Warning: SPOILERS For Star Trek: Lower Decks' Season 5 Finale - "The New Next Generation"

The season 5 finale of Star Trek: Discovery-style Klingons, five years later. Star Trek: Discovery's 2017 premiere brought multiple aesthetic changes to its mid-23rd century setting a decadebefore Star Trek: The Original Series. Rather than recreate TOS-style Klingons with smooth foreheads, Star Trek: Discovery's makeup artists developed a brand-new look that pushed Klingons' alien features even further. Discovery's Klingons were supposed to be what Klingons had always looked like, but could only be realized with modern technology and a bigger budget.

In the penultimate episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks' 5th season, "Fissure Quest", the collapse of a dimensional rift threatens the destruction of the entire Star Trek multiverse. Captain William Boimler (Jack Quaid) sends the universe-destroying beam of soliton radiation to Star Trek: Lower Decks' season 5 finale, "The New Next Generation", the soliton beam's entrance into the Prime Universe creates a Schrödinger field that changes anything caught in it into a different version from the multiverse.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Brings Back Klingons From Star Trek: Discovery

Discovery Klingons Haven't Been Seen Since 2019

Star Trek: Lower Decks' finale cleverly brings back Klingons from Star Trek: Discovery with the help of a well-placed Schrödinger probability field. Before the USS Cerritos or USS Enterprise-E can arrive at the site of the unstable dimensional rift, a group of Klingons are caught in the Schrödinger field. The Lower Decks Klingon crew transforms into hairless, blue-tinted Star Trek: Discovery Klingons with especially pointy-looking armor, as their Bird of Prey turns into a version from Star Trek: Discovery. Later, Relga's (Roxana Ortega) fleet meet their demise by becoming Proto-Klingons.

A Klingon from Star Trek The Original Series, Worf from Star Trek The Next Generation & a Klingon from Star Trek Discoveryy
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Star Trek: Lower Decks' brief transmutation into a different version of Klingons is the first time Star Trek: Discovery-style Klingons have been seen since the season 2 finale of Star Trek: Discovery in 2019. Discovery's changes to Klingons were controversial among Star Trek fans, so Star Trek: Discovery opted to abandon Klingons altogether after the USS Discovery's jump to the 32nd century. The Klingons in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which also takes place in the mid-23rd century, use the more familiar Star Trek: The Next Generation-era design, suggesting that multiple versions of Klingons exist in Star Trek at the same time.

What Star Trek: Discovery Klingons In Lower Decks’ Multiverse Really Means

All Versions Of Klingons Are Canon To Star Trek's Prime Universe

Worf and a Discovery style Klingon in Star Trek

Star Trek: Discovery Klingons being a part of Star Trek: Lower Decks' multiverse doesn't mean that Discovery Klingons—or Star Trek: Discovery itself—aren't canon to the Prime Universe. The Schrödinger probability field draws from the deep well of Star Trek's multiverse, which the Prime Universe is part of, to turn things into different versions of themselves. Inside the Schrödinger field, the USS Cerritos transforms into other classes of Federation starships that exist in the Prime Universe, like the Sovereign and Galaxy-class. The Klingons' transformation just confirms that Discovery Klingons exist at some point on the Star Trek timeline, even an earlier one.

One explanation for Star Trek: Lower Decks' Klingon transformation might be that there's a reality where Star Trek: Discovery-style Klingons have become the predominant variation in the 24th century over either of their less-ridged counterparts.

Star Trek: Discovery's drastic Klingon changes were surprising, considering the Klingon look from Star Trek: The Next Generation and its contemporary Star Trek shows had been the definitive one for years. However, the TNG-era Klingons as honor-bound warriors were, themselves, a huge change from the TOS era. It makes sense that Star Trek: Discovery would want to expand on Klingon culture with a new take. As a celebration of Star Trek's deepest cuts, Star Trek: Lower Decks found a way to say: yes, all Klingons are canonical to Star Trek's Prime Universe. Even Star Trek: Discovery's.