[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 2 “Wedding Bell Blues.”]

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds not only just brought in a character from The Original Series, but it also confirmed a theory from the novel Q-Squared.

Over the first two episodes of Season 3, Chapel (Jess Bush) told Spock (Ethan Peck) not to wait for her while she went off on her fellowship, only to return with a new boyfriend, Korby (Cillian O’Sullivan). But thanks to a wish granted by a mysterious bartender (Rhys Darby), Spock found himself preparing to marry Chapel … until Korby snapped him out of it and the two worked together to stop the bartender/wedding planner. In the end, it took that being’s father, voiced by John de Lancie, to put an end to his trickster ways, and the two went on their ways in balls of light.

TV Insider confirmed with executive producers Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers Rhys Darby is playing Trelane, the mischievous, childlike alien — he’s only 8020 Earth years old, “very young” — originally played by William Campbell on TOS. And yes, having Q himself voice his father does mean that Q is Trelane’s father.

“This is confirmation of that very smart piece of head canon that we now have absorbed into canon gratefully,” Goldsman tells TV Insider.

Adds Myers, “The only thing we can say is that father and mother, this is human. We’re applying our own human understanding of cultures to them, however they are.”

They brought in Trelane because “he’s a great character from The Original Series and also we did feel that was sort of unresolved, dangling, and it seemed intuitively quite smart to connect the two,” notes Goldsman. “From the outside, one could say, ‘Look, you have a character created by Roddenberry in one, you’ve got a character created by Roddenberry in another, he’s revisiting a kind of idea, refining it, so why not connect them up when you have the opportunity to do so?’ Since someone had cleverly done it without us, we just thought, ‘Well, let us bless that idea because it was a good one.’”

Darby, for his part, raves to TV Insider about how much fun he had taking on the role. “I was told that he was immensely powerful being mischievous, sly, cheeky, and once I put the outfit on, I realized, ‘Oh, yeah, I can pull this off,’” he shares.

Having Q voice his father “was the inkling to how powerful this character must be,” he says. “It was an absolute privilege to have this be part of the canon and knowing that the Trekkies are going to be pretty excited about it all.”

Darby enjoyed playing the turnaround, from showman to the child facing his father. “I think everyone’s wondering, ‘How is this going to end? How is this guy going to not end up just killing everybody?’ I have that immense power, and so the reveal that I’m just very immature in terms of my years, having the father turn up like that, that was probably the most fun part.”

In his time with the Enterprise crew, Trelane used his power to change the wedding cakes, shrink Spock down into a glass, and turn Korby into a dog. Darby said the treats were “pretty cool, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say putting Spock in a tiny glass was my favorite.”

Speaking of the half-Vulcan, whose wish he granted that messed with Korby’s life, Darby says that Trelane is “fascinated” with him. “I think he sees this character being very influential in the universe and important. And he’s a little bit enamored by him,” he explains. “He can tell that there’s something a little off about Korby as well, and he wants the best for Spock.”

Trelane went off with his father at the end, but has he learned his lesson or will he go on to disrupt others’ lives? “I don’t know whether he’s learned his lesson,” Darby admits. “It’s like any teenager, they probably need a few repercussions to fall in line properly, but yeah, he certainly probably would’ve grown from this a little bit. Will he return? I have no idea. Will he have really learned not to play with these people again? I don’t know. It’s too much fun.”

But, he adds, “I think even though he’s having fun and toying with the humans, he’s learning from them. He’s learning that you’ve got to have morals and you’ve got to have a sense of order so that you don’t create chaos because that will destroy the universe. So I think he is learning from his mistakes here. … He didn’t really hurt anyone even though he could, so he’s got goodness in him.”

Should he return, Darby would like to see Trelane “be more of an ally to these guys and learn from them, but he is mischievous and he’s got a spark of evil there, so I just think he needs to toe the line. He could be a great help.”

He also reveals that he improvised a bit during the wedding ceremony. “They’d said that I could mock anyone in the audience, and so I can’t remember which bits they told me to do and which bits I made up, but I think some of that is improvised and I did a lot more, but they ended up having to edit it down to what I did,” Darby says.

“Calling Korby Korbs,” he adds. “That was definitely me.”

What did you think of Rhys Darby as Trelane and the Q reveal? Let us know in the comments section below.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Thursdays, Paramount+