Lower Decks Season 5 Declares War on the Multiverse Trend

This article contains spoilers for the latest episode of “Star Trek: Lower Decks.”

The penultimate episode of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” season 5 (and the series itself), titled “Fissure Quest,” moves away from the USS Cerritos and instead takes place primarily on a ship called the USS Anaximander. This ship is captained by one William Boimler (Jack Quaid), a duplicate of Brad Boimler, created through a shipping accident. Captain Boimler is a member of the top-secret Section 31 and has been assigned a very important and very covert task: he must navigate around the galaxy, plugging holes in the space-time continuum that lead to parallel universes.

Boimler’s team is made up entirely of characters from other “Star Trek” shows, albeit slightly altered parallel universe versions of them. They are what the Marvel Cinematic Universe would call “variants.” Trekkies will be delighted to see that Anaximander’s doctor is Elim Garak (Andrew Robinson) from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” and that he is married to a sentient hologram of Dr. Bashir (Alexander Siddig), also from “Deep Space “Nine”. Meanwhile, most of the Anaximander’s crew is made up of variants of Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) from “Star Trek: Voyager.”

However, every time Captain Boimler finds a new dimensional opening, he rolls his eyes. He’s tired of running into parallel versions of the same damn people. What’s next? The evil Picard? Borg Kirk? Human Worf? For Boimler, finding slight twists on overly familiar characters is painfully boring. “That’s all the multiverse is,” he shouts indignantly. “Just lazy, derivative remixes!” Boimler’s exhaustion with the multiverse variants eventually becomes one of the episode’s main plot points.

The satire is clear: the writers of “Lower Decks” are poking fun at the multiverse trend that has become prominent in recent years.

The idea of ​​a multiverse, at least as presented in Marvel and DC superhero movies, was tired before it began. If every Marvel character had millions of variants spread across the multiverse, and other characters could happily jump between universes without much trouble, then the consequences of death would no longer be relevant. A Wolverine could die, for example, and Deadpool could happily skip a dimension, take another Wolverine, and replace the original without too much trouble. The multiverse seems like a dead end for creativity.

Multiverse stories also have a habit of providing crass fan service, allowing filmmakers to bring back every actor from every other superhero movie. Both “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” made huge amounts of money by bringing together various iterations of familiar characters that appeared in multiple rebooted franchises over the past 20 years. “Deadpool & Wolverine” even featured an army of Deadpool duplicates, each with a notable quirk or distinguishing characteristic. One was nice. One was a baby. One was wearing a hat. As Boimler said, they were tedious, derivative remixes.

Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire played Spider-Men in “No Way Home,” pleasing fans of all three, but the multiverse aspects were less interesting in that “Spider-Man” movie than its themes from the capital punishment. And of course, the animated “Spider-Verse” films have featured hundreds and hundreds of Spider-Man “remixes.” Fans seemed fond of the previous films, eager to drink up the fan service and unconcerned by the lack of creativity inherent in the premise.

The latest episode of “Lower Decks” takes all of that in its own right and softens it. The multiverse, as Boimler claims, is at stake.

Remember, too, that multiverse stories have been rejected as often as accepted, and “Lower Decks” doesn’t just take a stab at some of the most successful films of recent years. It also attacks a trend that fails as often as it succeeds, while directly making fun of itself, since “Star Trek” has played with parallel dimensions quite often.

Regarding the first point: the multiverse aspects of “The Flash” did not save that film from being one of the biggest flops of all time. Few seemed to love “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Even Kang’s story from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (created in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”) has been scrapped (although, admittedly, that was because Marvel Studios parted ways with Kang’s actor, Jonathan Majors). . Not to mention, did anyone really care when the Vulture (Michael Keaton) made a guest appearance in “Morbius”? The multiverse frequently backfires, revealing how lame the idea is.

But to the second point, “Star Trek” has also visited parallel universes before. One might immediately recall “Mirror, Mirror,” the episode of the original series in which everyone was evil and the USS Enterprise was a ship of conquest. That universe was later revisited in both “Deep Space Nine” and “Star Trek: Enterprise.”

Or perhaps one could think of “Parallels,” the “Next Generation” episode in which Worf (Michael Dorn) keeps jumping between dimensions without warning. Then, of course, there’s the matter of the Kelvin-verse, which currently consists of three films set in an alternate timeline. Each of these films features characters familiar to longtime Trekkies, just slightly remixed. Maybe they wear different uniforms, or maybe they are captains instead of lieutenants. Maybe Tasha Yar is still alive in this dimension.

Whichever way you look at it, Boimler is right. The idea is obsolete. After watching Captain Kirk’s 50th performance, one might long for something new. Boimler expresses the same exasperation with the multiverse that many viewers likely have. You have Any new ideas or are you just revisiting the familiar?

At the same time, “Fission Quest” also comfortably offers a defense of its own well-worn multiverse history. Captain Boimler, in his parallel-dimensional antics, runs into a spaceship captain named Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard), a variant of the character Woodard played in “Star Trek: First Contact.” Captain Sloane reveals that she too explores the multiverse, but hasn’t gotten tired of encountering duplicates and alternates.

Captain Sloane admits that while it can be exhausting to see the same 100 people, only slightly remixed, over and over again, she takes a much more diplomatic view. Sloane understands that every person she meets has their own life and their own personality. Sloane doesn’t care if their story is like someone else’s, they still have all the wit, intelligence, quirks, and friendships of anyone else. Sloane adds that she is an explorer, but of the human condition. She loves seeing endless character changes across the galaxy and was elated to discover that things like integrity, friendship, and tenacity remain constant.

In other words, “Fission Quest” is certainly dismantling and satirizing all the multiverse hoopla we’ve all grown tired of, but it also manages to find a compassionate point of view through it all. As audience members, we may have become cynical about the multiverse. However, if we really lived in one, we might be more optimistic like Captain Sloane.

The series finale “Star Trek: Lower Decks” premieres December 19, 2024 on Paramount+.