Star Trek: Picard Prequel Is Starting A Brand-New Era

Star Trek: Picard Prequel Announced, Shadow Frontier Image via MovieStillsDB Published Sep 17, 2026, 5:01 PM EDT Nicholas Becher is a gaming journalist with an MFA in Creative Writing from FAU. With extensive experience playing video games, he covers all forms of gaming content at Screen Rant, from breaking news to the latest fan theories. Most-played games range from Clair Obscur to Civ to Elden Ring to Halo 2 and beyond. Star Trek: Picard is hands-down one of the best modern series released for the franchise in years, giving Patrick Stewart the chance to revisit Jean-Luc Picard while also diving deeper into the character beyond his legendary days aboard the Enterprise. The series explored an older, more vulnerable Picard confronting the consequences of decisions made decades earlier, and went far beyond just tapping into nostalgia. While its first two seasons proved more divisive, Season 3 became a major celebration of Star Trek: The Next Generation, reuniting Picard with Riker, Data, Worf, Beverly Crusher, Geordi La Forge, and Deanna Troi for one final adventure. That reunion, combined with the return of the USS Enterprise-D and a story deeply tied to Star Trek's legacy, helped make the final season especially popular with longtime fans. More importantly, Picard delivered a finale that felt genuinely satisfying, giving its beloved crew a warm, hopeful farewell while leaving the door open for the next generation. However, as one door closes in the universe, another opens, with Picard getting an official prequel that will take fans on an entirely new journey in 2027. Star Trek: Picard Prequel Officially Arrives In 2027 Star Trek: Shadow Frontier has a particularly interesting connection to Star Trek: Picard, as the upcoming 2027 game has the opportunity to explore one of the biggest missing chapters in Ro Laren's life. Picard Season 3 revealed that Ro had somehow found her way back to Starfleet following her betrayal of Jean-Luc Picard and defection to the Maquis in The Next Generation. By 2401, she had risen to commander within Starfleet Intelligence and was even secretly serving as Worf's handler, leaving decades of her story largely unexplored. Shadow Frontier puts Ro herself at the center of that story, with Michelle Forbes reprising her iconic role. After answering a distress call, Ro crash-lands on an uncharted planet that has effectively become a graveyard for lost starships. She is attempting to rescue an unnamed old friend, but the mission quickly takes a turn as a planet-wide consciousness begins invading her mind, distorting her memories, and forcing her to confront her past. Ro will encounter other survivors while exploring the hostile world, although no additional major characters have officially been revealed just yet. Bloober Team is building the story around Ro's regrets and the consequences of her previous choices, potentially providing important context for the older, more seasoned officer who eventually reunites with Picard. The game goes well beyond simply bringing back a familiar face, and can help bridge the enormous gap between the rebellious Ro of The Next Generation and the Starfleet Intelligence commander audiences eventually meet in Picard. Star Trek: Shadow Frontier Marks The Start Of A New Era Star Trek: Shadow Frontier certainly feels like a bold new direction for the franchise, both in terms of what a Star Trek game can be and the period of history it explores. Bloober Team is approaching the universe as a psychological thriller with clear survival-horror influences, putting Ro Laren on a hostile planet filled with twisted creatures and a mysterious entity capable of attacking both her body and mind. It is an unusually dark setup for Star Trek, allowing the franchise to embrace more mature themes and tap into horror elements that are sure to terrify players, but without abandoning its science-fiction roots. The story itself also pushes into unexplored territory by focusing on Ro and the missing period between the character audiences knew in The Next Generation and her eventual return in Picard. Shadow Frontier can expand an era of Star Trek history that has largely existed off-screen, using that gap to take both Ro and the franchise somewhere genuinely unfamiliar. Star Trek: Shadow Frontier will release sometime in 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version also seemingly possible based on Bloober Team's future roadmap. Star Trek: Picard 6/10 Release Date 2020 - 2023-00-00 Network CBS All Access, Paramount+ Showrunner Michael Chabon