Star Trek: Picard not only brought back Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, but it also further explored her sexuality by confirming that she’s had relationships with women. First of all, we learned that she’d once been lovers with her enemy Bjayzl and then the season 1 finale teased a major new couple on the show, as it saw Seven staying aboard La Sirena and looking very cosy with Raffi Musiker.
This duo came out of left field, but many fans are excited to have a leading LGBTQ relationship on the series moving forward and star Michelle Hurd has now opened up to ScreenRant about where the idea came from to pair the characters together, revealing the unexpected inspiration for the coupling – a photo of the two actresses taken at Comic-Con.
Hurd at first praised the writers for adding in storylines that better reflect the world right now, saying:
“We kind of knew it was coming,” Hurd stated. “Our writers are so phenomenal. The whole world of Star Trek is that all of our writers and producers and everyone involved is receptive to the world, right? To what’s happening in the world, and what’s happening to that, and they put it in the scripts.”
And though Raffi and Seven hadn’t had much interaction in the show prior to that teasing final scene, it was Ryan and Hurd getting friendly at Comic-Con that got the writers thinking.
“And I will say that we were all at a comic con and Jeri [Ryan] and I were just hanging out, and one of our cast members took a picture of us. We were both looking good, whatever, and [the photo] goes back to our producers and writers and literally, you could just see them looking at that picture and they were like [makes whispering sounds]. It just made them go, ‘Wait! This could be a possibility.’ So they sort of floated it to us and we were like, ‘all good!’”
The producers of Star Trek: Voyager back in the day had plans to explore Seven being queer, but this was vetoed by CBS execs. So, having it finally become a thing in Picard is a pretty fulfilling development for the fan favorite character. Meanwhile, Raffi was previously established to have had an ex-husband and son, so her being romantically linked to Seven came as a bit of a surprise.
Hopefully we’ll get a lot more of these ladies together in Star Trek: Picard season 2. The only thing is, we don’t know when the next run will actually happen, what with filming being held up due to the pandemic. But with any luck, it’ll hit CBS All Access sometime in 2022.