In Star Trek: The Original Series, James T. Kirk (William Shatner) was a fearless leader who rarely, rarely looked back. Outside of his crew, Kirk’s primary love was for his ship, the USS Enterprise. But, decades later, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, we learned that Kirk had had a son well before the events of the most famous Enterprise five-year-mission. David Marcus, son of James T. Kirk and Carol Marcus, was a retroactive character who became a permanent part of Kirk’s backstory starting in 1982. And now, as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds gets closer to the timeline of TOS, one of the most bittersweet and saddest aspects of Kirk’s backstory is getting explored in a way that it never has before.
In SNW Season 4, Episode 2, “The Griffin Incident,” Spock (Ethan Peck), La’an (Christina Chong), and Kirk (Paul Wesley) are plagued by visions and spirits on a ship that can only be described as haunted. And in this horrific, psychological hall of mirrors, Kirk is plagued with some visions of David Marcus, who, at this point, is only a baby.
