Strange New Worlds is quietly moving on from Pike, and it fixes his oldest problem

Let’s be honest, calling Anson Mount’s Captain Christopher Pike the main character of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a stretch these days. The whole series kicked off with Pike wallowing in existential misery over a fate we already know (if you’ve seen The Original Series, you know exactly what I mean). That looming doom has hung about like a bad smell since day one, with the series regularly dragging Pike’s personal crisis back into the spotlight. But have you noticed? Strange New Worlds season 4 has been quietly pivoting away from all that Pike angst.

Yes, it still bills itself as a proper ensemble, but there’s no denying — it’s Christina Chong’s Lt. La’An Noonien-Singh stealing more of the show’s focus lately. If it’s not an episode all about her genetically-engineered complications, it’s still her dilemmas keeping everything simmering in the background. Frankly, this works better than most of Pike’s moody head-scratching, and there’s a clear reason for it.

Season 5 will introduce Kai Murakami as the new Sulu, joining the cast as the series lines up its timeline with The Original Series.

Pike’s Plot Armour vs. La’An’s Knife-Edge

Here’s where it gets interesting. Since Strange New Worlds is set before the events of The Original Series, the vast majority of its main cast are untouchable. Seriously — no matter how much anybody moans about timeline continuity, this is still the Prime Universe, and you just can’t off someone like Spock (Ethan Peck) or Captain Pike without blowing up decades of Star Trek storytelling.

But then you’ve got La’An Noonien-Singh. She’s only been about since Strange New Worlds launched, and while the writers have threaded her Khan heritage neatly into old-school canon, La’An herself is a blank space after this show. What happens to her before Kirk’s era? Death? Transfer to a different ship? She just walks off and finds a new life far, far away from Starfleet drama? We’ve no clue yet — and honestly, her lack of plot immunity makes her story infinitely more compelling than Pike’s “guy who awaits the inevitable” act.

Who’s Safe and Who’s Suspiciously Dispensable

We know certain faces — Spock, Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and Scotty (Martin Quinn) — are guaranteed to make it through to Kirk’s day. Canon headaches have cropped up, sure, but the show’s hands are pretty tied where the classics are concerned. Characters who were bit-players way back, like Nurse Chapel (Jess Bush) and Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), get some extra breathing room as they weren’t major parts of the original run. But again: if they were in the original, they’re not getting spaced any time soon.

That leaves the real wild cards: Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia), and Commander Pelia (Carol Kane). Una is technically an Original Series character, but in the “not really” sort of way — she appeared only via old pilot footage, dubbed in as a flashback and never showed up in actual storylines, so Strange New Worlds finally has a chance to explain what happened there. As for Pelia and Ortegas, they’re new crew. Pelia, being a long-living Lanthanite, could theoretically be off doing her own thing during Kirk’s heyday — probably lecturing at Starfleet Academy and correcting everyone’s grammar — though she’s not immortal if someone’s catastrophic enough to take her out. Ortegas, on the other hand, is painted as the diehard pilot who’ll fly until the wheels (or nacelles) fall off. Still, if she’s so indispensable, why isn’t she manning the helm for Kirk and Sulu?

• La’An, Ortegas, and Pelia are all new creations for Strange New Worlds — making them much more killable than Pike, Spock, or Uhura.

Remember what happened to Hemmer (Bruce Horak)? They axed a main character in the very first season, so nothing’s off the table. I’ve got this theory — hardly revolutionary, but hear me out — that Ortegas will end up on the wrong side of Starfleet protocol and be reassigned, opening the door for the already-announced Kai Murakami as Sulu in season 5. There's also a less cheerful option: she doesn’t survive the show at all. They’ve spent a suspicious amount of time pairing her up with Scotty — which, if you’re a TV cynic like me, feels like laying the foundations for maximum emotional fallout when one of them gets the chop. It would let Navia’s Ortegas exit with a bang, and give Scotty a retroactive reason for some well-hidden tragic backstory when Kirk takes over the bridge.