The Star Trek: Picard season finale has confirmed a same-sex romance for iconic character Seven of Nine, and fans are thrilled.
The show’s season finale dropped the quiet reveal, showing Jeri Ryan’s returning character Seven of Nine – first introduced back in Star Trek: Voyager – holding hands with Raffi, played by Michelle Hurd.
Star Trek: Picard gave characters a cute quiet moment.
Fans were naturally loving the tacit reveal, with one fan asking: “Did… did they? Are we officially getting Seven apart [sic] of the fictional character rainbow flag family?”
Another wrote: “Y’all? I’ma say it. When it comes to representation, Jeri Ryan and Star Trek: Picard did what no other franchise quite could. They got it right.”
Responding on Twitter, Jeri Ryan wrote simply: “🏳️🌈”.
Showrunner Michael Chabon previously spoke about hoping to portray a modern approach to sexual fluidity.
Showrunner says characters would naturally be sexually fluid.
In an interview with Queerty before the latest episode aired, he said: “It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to arrive at a time where it doesn’t even come up anymore and you don’t need to label yourself as anything at all.
“With a character like Raffi, to the extend we imagined her history in a fair amount of detail, her history included all kinds of sexual partners. There’s a father of her child, but that was far from her only sexual or life partner. She’s had relationships with all kind of people. If it was ever to come up, it was always going to be organic.
“Same thing with Seven of Nine, having to catch up after such along absence from the human race. If you think about that, it almost seems unnatural that she wouldn’t have had partners of other genders. It seems clear she would have.
“So even if we didn’t see that on Voyager, years have passed. In that time, she’s continued to explore the spectrum of human relationships in a broader way. So in our show, there are echos and implications of that.”
Chabon told the outlet that he believes “the Star Trek vision of the future, which is rooted in diversity and tolerance and openness and freedom, inevitably that would lead to total freedom to be who you are”.
He said: “One of the things I see looking around at people who are in their teens and 20s, is people exploring their identities and trying to figure out who they are in terms of their gender and sexual identity.”
Evan Evagora, the actor who plays the young Romulan warrior Elnor, has also said he is up for exploring his character’s sexuality.
2017’s Star Trek: Discovery was the first Star Trek show to feature a married same-sex couple in the main cast, with chief scientific officer Paul Stamets and medical officer Hugh Culber played by Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz respectively.