Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard Season 2, Episode 1 – “The Star Gazer”

The season 2 premiere of Star Trek: Picard confirmed the simplest theories about why Q (John de Lancie) and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) look older considering they are both essentially immortal. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) sought the wisdom of his oldest friend, Guinan, during his latest crisis as he struggles to look inward for answers to long-buried questions. However, different-looking Q makes a most unwelcome return; the omnipotent trickster alters the timeline to save Picard and Starfleet from death at the hands of the Borg – but Q’s interference has now created a darker alternate reality.

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As a member of the Q Continuum, Q is all-powerful, all-knowing, and he can live forever. Since he has the powers of a god, it was strange, at first, when Star Trek: Picard season 2’s trailers showed an aged Q, and this sparked theories as to why. Meanwhile, Guinan is also extremely long-lived. As a member of the El-Aurian race, Guinan comes from a race of listeners and she is hundreds of years old. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Guinan even teamed up with Picard and the USS Enterprise-D’s time-traveling crew in 19th century San Francisco. Of course, the actors who play Q and Guinan have grown older in the real world, and Star Trek: Picard had to conjure logical reasons for why both immortal beings have aged. As expected, Star Trek: Picard wisely opted for the simplest explanations.

When Jean-Luc finds Guinan in Star Trek: Picard season 2’s premiere, “The Star Gazer,” the El-Aurian has set up a new 10 Forward lounge in Los Angeles. Guinan noted that they are now both older and Picard reminded her that El-Aurians age very slowly, to which the bartender responded, “Yes, but only if we choose to. I notice that humans don’t like to be reminded of their mortality so I try to keep up.” By choosing to age, Guinan decided it was more important to put the customers who drink at her bar at ease than maintain her youthful appearance. Meanwhile, Q’s explanation for why he aged is an even simpler handwave. When Q reappears at Picard’s Chateau after he changed the timeline, he looks the same as he did in TNG, thanks to digital wizardry. But when Q noticed Picard is “quite a bit older” than when they last met, he snaps his fingers and ages himself so that he and “Mon Capitaine” are now “even.”

Both instances of justifying Q and Guinan getting older are good examples of Occam’s Razor, which states that the simplest solution is almost always the best. What is more important to Star Trek: Picard is the character interactions between Jean-Luc, his oldest friend, and one of his most relentless nemeses. There was no reason to bog down Star Trek: Picard‘s season 2 premiere episode with involved sci-fi explanations as to why Q and Guinan now look older. Audiences perfectly understand that Whoopi Goldberg and John de Lancie have aged in the decades since Star Trek: The Next Generation, as have Patrick Stewart and Jean-Luc Picard.

Star Trek: Picard season 1 built to Jean-Luc’s death from his untreatable irumodic syndrome, only to resurrect Picard in a new, synthetic body, which was a controversial move. But when Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill), Soji (Isa Briones), and Dr. Altan Inigo Soong (Brent Spiner) transferred Picard’s consciousness into his new android body, Star Trek: Picard went to lengths to explain why Jean-Luc was still in his advanced age instead of the scientists giving him a younger body. In comparison, Star Trek: Picard season 2’s simple explanation for why Guinan and Q are older is preferable and requires far less logical gymnastics.

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 streams Thursdays on Paramount+.

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John Orquiola
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John Orquiola is a Features staff writer and interviewer who has been with Screen Rant for five years. He began as a director’s assistant on various independent films. As a lover of film and film theory, John wrote humorous movie reviews on his blog, Back of the Head, which got him noticed by Screen Rant. John happily became the Star Trek guy at Screen Rant and he leads Feature coverage of the various Star Trek series, but he also writes about a wide range of subjects from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Cobra Kai. His other great nerdy love is British TV series like The Crown, Downton Abbey, and Killing Eve. John can be found on Twitter @BackoftheHead if you want to see photos of the food he eats.

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