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Star Trek: Prodigy Showrunners Discuss Wil Wheaton Joining Season 2

Star Trek: Prodigy creators/showrunners Dan & Kevin Hageman on why Wil Wheaton jumped at the chance to reprise Wesley Crusher for the series.

Since the return of Star Trek to television as the flagship franchise for Paramount+, Wil Wheaton's been more than happy being its brand ambassador and hosting the franchise's aftershow, The Ready Room, on the streamer's YouTube channel. While taking the occasional role, the actor scaled back on his projects, embracing more opportunities to host. Unfortunately, his last few live-action outings have only been cameos with his final two appearances. In The Next Generation-centric 2002 film Nemesis, he reprised his role as Wesley Crusher for Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Troi's (Marina Sirtis) wedding on the Enterprise-E with no explanation of how it affects his duties as a traveler. His other live-action appearance was another cameo in the live-action spinoff Picard, which saw Wesley recruit Kore Soong (Isa Briones) to become a traveler at the season two finale and not participate in the TNG cast reunion for season three. His last couple of outings as Wesley were more meaningful on the animated series Lower Decks and, more recently, Prodigy.

Star Trek: Prodigy Creators Dan & Kevin Hageman on Wil Wheaton's Return as Wesley

Season two of Star Trek: Prodigy saw Wheaton's Wesley acting as a gatekeeper for time and space trying to protect the timeline from The Loom, transdimensional beasts that use their tentacles to phase their victims out of existence, so no one retains their memory of the victim upon death. On top of trying to escape from The Loom, the young Starfleet cadets also try to locate Captain Chakotay (Robert Beltran) with the help of Vice Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) while trying to keep the Vau N'Akat Vindicator (Jamil Jameela) from threatening the Federation. Wheaton's role was a primary driving force for season two.

"He was thrilled. He has a lot of strong feelings [about Prodigy] because he was a child actor and [being part] of a show that kids can watch," Dan Hageman told Cinemablend on Wheaton's motivation for embracing his opportunity. "His nieces and nephews are huge fans, and he would watch it with them, and he loved watching it with them. When he found out he was going to be in it, he was like, 'I'm not going to tell them.'…they're going to watch the show, and he's going to be sitting there beside them like, 'Yep. I'm in it.' That just tickled us to no end." "Thankfully, Wil loved that we brought this back — he agreed Wesley finally grew into the 'awful pumpkin sweater,' and it somehow went all the way around the bend to being cool where no knitwear has ever gone before. #StarTrekProdigy #ProdigySpoilers," writer Aaron J. Waltke wrote on social media referencing the season one TNG episode "Where No One Has Gone Before."

On Lower Decks, Wheaton reprised Wesley on the season four flashback-driven episode "Old Friends, New Planets," which revisits the events of the season five TNG episode "The First Duty," taking place before the infamous Nova Squadron flight accident that claimed one of their own. The tense episode featured Wheaton participating in a conspiracy at Starfleet Academy finding the younger Crusher at odds with his former captain, Jean Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart). Also returning for the Lower Decks episode was Robert Duncan McNeill, reprising his pre-Tom Paris-Voyager role of Nick Locarno, the leader of Nova Squadron from the TNG episode-turned-season four villain of the animated series, and Shannon Fill, who returned from acting retirement to reprise Sito Jaxa. As a point of exposition, it's revealed the U.S.S. Cerritos' Mariner (Tawny Newsome) has a past with Nova Squadron, which partially explains her perpetual stagnant standing as an ensign at Starfleet.

Both seasons of Star Trek: Prodigy, which also stars Brett Gray, Ella Purnell, Rylee Alazraqui, Dee Bradley Baker, Angus Imrie, Jason Mantzoukas, John Noble, Daveed Diggs, Jason Alexander, Robert Picardo, and Jimmi Simpson is available to stream on Netflix.

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