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Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 2 – “The Griffin Incident”Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4’s horror episode is more than a scare fest, as “The Griffin Incident” sets up three major events in the lives of Lieutenant La’an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), Lieutenant Spock (Ethan Peck), and Lieutenant Commander James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley).
Directed by Axelle Carolyn and written by Robbie Thompson, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 2, sends Kirk, Spock, and La’an aboard the USS Griffin, a ghost ship missing for nine years. The Griffin was possessed by an inexplicable malignant entity, which instigated the deaths of its crew. Spock, La’an, and Kirk unsuspectingly beamed into their own personal nightmares.
With nods to Event Horizon, The Shining, and other horror flicks, “The Griffin Incident” is an unnerving and eerily effective genre shift for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. This Star Trek ghost story certainly brings the scares, with ghastly murders, body horror, and spectral apparitions. However, “The Griffin Incident” also plants the seeds for changes to come in Kirk, La’an, and Spock’s lives.
La’an Is Turning Into A Star Trek Villain
“The Griffin Incident” sets up a personal reckoning for La’an Noonien-Singh in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4. La’an was uniquely targeted by the Griffin’s evil entity, which took the form of Lieutenant Rose Harper (Sorika Wolf). The USS Griffin’s deceased Security Chief is La’an’s counterpart and ultimately held Noonien-Singh in her thrall.
La’an is going through changes that mortify her. In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3’s “Four-and-a-Half Vulcans,” La’an was transformed into a diabolical Romulan with designs on galactic conquest. La’an realized that her brief stint with pointy ears activated her recessive augment DNA she inherited from her supervillain ancestor, Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban).
The Griffin entity fed on La’an’s fear of herself, offering her solace that she’s “not a monster” and “not a Khan,” and that she belongs among the ghost ship’s undead. When she succumbs to the Griffin, La’an tries to kill Lieutenant Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia), Ensign Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), and James Kirk. However, only Kirk was real and was victimized by La’an’s blade in his gut.
La’an will inevitably face her enemy within in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, likely in season 4’s penultimate episode, the aptly named “Once La’an a Time.” The outcome of La’an’s battle with herself will determine whether she will indeed become another Khan or rise above the darkest aspects of herself that she has dreaded her whole life.
Kirk’s Son Will Die In Star Trek III
When she was fully under the Griffin entity’s thrall and nearly murdered Kirk, La’an taunted James about the future death of his son, David Marcus. This foreshadows David’s (Merrit Butrick) tragic murder at the hands of Klingons over twenty years later in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. La’an told Kirk:
“Your little boy is going to die just like you. At the end of a blade. Bleeding out in a dark corner of space.”
Although Kirk has no way of knowing that La’an’s prediction will come true, it will still haunt James going forward. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4 delves into Kirk’s guilt over prioritizing his Starfleet career over his young son, and that James truly loves David. Not yet defined is that David’s mother, Carol Marcus, wants to raise their son herself so he doesn’t take after his space hero father.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan deals with how Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) never truly faced death until he lost his best friend, Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy). “The Griffin Incident” nods to Kirk’s fears of being unable to save his loved ones when he helplessly watched his brother, Lt. Sam Kirk (Dan Jeannotte), die. Although Sam wasn’t real, James will still carry those emotional scars inflicted by the Griffiin.
Admiral Kirk will be as helpless to save David’s life in Star Trek III as he was to stop Sam from being blown out of the USS Enterprise’s viewscreen in “The Griffin Incident.” David dies at the order of Commander Kruge (Christopher Lloyd) on the doomed Genesis Planet, in the “dark corner of space” the Griffin-controlled La’an predicted.
Spock Will Become Leonard Nimoy’s Vulcan
The Griffin entity isolated Spock from Kirk and La’an, subjecting the Vulcan Science Officer to a singular form of torture. However, Spock’s body horror was centered on his hidden belief that his humanity is a greater virtue than being a Vulcan. This was confirmed by the Griffin pulling a vision of T’Pring (Gia Sandhu), his ex-fiancée, from Spock’s mind, who manifested his duality and war with himself.
T’Pring strapped Spock to a bio-bed, sliced off the points of his Vulcan ears, and threatened to perform surgery to move Spock’s heart to the side of his chest where it would be if he were fully human. The twist was that since T’Pring was never real, Spock cut off his own ears, symbolically purging his most obvious Vulcan physical trait.
Throughout Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Spock has experimented with, and even prized, his humanity. This was the basis of his romances with Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) and La’an. However, his trauma from the Griffin would seem to spark Spock seeing his humanity as a problem to be suppressed, leading him to embrace Vulcan logic and evolve into the Mr. Spock portrayed by Leonard Nimoy.
Spock’s story arc in the remainder of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, and in the fifth and final season, is to ‘Vulcan up’ and fully become Spock in Star Trek: The Original Series. Spock cutting off his own ears indicates that he has pushed his quest to be human as far as he can go, and he will reverse course to become the proudly Vulcan Spock he will be for the rest of his life.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4’s new episodes premiere Thursdays on Paramount+.
- Release Date
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2022 – 2027-00-00
- Network
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Paramount+
- Showrunner
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Henry Alonso Myers, Akiva Goldsman
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John Orquiola
Almontather Rassoul
