Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard Season 2's Finale - "Farewell"
Khan (Ricardo Montalbán) is receiving a renewed focus in Star Trek: The Original Series. Meanwhile, Star Trek: Picard season 2's finale dropped a shocking bombshell about Khan, linking his creation to the devious Dr. Adam Soong (Brent Spiner). Both instances are new directions that separate Khan from his rivalry with Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner).
Khan wasn't as well-received as the filmmakers hoped. Yet the two appearances by Ricardo Montalbán's Khan are still the standard all Star Trek big bads are held to, and other movie villains like Dr. Tolian Soran (Malcolm McDowell), Shinzon (Tom Hardy), and Nero (Eric Bana) were created in Khan's mold.
Star Trek: Picard season 2's finale evoking Khan was a genuine shock. After he was totally defeated by Jean-Luc Picard's (Patrick Stewart) motley crew and his own genetically-engineered daughter, Kore (Isa Briones), Dr. Adam Soong opened a drawer to reveal a top-secret file dated 1996 and marked "Project Khan." Given Soong's age in 2024, it's conceivable he was part of Khan's creation when he was a young scientist specializing in eugenics. Indeed, the details of Khan's origin haven't been canonically revealed in Star Trek and so, Star Trek: Picard season 3 may be doing just that. Of course, Ricardo Montalbán ed away but given Star Trek's success with recasting legacy characters, it's possible Star Trek: Picard may show the younger Khan or even potentially reboot him to threaten Picard in the 25th century.
Meanwhile, La'an Noonien Singh embodies Khan's legacy in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. The fact that she is Khan's descendant was revealed well before Strange New Worlds premiered and he certainly factors into La'an's fierce demeanor and capabilities thus far. In La'an's backstory, she somehow survived being imprisoned by the Gorn, which may be due to her inheriting Khan's physical and mental superiority. La'an doesn't exhibit Khan's megalomaniacal drive toward conquest, and she doesn't seem to be evil like her forerunner. B It's also not clear if La'an is actually a genetically-engineered Augment like Khan was. Strange New Worlds will explore and define La'an's exact ties to Khan as the series continues and marches towards the supervillain being revived in Star Trek: The Original Series.
The fear of eugenics creating a villain like Khan is an old idea Star Trek is exploring once more, as Adam Soong's "Project Khan" hints. Part of Star Trek's continuing obsession with Khan is because of the franchise's difficulties in creating other great supervillains. Even the Borg Queen (Annie Wersching/Alison Pill) was redeemed in Star Trek: Picard season 2. After all, Star Trek's mantra has always been turning enemies into friends of the United Federation of Planets. Yet Khan is an outlier who stands above all other Star Trek villains. Star Trek struck gold with Khan in the first year of The Original Series and the franchise continues to draw water from Khan's well 56 years later. But because Khan is long dead, the only stories left to tell about him are how Khan affects his descendant, as in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and, potentially, revealing Khan's origin, which could happen in Star Trek: Picard season 3.
Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds are streaming on Paramount+.