Picard Season 2, Episode 10: “Farewell” Review
While the final episode of Picard’s second season, entitled ‘Farewell,” shares many of the problems of the previous episodes that led to this point, it deserves some credit. It actually wraps up the convoluted story and all the disparate plot threads better than expected. The episode could have been better if the various subplots were well-written and executed in the early episodes, but it is clear that the showrunners did have a planned endpoint for those story threads that largely works.
All of that aside, this episode really works because of one scene. Q returns for this episode, and he and Picard have a very poignant conversation. Long-time fans, even those most cynical of the franchise’s current direction, should find this scene to be a good capper to the rather interesting relationship between Jean-Luc Picard and the God-like being Q. Here, in this scene, Picard finally asks: “Why me? From the very beginning, for over 30 years, why me?” In his answer, Q is actually candid and reveals something about himself that Picard had already figured out: he is dying. However, Q wants to die alone, but he does not want the same for Jean-Luc. He speaks about how humans are fixated on moments in the past. “You’re like butterflies with the wings pinned.” He tries to reassure Picard that, since he accepted the future fate that his mother will die as a result of what he eventually does as a young boy, Picard is “now unshackled from the past.”
Picard then asks Q why his own life matters so much, and Q’s answer is surprisingly poignant in ways that should make a long-time fan a little emotional.
Certainly, one scene cannot make a whole episode, let alone a largely terrible season, good. Yet, it can tip the emotional scale just a bit. It’s a good scene: it has no gimmicks, no special effects or crazy camera or editing tricks, just two men having a conversation that is the cap of thirty years of tough love. Stretching this crazy time-travel story across ten episodes was a mistake, but they found the correct emotional note on which to end it.
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