Star Trek’s New Guinan Actor Explains Her Relationship With Franchise

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 4.

The actor who has been cast to play a young Guinan on Star Trek: Picard reflects on her relationship with the Star Trek franchise. Star Trek: Picard began its second outing in early March, and is now reaching the midway point of its ten-episode run before season 2’s finale hits screens on May 5th. Thanks to the reappearance of Jean-Luc Picard’s nemesis Q, Star Trek: Picard season 2 has been able to explore time travel and alternate timelines, giving audiences plenty of cameos and call-backs in the process.

Those cameos include a young Guinan, who is living on Earth in 2024 and running her 10 Forward bar in L.A. The El-Aurian bartender isn’t played by Whoopi Goldberg, however, and has been recast with Ito Aghayere taking on the role. The character appears in Star Trek: Picard season 2, episode 4, “Watcher,” when Admiral Picard is sent to the bar on his search for the elusive Watcher. As it turns out, a young Guinan, who doesn’t recognize the old Starfleet Admiral, is closing down the bar and planning to leave Earth. After a frosty reception, and plenty of convincing, the character eventually helps to guide Admiral Picard toward the Watcher and, in turn, he attempts to convince her to give Earth another chance.

Now, in an interview with Variety, Aghayere has explained her relationship with the Star Trek franchise. The actor shared that, as she was growing up, Star Trek: The Next Generation was one of the only series she was allowed to watch as her “very conservative” family believed that Patrick Stewart’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard looked “really smart and intelligent.” Aghayere said that while she wasn’t able to watch shows like Power Rangers, she found the time to watch “all of ‘TNG’” thanks to her parents’ belief that she might “learn something” from it. Check out the actor’s full comments below:

“I watched all of ‘TNG’ as a kid, primarily because my parents are immigrants, and they’re very conservative. As a kid growing up, there were very few shows that they would let us watch without having to care what it was about, or understand what it was about. I don’t think I told Patrick — as I probably should have — but they thought he looked really smart and intelligent. So they were like, ‘Eh, she’s gonna learn something, let them watch it.’ I couldn’t watch ‘Power Rangers,’ but I could watch ‘Star Trek.’”

The chances are that Aghayere’s parents were right, and that the young actor did learn from the series. Star Trek: The Next Generation’s episodes would often raise challenging ethical questions through the medium of science fiction, and helped to promote progressive values like tolerance, the value of diversity and equality, and open-mindedness. While the franchise has moved into different territory in recent years, choosing to portray a darker picture of humanity with a focus on action and conflict, the foundation of the Star Trek franchise set by early series like TNG still remains.

Although Aghayere was undoubtedly excited to portray a character who is so beloved by fans of the series, her appearance in Star Trek: Picard raised more questions than it answered. While most audiences will be able to understand the practical reasons behind the recasting, many have been left wondering why Aghayere’s version of the character didn’t recognize Admiral Picard after the events of “Time’s Arrow,” when the two met in 1893. Q’s impact on the timeline has been used to explain the apparent plot-hole, but with Guinan’s ability to detect shifts in reality and time, some will question if all is as it initially seems. Ultimately, audiences will soon find out whether Aghayere’s version of Guinan has more of a role to play as the season accelerates towards its conclusion, or if her time on Star Trek: Picard is now over.

Source: Variety

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