Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Finds A Sneaky Way To Bring The Romulans Back

Spoilers for the latest episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" to follow.

If you thought "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 3 got its silliness out of its system with "Wedding Bell Blues," think again. 

One of the best received episodes of "Strange New Worlds" season 2 was "Charades," in which Spock (Ethan Peck) is temporarily turned into a full human. So, the latest episode flips that premise and turns half of the human main characters into Vulcans. "Charades" and "Wedding Bell Blues" director Jordan Canning even sits back in the chair to helm "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans." 

In this episode, the Enterprise has to visit the planet Tezaar to fix a failing power supply. The only problem? The Tezaarians are a pre-warp people who haven't made contact with the Federation, so under the Prime Directive, Starfleet is barred from helping. But there's a loophole here. The Tezaarians had made contact with the Vulcans, and only the Vulcans, before the founding of the Federation. (The Vulcans gave them the power supply in the first place.) So, a Vulcan team can go on the planet without breaking the Prime Directive of noninterference. Spock is apparently the only Vulcan on the Enterprise, and fixing the power supply is a five Vulcan job.

However, Pike (Anson Mount), Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), Chapel (Jess Bush), and La'an (Christina Chong) can't just disguise themselves as Vulcans because the Tezaarians (somehow) have advanced scanning technology. Instead, they have to become Vulcans by taking the serum that turned human Spock back to his normal self in "Charades."

The set-up is painfully contrived, but it's a tad easier to swallow since this is a comedy episode. The now-Vulcan Enterprise team fixes the problem on Tezaar in about 10 seconds before beaming back to the ship. But the serum doesn't reverse the effects, and soon, they decide they're going to stay as Vulcans.

Vulcans can be prejudiced and elitist because they think their logical ways make them superior to more emotional races like humans. During Spock's childhood on Vulcan, he was bullied for being half-human. His now Vulcan friends repeat that, constantly reminding Spock that they're (genetically) more Vulcan than he is.

The rest of the Enterprise crew refuses to accept this decision, because their now Vulcan shipmates are all huge a-holes. One of them even becomes outright dangerous. La'an, as the ship's security officer and survivor of childhood trauma, is closed-off and paranoid. She keeps those traits after her transformation, so she's less a logical Vulcan and more of a devious Romulan.

Romulans are some of the oldest "Star Trek" villains, debuting back in the "Original Series" episode "Balance of Terror." They're an ancient offshoot of the Vulcans; the Romulans' ancestors refused to embrace the logical teachings of Surak and left Vulcan, settling on twin worlds now called Romulus and Remus. Romulans are duplicitous, arrogant, manipulative, and bellicose (because they assume everyone else thinks like them).

"Balance of Terror" established that, in the 22nd century, Earth fought a war with the Romulan Star Empire. (This conflict has retroactively become the event that brought the Federation together.) But it also revealed that humans never actually saw the Romulans face to face during the war and that the Romulans have been in isolation since the war ended.

That leaves "Strange New Worlds" having to jump through loopholes to include any Romulan villains. In the season 1 finale "A Quality of Mercy," Pike time travels to the events of "Balance of Terror." In season 2, episode 3, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," La'an and Jim Kirk (Paul Wesley) were sent back in time to 21st century Earth; it turned out to be the work of a Romulan agent, Sera (Adelaide Kane), trying to alter human history.

Now, in "Four-and-a-Half Vulcans," La'an herself becomes the episode's Romulan villain. Whereas Pike, Uhura, and Chapel all affect a monotone as Vulcans, La'an wears a smirk and speaks with a timbre of barely-contained evil glee, just like any proud Romulan would. Roping in Kirk and Scotty (Martin Quinn), she decides she's going to prepare the Enterprise for war.

The Vulcan Pike senses La'an isn't behaving very Vulcan-like; unlike the rest of the crew, he knows a Romulan when he sees one. However, neither Pike nor La'an are permitted to discuss their time travel missions. When they simultaneously blurt out "Romulans," they agree that the logical decision is to not speak any further.

La'an differs from the usual Romulan in one way, because she's technically still on the side of the Federation. That said, her new Romulan persona amps up her paranoia, and she now sees the galaxy not as something to explore but to conquer. As she puts it:

"There is so much uncontested space out there. Space that is ... wasted. Space that is merely there for the taking ... if we do not take [that space], who else will? Someone we might have to destroy, if it came to it."

La'an's plan is to create chaos among the other Alpha/Beta Quadrant superpowers, and then, when they destroy each other, the Federation can swoop in and take everything that's left. "First, we're going to reach out to the Klingons and convince them the Orions are plotting to invade," she explains. "Then we tell the Orions the Tholians are behind the plot, but we tell the Tholians the real puppet masters are the Gorn Hegemony."

When Kirk says they shouldn't do that, La'an decks him. Scotty trying to remind La'an of how noble she is only earns him her contempt, so he tricks La'an into electrically shocking herself out.

After a mind meld with Spock, La'an rediscovers her human side and agrees to change back. La'an and Spock may be trying to keep their new romance casual, but Spock was integral to helping La'an unlock her true self. That true self is, as Spock observes, "Aggressive, paranoid, suspicion, [and] arrogant." La'an is a descendant of human augments, so becoming a Vulcan affected her differently than the others. As the "Star Trek" franchise has demonstrated in the past with La'an's ancestor Khan, superior ability breeds superior ambition. 

Vulcans and Romulans don't just share pointed ears and common history, they also both see themselves as a superior race — but only the Romulans are out to enforce their supposed superiority.

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" is streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes premiering on Thursdays.