John de Lanzi had one condition to return as Q on Star Trek: Picard

In the second season of Star Trek: Picard, the good admiral (Patrick Stewart) is approached by his old rival the space deity K (John de Lannis) for a new challenge. Q snaps his fingers and throws Picard into an alternate universe where Earth had become a galactic tyrannical force dedicated to destroying its perceived enemies. Earth had already led the Romulans and Klingons to destruction, and now it was about to execute the last known Borg (Annie Werching). It's pretty grim. Occupying the space of his tyrannical interdimensional counterpart, Picard must gather his friends (Q conveniently teleports several of them to the evil universe as well) and then travel back in time to 2024 to find out how the evil universe came to be. to be

At the end of the season, it was revealed that Q was only playing his little time travel game with Picard as a kind of long goodbye. Q was previously believed to be immortal, but in reality he was nearing the end of his life and his powers were waning. He used some of his last magic shards to examine Picard, hoping to communicate with him. The season ends with Picard and K embracing each other warmly.

This was a rather restrained conclusion for the character considering how stupid he was before. There was an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” in which Q turned Picard and his crew into Robin Hood charactersfor example. In another episode, to celebrate a personal milestone, Q appeared on the bridge of the Enterprise with a magically manifested mariachi band. In case you couldn't tell, Star Trek usually brought a lot of levity.

However, when it comes to Picard, de Lanissa chose to be a little less funny. He even made a special request in this regard.

Note that “Star Trek: Picard” mostly served as a flashback series, catching up with Jean-Luc Picard about 20 years after his last appearance (in the 2002 feature film “Star Trek: Nemesis”). Many episodes of “Picard” brought back familiar faces from Picard's world, including Q, Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) and most of the cast of “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Stewart had agreed to return for the entire Picard series, but de Lancey required some convincing.

De Lancey was concerned that he, now in his mid-70s, would be asked to be as angry at “Picard” as he had been decades earlier in an episode of Robin Hood. Fortunately, the producers of “Picard” made peace. As de Lanisa explained Newsweek in 2022:

“I sat down and said, 'Listen, the first thing I want to know is, you're not going to pull me into these tights again, are you?' Because if that's the case, it's a deal breaker! They said, “No, no, no, no, we're going to a different feeling.” I looked pretty much the same as I do now, and they said, “Actually, we want a beard, we want a sense of maturity, and there's something on your side.” And I said, “So it's not time for, like, a mariachi band?” And they said, “No.”

Q “died” at the end of Picard's second season, happy to have given his old friend one final challenge. His look was both menacing and sentimental; there was no mariachi band and Q himself wore a tasteful black overcoat. Of course, since Q doesn't experience time linearly, he also returned to Picard at the end of season three to confront Picard's grown son, Jack (Ed Speleer). Although it seems unlikely, time will tell if Q will show up the proposed “Star Trek: Legacy”.