Kirk and Spock are two of the most iconic characters in Star Trek, perhaps the most iconic, depending on who you talk to, but we’ve never actually witnessed their first meeting in the Prime Universe. That’s all set to change in the upcoming second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds as co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers teased making a big moment out of the first meeting between Kirk and Spock.
Paul Wesley (The Vampire Diaries) plays James T. Kirk on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and first appeared in the finale of the first season. But the Kirk we met in that episode was from an alternate future in which he had never captained the U.S.S. Enterprise. When Wesley returns for season two, it will be as the real Kirk, who is a lieutenant on the U.S.S. Farragut at this point in time. Henry Alonso Myers told TVLine that Lt. Kirk is “not yet the person who is going to be. He has some stuff to figure out before he becomes that person.” One important stage of Kirk’s development is meeting the man who would become his best friend, Spock. “We think about it every day,” Myers said of Kirk and Spock’s first meeting. “In the moment, when they finally meet, we absolutely make a big moment of it and hope people will enjoy what we come up with.“
Kirk and Spock were already fast friends by the time Star Trek: The Original Series began. There was once talk of a Starfleet Academy movie in the 1980s that would have revolved around their first meeting, we had to wait until J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek to see that meeting play out. How will Star Trek: Strange New Worlds handle the first meeting between Kirk and Spock? I can’t wait to find out. Strange New Worlds has become the most-watched original Star Trek series since the franchise returned to television in 2017. The second season has already wrapped filming and is in the midst of post-production for a 2023 premiere on Paramount+.