Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard Season 3 Finale - "The Last Generation"
Picard finale end-credits scene.
Screen Rant ed a roundtable interview with Terry Matalas, who detailed his far more ambitious plans for Star Trek: Picard's series finale, which he wrote and directed. Matalas explains that more huge Star Trek characters were intended to appear but had to be cut. Read his quote below:
Terry Matalas: There were characters I really wanted to see again. In the original finale script, it was a giant movie that we were building on a television time schedule... But there was a scene with Soji and Data that we could not afford to do and bring back another actor. There is a scene in which they found Ro Laren in the dungeons of the Intrepid with Tuvok and that she had survived we weren't able to pull off. Harry Kim had appeared at one point. We wanted Kate Mulgrew to be part of Seven of Nine's promotion.
Why Huge Star Trek Cameos Were Cut From Picard's Finale
Terry Matalas further explained that the reason huge Star Trek cameos like Kate Mulgrew's iral Kathryn Janeway were cut from Star Trek: Picard's finale simply came down to budget. Matalas says:
These are all things that are all in the first script and then your line producer says, "Are you out of your f***ing mind? You can't afford these things. You are not Avengers: Endgame." So they gotta go away. And so, those are regrets, but I'm very happy with what we are we were able to pull off.
As satisfying as Star Trek: Picard's finale is, it's also a shame that Terry Matalas' full ambitions couldn't have been realized. iral Janeway, for instance, was name-dropped in Star Trek: Picard season 3, and Janeway promoting Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) to Captain herself would have brought the house down. As would the now more human Data (Brent Spiner) meeting his daughter, Soji (Isa Briones), who was one of the Star Trek: Picard season 1 and 2 characters cut from season 3 due to the budget. And Commander Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes) could have survived Picard season 3. Still, Matalas should be immensely proud of the movie quality he achieved with Star Trek: Picard season 3 on a TV scale even without his entire cast of planned Star Trek character cameos.
Star Trek: Picard Season 3 is available to stream on Paramount+