It’s as messy as it sounds. In fact, the overarching plot of Picard doesn’t always make a ton of sense. Over the course of the season, it’s far too easy to lose the thread of the Romulan story – who was chasing and/or betraying whom, which side Soji’s dirtbag ex-boyfriend Narek was on at any given moment, whether she was truly destined to become an apocalyptic destroyer of worlds or precisely who was trying to kill or kidnap her during any particular episode.
Thankfully, Picard is really a story about its characters, so you don’t need to feel that bad about not caring about the complicated hierarchy of the Romulan empire. Because what we’re watching isn’t ultimately a story about Romulans, or even synthetics. (Even though perhaps we should spend a bit more time on the idea that Picard himself isn’t exactly human anymore by season’s end, just saying.) What we’re actually witnessing is the formation of a family, assembled piecemeal from a group of people that find in one another something to believe in.
“That’s the whole point. That’s why we’re here: to save each other,” Picard tells Soji while he’s begging her not to summon a raft of vicious space snakes and destroy a big chunk (or possibly all?) of humanity.
This is a philosophy that Picard embraces on both a macro and micro level. Every member of the La Sirena is, in some way, fighting a complicated and uphill emotional battle, often involving dark histories. Agnes must reckon with the fact that she killed a man she once purported to love. Seven of Nine repeatedly confronts her Borg past this season – even going so far as to reconnect to the collective in order to help rescue a boy and a people she barely knows. Raffi begins the slow climb out of addiction and back to herself, while Rios finally starts to process his grief and anger over his former Starfleet captain who killed himself. And Soji, of course, discovers that everything she’s known about her life is a lie.
Picard’s final, moving speech to Soji is not just a great character moment for them both, but a reminder of what we owe to one another, in a larger sense. Soji’s choice is a powerful one – to trust that humanity has more good days than bad ones, and that, together, we can help lift one another up. And each member of the La Sirena makes an equally powerful – if quieter – choice. Together, they can help each other be better than they were before
In the end, each of these characters choose one another. The final shot of the finale is of our ramshackle new crew, sporting Starfleet insignia and taking up their positions in a world they’ve made for themselves out of pieces that really shouldn’t fit together at all, but do. What will their story look like in Season 2, now that they’re firmly a family? It’s difficult to say just yet, but this little starship family looks vastly different from every version that’s come before. It seems safe to say their journey will too.
