Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ short fifth and final season comes with an encouraging silver lining. Paramount+ announced that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 5 would be the end of the series and will consist of only six episodes before the premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3.
Additionally, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, which was filming in early 2025, wrapped in July before the premiere of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3, episode 4, “A Space Adventure Hour.” Season 4 will be the last season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to clock in with 10 episodes.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 premiered after a two-year wait, the result of a 7-month delay caused by 2023’s SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. Response to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 was colder than the enthusiastic response for the first two seasons.
Some Star Trek fans took issue with Strange New Worlds season 3’s giddy exploration of various TV genres, comedy, dancing, and overall risk-taking. Additionally, Strange New Worlds season 3 made longtime Trekkers miss classic Star Trek‘s 22-26 episode seasons, which made unpopular episodes easier to swallow.
However, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 5 only consisting of six episodes could be an advantage for the final voyages of Captain Christopher Pike’s (Anson Mount) USS Enterprise.
The Silver Lining Of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 5 Only Being 6 Episodes
The good news about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 5 only running for six episodes means the final season will be more streamlined and focused. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds executive producer Akiva Goldsman alluded to this when speaking to ScreenRant at New York Comic Con:
Akiva Goldsman: We’re making season five now, we’re trending towards that, which is probably the center line of Star Trek, right? We’re trending now, and beginning with season four and through season five, to a much more singular sci-fi, action-adventure, emotional storytelling. And you know, the outliers are getting less and less as we kind of focus on saying goodbye to each other and the fans.
Only having six episodes to play with forces Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to bear down to brass tacks and deliver the “singular sci-fi, action-adventure, emotional storytelling” that Akiva Goldsman described.
Akiva Goldsman also noted that “the outliers are getting less and less,” meaning that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 5 won’t be as focused on “big swings” and experimental episodes as Strange New Worlds seasons 3 and 4 are, with 10 episodes of real estate.
While there may still be a high concept or genre episode or two, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will, by necessity, zero in on the endgame of its five-year mission and bring Captain Pike’s Enterprise to the cusp of Star Trek: The Original Series‘ beginning, with all the transition that will entail.
Why Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Is Ending With A 6 Episode Final Season
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ fate was in the balance in 2023 and 2024 as Paramount Global prepared for its sale to Skydance Media, which was finalized in August 2025.
Paramount+ canceled Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Prodigy, and Star Trek: Lower Decks after Star Trek: Picard ended with season 3. Meanwhile, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was the most popular Paramount+ Star Trek series with mainstream audiences.
When Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 was greenlit, executive producers and co-showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers went into production expecting that the fourth season would be their last.
However, Paramount+ offered Star Trek: Strange New Worlds a two-hour movie to close out the series. Yet Paramount+ also agreed with Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds essentially promised audiences that the prequel would lead into Star Trek: The Original Series.
The compromise reached was a six-episode Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 5, which Goldsman and Myers feel is enough real estate to bring Captain Pike’s five-year mission to a close and set up the takeover of the Starship Enterprise by Captain James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley).
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is now filming season 5, which will wrap in December 2025. Ultimately, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will consist of 46 episodes total in its five seasons on Paramount+.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Could Still Get A Captain Kirk Spinoff
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ five-year mission is coming to an end, but Akiva Goldsman, Henry Alonso Myers, and audiences are hoping for more. Specifically, Goldsman and Myers dream of a USS Enterprise spinoff led by Paul Wesley as Captain Kirk.
Myers and Goldsman envision a Strange New Worlds spinoff dubbed Star Trek: Year One. It would depict the first year of Captain Kirk in command of the Starship Enterprise before the events of Star Trek: The Original Series‘ second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3’s best episode, the Valerie Weiss-directed fan favorite, “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail,” tacitly set up Star Trek: Year One by giving Paul Wesley’s Lt. Commander Kirk his first mission as captain of a starship. Kirk led the USS Farragut on a successful rescue of the Enterprise.
It was by design that Jim Kirk’s first time as a Captain saw him surrounded by his future USS Enterprise crewmates, Lt. Spock (Ethan Peck), Scotty (Martin Quinn), Ensign Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush).
The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” won over doubters that Paul Wesley could lead his own spinoff series as Captain Kirk.
Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers spoke about their Star Trek: Year One idea throughout Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3’s publicity, but “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” won over doubters that Paul Wesley could lead his own spinoff series as Captain Kirk.
Star Trek: Year One will presumably be pitched by Goldman and Myers to Paramount Skydance’s new leadership, which is looking to assert new Star Trek theatrical movies and streaming TV shows as a priority for the studio.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds seasons 4 and 5 may need to be a slam dunk with critics and audiences to make Star Trek: Year One viable, but season 5 could potentially be the best six-hour Star Trek movie ever made.
- Release Date
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May 5, 2022
- Network
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Paramount+
- Showrunner
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Henry Alonso Myers, Akiva Goldsman
