Warning: This post contains spoilers for Thursday’s end of the season Star Trek: Discovery.

Star Trek: Discovery His third season capped off a well-deserved promotion in the ranking. Thursday’s final saw Burnham top Discovery Her crew is in a fierce battle to retrieve the ship from the evil Osira and save the Federation – and she was eventually rewarded by its name DiscoveryThe new captain. You will drive now Discovery Because it ships much-needed delithium to distant planets, now that the burning mystery is solved. (Read the full summary Here.)

So what’s next for Burnham’s program Discovery? (CBS All Access Renewed Discovery For season four again in October.) TVLine spoke with Discovery Michelle Paradise, model and co-executive producer (who wrote the epilogue) about Burnham’s big promotion, and we also asked her some disturbing questions as well. Will Stamets’ grudge against Burnham continue? And Saroo is still a member of Discovery Crew, because he was conspicuously absent at the finale? (Plus, we had to ask for Cat’s grudgeRead on for answers, Trekkies guys.

TVLINE | The season ends with Michael in the captain’s chair, which has been coming a long time ago. We always knew she was going to get there, but why is it the right time for her to pilot this ship?
I felt it was the right time to do so. It felt like we took her on this incredible journey over the course of three seasons, and we knew at the start of Season Three that this was where we wanted it to end. It’s something I think people have been expecting since the show started, and so when we started Season 3, the conversations that we had were: Well, if that’s where we want her to go, how far can we take her away from that at the top of the season, So she has the most satisfying arc of Season 3, but that also pays off from the journey she went through over the course of Season 1 and 2? So it gave her the opportunity to enter this new future and stay here for a year without the rest of our heroes DiscoveryAnd, letting it grow and change during that time and back and figure out where it fit in, it felt like the right kind of journey for the character. It also allowed us, over the course of Season Three, to create new layers for that character, and of course, new layers for our amazing actress to play with.

TVLINE | So under Captain Burnham, he was Discovery It is now tasked with delivering delithium to distant planets. Is this the model for the fourth season?
I can’t talk about Season 4 specifically, but objectively, Season 3 was all about connection, breaking up, and finding a way back for each other. Cremation made this impossible in many cases, because civilization simply did not have the means to reach each other. So it felt like an important journey beginning at the end of our season: How do we move forward in the process of reconnecting worlds together? This seemed to be an important first step. Now that they have a cache of Delitium, they will definitely have to be responsible for not repeating the mistakes of the past and overusing them, but it looks like the place to end the season and throw out whatever is coming.

TVLINE | You ended the episode with a quote from Gene Roddenberry and Old School Star Trek Theme of music. This was a way to tie the ending back to those Journey the roots?
Yes, in everything we do, we always think about the origin Journey The Roots, what Gene Roddenberry started, and what originally created it Journey Series … it’s hard to overestimate how pioneering it was at the time. And of course, it still affects all Journey Series since then. The quote in particular, was something that came up later in the editing process. Given what is happening in the world today, I felt this would be an appropriate message to end our season, especially the next one.

TVLINE | She didn’t even know how that would be appropriate this week.
I know! This whole season really resonated in a way that we clearly never expected. When we were writing all of this, there was a lot of dichotomy and disconnection, but we didn’t expect the pandemic to come. Until that happens at this time, when we were objectively addressing some of the things that we were testing at the time, but we’re testing them more intensely now … I think that goes back to some of the roots of the original series and what he did by looking at what was happening in society and using science fiction. As a way to express some of that, talk to him, comment on it and say, “The challenges we face, we can overcome them. They don’t have to be as divisive as they are.” It certainly echoes today.

TVLINE | Everything was smiling at the end, but I noticed Stamets ignore Michael a little bit. It appears he still holds a grudge against her for putting Hugh at risk. How dangerous is this rift?
I think that’s something they’ll get over in time. It was a very emotional and very personal thing for Stamets: “Wait a minute, we’re going to pause going back for them? We can’t do that!” Burnham, of course, absolutely loves Culber, Adira, and Sarrow, but he also knew that if they made that choice right now , There will be no union to return to. And for Stamets, that was just a personal need. Thankfully, she and her crew found a way to do both, but he clearly still had some emotional responses to that. But I expect him to get over that.

This was one of those things, by the way, that we wanted to do over the course of Season 3 was to make sure that our characters, whatever their experience, that their emotional responses were grounded and that we didn’t blow up. Past things. So having Stamets having this kind of emotional response at the moment seems realistic. Realism felt like challenging our crew by coming to this new future and landing, which is not what they expect. So we wanted to try to find a way to look at those true emotional responses in the midst of telling science fiction stories.

TVLINE | I didn’t see Saroo on the bridge in the end. Just to confirm: Still part of the crew? Can we count on seeing him in Season 4?
Yes, he will definitely return. The season finale for him was about to return to Kaminar to help Su’Kal, so he wasn’t there at the end, but we didn’t let Doug Jones go anywhere. He definitely got back in business in Season 4.

TVLINE | The book has made a huge impact this season, as has his cat grudge, and it looks like she is part of Discovery Crew to move forward. What has been presented in Burnham as a character this season, and where do these two go from here?
First of all, David [Ajala] Unusual. We were very fortunate to have him join us this season. I think as we entered this season, we knew we wanted to explore different aspects of Burnham. We wanted to give it a chance to grow and change, and to give Sonicwa [Martin-Green] An opportunity to play new things with it. In previous seasons, she had a kind of fraught relationship with Tyler … “fraught” is the kind way of saying it. It was very noisy. We knew this season, when we started talking about the Book, that we wanted him to be someone who could bring out the other aspects of it. The tone of this relationship may sound different and it can feel both fun and light. You haven’t had much fun before. [Laughs] So we wanted to give her that, and see: What brings her out, and how does that change her? I think the relationship between the two, being able to push each other in new ways and help each other grow, was really exciting to find over the course of the season. So I think with Season 4 coming in, they will definitely have new places to go.

Then of course, I mentioned the grudge, which is pretty much anyone’s breakout star Journey Series ever. I think at some point, we just need to name the ship by its name. [Laughs] USS grudge. Spoiler alert, season four: We’re going to change the name Discovery. This was amazing. I love how people respond to that cat! And she is an amazing cat.

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