Thought Star Trek: Picard season 2's Federation is now the Confederation - a bloodthirsty, war-mongering state founded upon the notion that humans are great and all other races must die accordingly. General Picard has apparently played a significant role in the Confederation's galactic success, and Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc is dismayed to learn his alternate self is a ruthless murderer whose estate is managed by an army of synthetic and alien slaves. And he doesn't even drink Earl Grey.
Every time a Star Trek captain crosses over with their evil alternate (and it happens with surprising regularity), the franchise is paying homage to 1967's "Mirror, Mirror" episode. This original series classic sees a transporter malfunction swap Captain Kirk with his wicked counterpart from the Mirror universe and, just like "General" Picard currently is, Kirk played the role of his evil self until a route home could be found.
We've met alternate Picards before in General Picard and the Confederation.
You could argue that Mirror Kirk's prime motivation was ambition, whereas Confederation Picard seems to genuinely enjoy the stench of death underneath his fingernails. In truth, however, both alternates are the worst of their species - two horrific, irredeemable individuals with no concept of life's sanctity. Comparing which is morally worse based on their respective deeds would be both crass and pointless. Yet one key detail from Star Trek: Picard does confirm General Jean-Luc is a darker creation than Mirror Kirk - from an audience perspective, if not in-canon. See, the Confederation doesn't sit within an alternate universe; it's the Prime universe changed by a time-traveler (that'll be Q), and General Picard is, in essence, still Prime Picard.
As implied by its title, the Mirror universe is pretty much a flip of Star Trek's Prime continuity. If you're a moral, upstanding citizen in the Prime universe, odds are your Mirror counterpart is a right terror. This is true for the likes of James T. Kirk, Intendant Kira, Michael Burnham, Emperor Georgiou, and - most terrible of them all - Sylvia "Captain Killy" Tilly. There's some invisible internal Star Trek mechanism that means these characters in this specific universe must be inherently bad. In Star Trek: Picard season 2, however, Q doesn't send Jean-Luc and friends to the Mirror universe, nor any alternate reality. The Confederation exists in the Prime universe where a key change to Earth's history has set humanity on a darker path.
That means characters who broke bad in Star Trek: Picard's reset timeline did so either through nature or nurture. General Picard isn't a murderous tyrant simply because that's the nature of his universe (which you could argue in Mirror Kirk's case, even though the Terran Empire is overthrown eventually), but because he was raised and molded that way... or maybe even chose to be. Evil parallel universes are one thing, but one small change to Earth in 2024 and Jean-Luc Picard goes from a tea-sipping flute player to decapitating Sarek on the steps of the Vulcan Science Academy. From the audience's viewpoint, that's a far darker direction for a Star Trek captain than the Mirror universe's James T. Kirk.
Star Trek: Picard continues Thursdays on Paramount+.