Back in March 2023, it was announced that Star Trek: Discovery was ending with Season 5, and now we’re just a few weeks away from this era of the sci-fi franchise concluding on the 2024 TV schedule. Fortunately, Discovery’s cast and crew were given extra filming time to ensure the series could end on a proper note. As we enter this final stretch, Elias Toufexis, who played the Breen character L’ak this season, discussed with CinemaBlend why he thinks the show “wraps up really nicely” after being informed about what’s to come.
In addition getting his thoughts on the big L’ak twist that “Erigah” delivered, I asked Toufexis, who also voices Seraphim in Netflix’s Blood of Zeus, if he’d seen Star Trek: Discovery’s ending yet, and if so, what he thought about it. Although the actor hasn’t seen the final product, not only did he read how everything comes to a close, he was impressed by how Season 5 feels like the final hurrah despite the fact that it was intended to be from the start. As he informed me:
I haven’t seen it, they haven’t shown us yet, but I did read it and I talked to Michelle Paradise about it. As a fan of the show, I think that it wraps up really nicely, and I think it’s going to be pretty emotional, if you’re a fan of the show, to watch. It’s a very smart way to end it. You know what’s really interesting about this season is we didn’t know it was going to be the last season when we were shooting it, but in some strange universe way, episodes all feel like they’re ending. Like Saru going off and becoming ambassador and getting married. Just the time travel one, Episode 4, where they’re going back and seeing the old [characters]. These are the type of things that shows that know they’re ending do, but we didn’t know. It just happened to turn out that way. Then they went back and did this denouement thing. At least on the script point of view, it really works and I’m really excited to see it.
When Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 began filming, the possibility of Season 6 was still on the table. It was only after principal photography concluded that Paramount+ pulled the show’s plug, but looking back, Elias Toufexis is impressed with how some of Season 5’s episodes and status quo changes serendipitously feel like they belong in a final season. Like he noted, Saru resigned from Starfleet and is now an ambassador for the Federation, and Episode 4, titled “Face the Strange,” is a look back at times long gone by before we wrap things up.
Then as far as the show’s ending itself goes, Toufexis is confident that fans will be happy with it going off of what he read and learned from showrunner Michelle Paradise, and he’s just the latest Discovery actor to voice such thoughts to CinemaBlend. In January, Saru actor Doug Jones told us that he felt “closure” after watching the show’s epilogue, and in April, David Ajala, who plays Booker, said he was “excited” for fans to see “one very specific thing” that was filmed after the cancellation. Then this month, Callum Keith Rennie, who joined Season 5 as Rayner, said Discovery will deliver a “great finale,” and Tilly actress Mary Wiseman described what she read as “lovely,” although she won’t watch the entire thing until it’s released to the fans.
Star Trek: Discovery fans will finally get to know what the actors are talking about when they’re able to stream the series finale, titled “Life, Itself,” with their Paramount+ subscriptions on Thursday, May 30. As we count down the days until the big finish, look over the upcoming Star Trek TV shows that are slated.