Star Trek: Lower Decks Will End With Its Fifth, Final Season

Good news and bad news, Trek fans. The good is that the excellent Strange New Worlds will continue to boldly go for at least more more season beyond its currently filming third. The bad news: another member of Paramount’s current Trek streaming stable is preparing to say goodbye.

Variety has confirmed that alongside a season four renewal for Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks—the animated series developed by Rick and Morty and Solar Opposites’ Mike McMahan—will conclude with season five, set to begin streaming on Paramount+ this fall.

“We remain hopeful that even beyond Season 5, Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford and the whole Cerritos crew will live on with new adventures,” a shared statement from McMahan and Trek architect Alex Kurtzman read. “While five seasons of any series these days seems like a miracle, it’s no exaggeration to say that every second we’ve spent making this show has been a dream come true.”

Lower Decks was the first animated Star Trek series since the short-lived 1973 animated continuation of the original show, and the first aimed at an adult audience. Its sense of humor and love of the sort of deeply silly and deeply nerdy questions Star Trek fans have always asked about life aboard a Starfleet vessel, from the perspective not of senior officers, but a group of affably goofy ensigns, quickly overcome a great deal of skepticism to become one of the shining pillars of Star Trek’s current streaming age. Season four concluded on a high note, as our heroes—Boimler, Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford—all found themselves on promoted paths and ready to find new purposes in their places on or off the USS Cerritos.

Hopefully, even after season five concludes, we’ll get to see where those paths take them some day.

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