Alright. So to start this off…

SPOILERS LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER FOR SEASON 3 OF STRANGE NEW WORLDS

Alrighty.

So the most recent episode of Strange New Worlds was a phenomenal episode but a dozen things started racking themselves into place the morning after watching the episode. All things that are pretty fucking concerning however it also demonstrates some truly incredible writing. People keep saying they love SNW because it’s very episodic but this whole season has been remarkably serialized. Every episode has been a clue so far. Every fucking episode.

Episode 1

We pick back up after the end of last season. The predominate running theme is that Captain Batel is infected with the Gorn and a fix needs to be found however nothing is working. Eventually they find a temporary fix but it is temporary. However, what is the fix? A combination of Illyrian Blood, blood that is wildly genetically engineered, and stabilizing the Gorn inside of her so they can find some other fix later. At the same time, they also use a type of Gorn cloaking gadget from Scotty (yay) to sneak through the Gorn front lines. They know Gorn communicate through light but they also eventually clue into the fact that Solar Flare activity can either put them into a state of higher hostility or into, effectively, hibernation. The ship more or less creates a giant Solar Flare by drawing in light from the two surrounding stars. A weird warp effect is also seen during this episode when Pike talks at one point and that’s been bugging me the whole time.

Episode 2

Everyone talked about the fact that Trelane is now confirmed to be Q but a lesser line that people haven’t freaked out over as much is said very, very quickly at the end. At the start of the episode, Chapel tells a story about how she and Korby had a very romantic experience while on an expedition on the planet Vadia 9. Said to be the last expedition that they were on. Mount Caleb and all that is on that planet. At the very end of the episode when Trelane is revealed to be a Q, Spock pushes him and questions why he did this to Korby. Trelane says he’s handsome and perfect, joking around, but also throws in a line saying “I caught him digging in the dirt *in the old Homeworld.” Spoken by a Q themself, we now have a confirmed Homeworld for the Ancient Q.

Episode 3

Batel is getting worse. Spock and Chapel realize the best option is to utilize a ‘Chimera Plant’ that is capable of moving molecules through cell membranes and genetically modify Batel, or Bio-engineer Batel, so that she is part Gorn. In doing so they have to go to a planet with, for lack of a better word, zombies. Creatures that are both alive and dead at the same time. The flower is retrieved and Batel is saved by doing what they promise. Making her Part-Gorn. Also during this episode, Spock mindmelds with Captain Batel to help her control the pain of the Gorn but something sort of reverses. Spock gets kind of infected, a second mind inside of his own that instantly sends him into a rage and takes a moment to snap out of it. He and Batel talk about it and say like it was another presence he felt.

Episode 4

The Hologram Episode that pissed me off to no fucking end. I barely paid attention to it and am going to have to rewatch it. However, we had two big themes in this episode. First was a body inhabited by not a native personality. They were digital characters, but La’an kept finding it amusing how it was faces she knew but with a totally different personality. The second was that they’re holograms. A good portion of the interface is just photons that are being arranged by a holographic emitter. They’re photonic beings.

And then we get to Episode 5 where a thousand things hit me like a fucking truck.

First off, Korby is back. After their expedition to Vadia 9, he and Chapel kept finding writing on other planets that correlated to Vadia 9 and a magnetic anomaly there. Writing either in ‘Praetorian’ or ‘Ancient M’Kroonian’ or a language on Polaris 12 that shared the same alphabet as those languages, suggesting some spacefaring race connected all of them in some fashion far in the past. All of it tying in with ancient beliefs revolving around reincarnation or immortality. Likely achieved using Quantum Instability or being two things at the same time. So, the characters return (while we viewers see for the first time) the Homeworld of the Ancient Q Race. At this point in time, the planet is uninhabited but under the control of the M’kroon, a species with a unique vocal range that seems to have two voices layered atop one another. After discovering an ancient complex, looking almost like a temple, they enter only to have things go terribly wrong.

First, the dude I was so sad to see die. Ensign Gamble picks up a device that suddenly glows looking like it contains a small Sun. It erupts and, as we learn later, kills Ensign Gamble pretty quickly. However some foreign intelligence takes over the body, later named as ‘The Vezda’. Things deteriorate rapidly with this foreign intelligence either incapable of adequately pretending to be Gamble or not caring. This creature only ever demonstrates knowledge that Gamble himself would have with the exception of two things. More on that later. Either way, both the capsule that the Vezda erupted from as well as the Vezda itself instigated a genetic response inside of two crewmembers. Pelia, a Lathanite, said she couldn’t explain it but the capsule gave her the ‘heebie jeebies’. Said it was ancient. Considering her race is long lived to fuck, that’s something to pay attention to. Humans didn’t have a reaction but they did, a species that was older than humans with a life span of "Nearly Forever. Then you had Batel who had the Gorn inside of her react violently. The Vezda seemed to instantly recognize what she was, or at least what was in her, responding in its native tongue or perhaps a Gorn tongue. Batel then speaks in a voice that uses the exact same effect the M’Kroon voice has before a violent attack occurs with her demonstrating superhuman strength. Batel later described the feeling she was taken over by as a desperate need to exterminate what she was seeing. Gamble-Vezda, or Gazda at this point because fuck it, is imprisoned but is able to break out by sweet-talking a guard (more on that later). He corners Pelia and openly calls her “Lanthanite Child”, freaking Pelia out even more. When he’s eventually taken down, we see a sort of Photonic being start to eject itself from Gamble’s body only to be contained either in the fixed orb it originally was in or a newly built one by Scotty. He then stores it in the transporter buffer (Been annoying the fuck out of me how they’re misusing the transporter buffer in this series) and they go on their merry way. However we do see M’Benga checking up on the digital status of this Vezda on a screen that the text changes on, text mirroring that found on Vadia 9.

But on the planet, things aren’t much better. They spot a crystal statue (that they call a ‘Beholder’) in another room that causes the M’kroon with them to scream “Evil” and “We’re all going to die” and run out of the room as fast as he can, triggering a security protocol that kills anything that leaves that isn’t actively brought in by a chosen. The text outside the facility reads “The path to absolution with blood given freely.” The instant assumption made is that this was referring to the blood sacrifice required to enter however the sacrifice was really minor. A pin prick. They enter, the M’kroon trips the security protocol, and suddenly quantum instability kicks up in every fucking way. The crew are split into what seems to be different rooms but are realized to be the same room that are “overlapping” one another. In one of these is that The Beholder which is said to be alive but shows no signs of life otherwise. Why Beholder? So named by Chinese text (inexplicably Chinese text) saying “Here stands The Beholder, sentry of eternal bridges.” It’s alive and dead. Here and not. Spock and Korby on the other hand, get into a debate over not just immortality but a way to make sure your consciousness doesn’t cease. Like the physical body may die but reincarnation of some variety where you retain yourself. This continues until Korby realizes that the text on a tablet says “Parasite // Hitchikers”, “Well // Pit” and then the word Vezda. The M’kroon for Evil but on the plaque it’s used as a singular, like it’s the name of a being. Spock then yoinks a visor off of an ancient dead being and looks through. In the central area, now visible, is a deep pit (or well) with countless glowing orbs like the one that killed Gamble. As many as there are stars in the sky. One floats up to him that he inspects. As it gets closer, a Gorns face suddenly jumpscares Spock from inside of the orb. Not too dissimilar from the Gorn jumpscare we saw during the mindmeld. Either way, they realize more and more stuff happening in this area is tied to Quantum Instability or Temporal Causality and all seem specifically designed to impede any sort of escape. Things click for them and they finally say the word. Prison. “Path to absolution by blood given freely” was referencing the letting the creatures out by someone who took responsibility via the blood sacrifice, not by gaining immortality. But they also theorize that granting immortality to themselves may have had an alternative effect and it pulled something in from somewhere else. Nonetheless, the very last task required to escape is to walk across a bridge that’s not there yet so you can turn it on to be able to walk across it. A paradoxical loop. They escape and all is well (other than a dead Gamble) but during the debrief something is said. “Evil and good are relative terms son…” followed by Pelia immediately cutting Pike off and saying “There is evil and good in this universe. As sure as there is matter, as sure as there is light. I know that being was ancient. Malevolent. The desire to malign, to pervert and consume given corporeal form. If any of those things ever escape that well down there… God help us all… You want one for the camera?”

But what about that “We’ll talk about it later?”

Gamble had two moments of demonstrating information he shouldn’t have had. The first time is far more dramatic and revealing so I’ll jump to the second here. While imprisoned, he’s able to talk to a Guard and claims that something is hurting the guards mother, named Jara. Gamble then says she wants to tell him what is hurting her before reaching through a forcefield like it isn’t there and choking the shit out of him. The first time was when he was talking to M’Benga and dropped a name I never expected to hear again, nevermind here. Rukiya. M’Benga’s daughter. During an episode long ago, a non-corporeal form inside of a nebula went fucky wucky and caused essentially a reality re-write to an extent turning everything into a fairy tale. At the very end, Rukiya leaves to go be with the Star, said Star convincing M’Benga that his daughter would never be alone, always have stories and happiness and never die. But why did this thing go fucky wucky? Because it thought Rukiya was imprisoned. It felt some natural kinship with her and wanted to rescue her from being lonely. The theory in the episode was a Boltzman Brain that was inside of a nebula. And while Nebulae can created in a variety of ways, one such way is a star that has long since exploded.

At any rate, Gamble taunts M’benga pretty aggressively.

Gamble: Rukiya… what a beautiful name. It’s a shame you had to let her go. M’Benga: I never told you about Rukiya.
Gamble: Hm, you’re right. My mistake. Do you think that woman who came to you was really your daughter? Or do you think it was something wearing her skin? Something that drank her tears and fed off her screams?

Nonetheless, every episode has led into the next almost perfectly and culminated in Episode 5. The bioengineering, the dead/alive, the non-native personality, the Q…

The Not Totally Insane Theory

I think the Ancient Q imprisoned the Vezda from wherever they might have come from in this place. They seeded various worlds with the information about this place and embedded it into their culture as a way of warning against this for the future. The same way we’re trying to figure out how to future proof nuclear waste sites. But they weren’t able to imprison these things until after great conflict with these beings. During said conflict they needed warriors so they started to genetically engineer creatures. The Lanthanites were designed to live an extremely long time so they wouldn’t die to be taken over by the Vezda. The Gorn were designed to hunt out photonic beings. Overtime both started to evolve on their own. Not sure what happened to the Lanthanites in the meantime but the Gorn evolved to become more linked with solar flares due to their sensitivity to hunting those light beings. They won and imprisoned these beings.

The Slightly More Insane Theory

The Ancient Q were corporeal before rising to a non-corporeal form, similar to these things. What if they created the Vezda? Either intentionally or accidentally? What if in their experiment to raise themselves, things went wrong and they instead opened a doorway to some other dimension or damned souls from another planet into these hellish creatures?

The very insane theory

What if the Ancient Q were alone? They raised themselves, evolved like we humans do and then eventually realized that there’s a sort of Great Barrier. Some sort of problem. Life should be everywhere but it isn’t. So they start exploring and either start dying or start getting back concerning readings. Every star they encounter is infested with a parasite. A parasite that leaches out the organic life from everything in the area, consuming everything. Maybe it straight up is just eating organic life or maybe it allows organic life to develop to a certain point before throwing it into an endless nightmare where it feeds off of the pain, agony, and damnation of the spirit. A world just like our Earth but one where you can never escape, where things will never get better. The telepathic abilities of this creature being immense, it’s able to effectively create whatever world it wants to fit that need. The Q are naturally horrified and they devise a plan to wipe them all out in the Galaxy. They blast them into a non-corporeal state, separating them from their host star and allowing the life on those planets to evolve on their own but maybe something goes wrong. The Q are left in a situation where they either go to war with these beings (as stated above) or have already effectively won with this single act that decimated the galaxy. So, they create a technology that allows them to seed planets with life. However they’ve also discovered something else… in making these things non-corporeal, they can do it to themselves as well. So they use this technology to one race. The Progenitors. These people then realize how alone they are and go onto create other races, but with temporal causality being fucked with by the Q, they sort of “have” to make specific species. First is the Lanthanites to not die and not be infested by these Vezda (as they discover they have the ability to do so after becoming noncorporeal) so that something can always stand a chance to fight back. The second is the Gorn to hunt them down if any are ever found. The third are the humans (made in the image of the Ancient Q) who are to represent who the Q are. This can also explain why our Q takes such an insane interest in humanity. He’s an ancient archeologist. They lock away the Vezda and knowing that things would be found in the future (perhaps due to temporal causality they cannot prevent) they hide these things on various planets. Also knowing a human will find it, they put Chinese on the screen as by that point in time Chinese will be the most populous language on the planet. That then forces Humanity, through temporal causality, to have a ton of Chinese people so that language ends up being the most populous language on earth. All to prepare for the Vezda returning which would have to happen because Paradox. But one was still trapped inside of a star that was going supernova. It exploded into a nebula and, many many years later, took a child named Rukiya to fight off it’s never ending starvation.

The even more insane theory

Balance is required in all things. If Q were elevated to Gods… who are the devils? Did they pull them in from some other plane? Or just awaken them?