Star Trek: Discovery’s Jason Isaacs Reveals What It Would Take For Him To Return

The first season of Star Trek: Discovery is far from perfect, as the show hit some speed bumps along the road to figuring itself out, but one element of it that fans uniformly rate highly was Jason Isaacs’ performance as Captain Gabriel Lorca. Folks loved his much darker take on a Starfleet captain, and while the Mirror Universe Lorca was killed off, we’re still yet to meet his Prime Universe counterpart.

There’s been a lot of talk about the Harry Potter star possibly returning to the Trek franchise as Lorca over the years, then, and in a new interview Isaacs has explained what it would take for him to agree to don the uniform once again. The British actor told ComicBook.com that, even though he had such a great time on Discovery, he wouldn’t just return for that reason and would have to be won over with the promise of a strong storyline to explore.

“I don’t want to just be in things because other people want to see them,” he explained. “I want to be able to play something. So, in all the things you’ve mentioned, I felt like I had something great to play. And, for instance, there’s a clamor often for me to go back to Star Trek. Had a fantastic time on Star Trek, I loved all the people, I love being part of that universe, and Prime Lorca, the Prime Universe version of my captain, has yet to be found. But I wouldn’t go back just to be in it, I’d go back if you had a great story to tell.”

Given that Discovery now takes place in the far future, more from Lorca on that series seems unlikely. However, fans have theorized that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds could be the perfect place to bring him back. Spinning off from DIS season 2, SNW follows the pre-Kirk voyages of the Enterprise, with Anson Mount’s Christopher Pike in the captain’s chair and Ethan Peck’s Spock and Rebecca Romijn’s Number One beside him.

With this show rooted in the correct era, this makes it the most logical outlet for Lorca’s return, though clearly Isaacs wouldn’t be satisfied with a mere guest spot or cameo and would no doubt need a meaty recurring or regular role to be coaxed back. By the sounds of it, however, Isaacs has yet to be approached by anyone over in the Trek camp so maybe we shouldn’t expect him to feature in Strange New Worlds‘ first season, coming sometime later this year.

The same goes for Star Trek: Discovery season 4, which is confirmed for the final quarter of 2021.