Wil Wheaton is back as Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 after over 3 and a half years of keeping his role in the second season of Netflix’s animated series a secret.
As a Traveler, Wesley Crusher becomes a mentor to the young Starfleet hopefuls of the USS Protostar in Star Trek: Prodigy season 2. Together, Wesley, Dal R’El (Brett Gray), Gwyndala (Ella Purnell), and their friends must protect every Star Trek timeline from the reality-eating threat of the Loom, as well as repair Star Trek’s broken Prime Timeline. Scatterbrained, motor-mouthed, and deeply heroic, Wesley is crucial to Star Trek: Prodigy season 2.
Screen Rant had the pleasure of chatting with Wil Wheaton about keeping his comeback as Wesley Crusher a secret, how Star Trek: Prodigy welcomed his ideas and the possible future of Star Trek’s own Time Lord.
Wil Wheaton Is Proud To Be Part Of Star Trek: Prodigy
Screen Rant: Congratulations on your comeback as Wesley Crusher. Prodigy season 2 is one of the best seasons of Star Trek I’ve ever seen, and Wesley is a huge part of why.
Wil Wheaton: Thank you. Oh, my gosh, thank you so much. I keep hearing this from Star Trek fans, that they’re comparing us to the later seasons of Deep Space Nine, which is an enormous compliment. I think the last two seasons of Deep Space Nine are the best Star Trek that’s ever existed. So to even have an opportunity to be on at the same table as that is amazing.
I don’t think that we should be that surprised. Honestly, Kevin and Dan [Hageman] are amazing. And they know exactly what they’re doing. And their writers’ room is brilliant. They worked really, really hard to put together a story that kids who had never seen Star Trek before could fall in love with and relate to, full of characters and references to existing storylines that their parents love. I have met people over the last 30 years who have told me that they grew up watching Star Trek with their parents because they loved Wesley and their parents loved Star Trek, and that, over time, they came to love Star Trek as well. And I absolutely love [that] and I am so honored.
It is such a privilege, and I am so grateful to be Wesley again, on a show that kids can watch with their parents, that can be an introductory point for Star Trek for a whole new generation of kids.
Wil Wheaton On Keeping His Return As Wesley Crusher A Secret
That’s one of the greatest things about Prodigy. And you have been keeping your return as Wesley a secret for years.
Wil Wheaton: It’s been the hardest thing. We spent like three and a half years. I cannot believe how long it’s been. And there was a moment where I was like, ‘Is it just not ever going to come out? Like did we do it and it’s not going anywhere? And I’ll never get to see it?’ It’s been quite a journey.
Who actually knew you were in Prodigy this whole time?
Wil Wheaton: Not a lot of people [knew]. I mean, the folks who worked on the show, obviously. Most of my [Star Trek: The Next Generation] cast didn’t know. My space mom [Gates McFadden] knows. [Jonathan] Frakes knew. Kate [Mulgrew] knew because we had scenes together. But nobody else knew. It was a gigantic secret.
When I worked on Picard, nobody on Picard knew that it was coming up. And for years – years! – people have been saying to me, ‘Man, I want to see Wesley again. Do you think he’ll be in Strange New Worlds? Do you think you’ll be in Prodigy? Do you think he’ll be in –?’ And every time I was like, ‘I’m going to tell you a big old lie right now because that’s what I have to do. I don’t know.’ So sorry, everybody. SURPRISE!
The thing that’s kind of cool is that both times Wesley has shown up in Star Trek in this current… what we call the Latinum Age of Star Trek… It’s been a giant surprise, a huge reveal, one of those moments for the audience. As a performer, you kind of hope for maybe one of those in your career, right? Just one of those really great moments. Orson Welles said of The Third Man, you want to be someone that they spend the first two-thirds of the movie talking about, and then you show up for the third act, and you haven’t done anything. They’ve done all the work to make you cool and then you’re just there, and you just cash. I feel like that was happening with Wesley. The people were doing all the work, getting all excited for him, and then there he was. And I’m just so grateful for how it all came together.
That’s so true. It’s interesting you said that. You’re almost like the shark from Jaws. There’s a huge setup for the first two acts, and then there you are.
Wil Wheaton: We even recorded me for some lines that are in the first season where we don’t yet know that it’s Wesley. We recorded some lines, I recorded them and [Robert] Beltran recorded them, and then they blurred them together for another point where you’re not supposed to be able to tell. They worked really hard to keep it a secret.
I do remember at least once seeing on Reddit, someone predicting Wesley would show
up in Prodigy as a Traveler to do a thing and I can’t remember how far into the prediction they got before they diverged off the timeline, but I just thought, ‘Wow, that’s weird.’ So whoever that person was, I imagine they were rather proud of themselves when that episode dropped.
Wil Wheaton Reveals How Much Say He Had In Wesley Crusher’s Star Trek: Prodigy Season 2 Story
When I spoke to Kevin and Dan Hageman about season 2, they talked about how Wesley was baked into it from the very beginning. Now, I would think you know Wesley better than anyone. How much say did you have in Wesley’s story?
Wil Wheaton: So much more than I ever thought I ever would. When we worked on Next Generation, I was very much treated like a kid. Not by my cast at all, but by the producers and by all of our directors, I was treated like a kid who was expected to shut up except when he was saying his lines, I was expected to have no opinions, I was expected to just stay in my lane and do what I was told and then go be invisible. And that was frustrating for me because I had been acting for a really long time by then. And I had a pretty good idea of what I was doing. And I would have responded very well to direction and conversation.
So when this came around, a good friend of mine is one of the writers for Prodigy, and she reached out to me kind of on the down low and said,’This is a thing we’re thinking about maybe happening. And I wanted to talk with you about Wesley because you know him better than anyone. What do you think about…?’ And then she gave a very broad pitch of him being this pseudo Time Lord character. And I said, ‘Dude, I have been writing fan fiction for years where that’s the character I’ve been writing. I’ve been telling this story about him.’ So we just started spitballing and brainstorming, and I was like, ‘Take all of my ideas. I don’t want any credit for them. This is what I was thinking.’ And she was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s all great. Thank you. I love it.’
She took it to them. They came back to me. Kevin and Dan talked to me: ‘How do you see him? How does he sound to you? How does he feel to you?’ I even got to consult on his costume. When the question of the sweater came up, I was like, ‘It has to be the pumpkin sweater because that’s the iconic sweater.’ When you think of Wesley in a sweater, there were a lot of them, but that’s the one, right? And for me, there’s a beautiful kind of closing of a circle because, as a kid, I hated that sweater. It was hot. It was baggy. I didn’t like the way it looked. And as an adult. I’m like, ‘Oh, Wesley in your sweater! I love it. That’s great.’
My big request was [for Wesley] to be wearing Doc Martens. I just wanted him in Doc Martens because when I was a kid working on Star Trek, I wore Doc Martens. I thought they were cool. When I was a kid, I didn’t think Wesley was cool. I didn’t understand that he was. And they were like, ‘It can’t be Doc Martens,” and I said, ‘Well, could it be something that is similar yet legally distinctly different from Doc Martens?’ So he got his Not Doc Martens.
Wil Wheaton Has Lots Of Ideas For Wesley Crusher’s Star Trek Future
You mentioned your cameo in Picard season 2. Gosh, what I’d love for Prodigy season 3 or some future Star Trek is for you and Isa Briones to come back as Travelers. And Wesley and Kore Soong are like an old married couple where you’re always bantering and at loggerheads. I think that’d be amazing.
Wil Wheaton: I have all these ideas. Some are canon, most are not, about how things work when you’re a Traveler. You know, when you have a character who is essentially a Time Lord, it’s difficult to put them in real peril. So you have to put actual constrictions on them, rules they have to follow, and laws of physics that they can’t break. I like very much the idea that the Travelers have abandoned our universe because, to them, it’s like we’re giving up. And Wesley has said, ‘Well, I don’t give up. I know I’m breaking the rules, and I’m probably gonna get in trouble for this, but I love this universe. My mom lives in his universe. It’s the universe I came from, and I’m gonna stay here and fight at the risk of venturing off the reservation a little bit.’
I think that’s an extremely relevant message right now, that there are things that are worth fighting for. And there are universes that are worth saving. And there are things that are worth protecting. And I love very much that Wesley is like, ‘I will do that. I will risk everything to do this.’ I think that’s a wonderful message. I think it’s really inspirational, just after people being really cruel to me, and really cruel to Wesley when we were kids, that he is here now. He’s an adult, I’m an adult. He loves and cares about this universe, I love and care about this universe.
He wants to be a mentor to these kids. I’ve had the incredible privilege as the host of The Ready Room to just make myself available [to newer Star Trek actors]. I’m an elder in this world. I’m a legacy actor. Whenever you want to talk to somebody about the weirdness of this, I’m available to you, take it or leave it. No pressure. And I really love that Wesley is kind of in a place to do something similar with these characters in the show.