character and science and make it super funny, and we get half the pages as everybody else. So hats off to Mike.

You said earlier that you saw the finale as a “pause” for the story, and Alex Kurtzman, who oversees all of “Star Trek” on TV, has said that he would like to make more TV movies like the upcoming “Star Trek: Section 31.” Would that be possible for “Lower Decks”?

As far as the people creating it, we all would love to do that. I don’t know who writes the check for that, so I don’t know if they think it’s possible. But Mike has stories upon stories in him for these characters. He could do 10 more seasons. He is not done. None of us are done. Me, Jack, Eugene and Noël and not to mention the rest of our bridge crew and our recurring characters. Everybody’s like, “Yep, sign me up. We’ll be the next ‘Futurama.’ We’ll come back in 10 years, whatever you want.” So we’re all game. I would love a movie. I’d love a live-action movie, because we need to see Noël and Jerry and Eugene in human form — human-ish form.

This interview has been edited and condensed.