Star Trek: Strange New Worlds comes back for its fourth season on Paramount+ on July 23, 2026. The first of 10 episodes arrives on a Thursday, with new episodes following every Thursday after that (TrekMovie). An official trailer came out in June (Paramount+), following earlier previews at San Diego Comic-Con 2025 (StarTrek.com) and New York Comic Con in October 2025 (StarTrek.com).

The season tries out a wider range of styles than usual. Episode 2 includes heavy gore and body horror, which is a shift away from the show's usual weekly adventure format. Episode 6, on the other hand, has been called by Engadget's reviewer one of the best episodes in Star Trek's 60-year history. That same preview, published July 22, is critical overall and says the quality is uneven across the season (Engadget).

One of the most unusual experiments this season is a puppet episode made with Jim Henson Studios (Engadget). This is not entirely out of character for the show. Season 2 included an animated crossover with another Star Trek series, Lower Decks, which showed the team was open to changing formats. The Henson partnership goes further by bringing physical, hands-on puppetry into a franchise that has mostly used makeup effects and computer-generated imagery to create its aliens.

Episode 6 also includes a reference to the Scottish comedy show Burnistoun, reportedly added by actor Martin Quinn (Engadget). It is the kind of small detail that modern Star Trek writers like to include, hiding jokes for dedicated fans inside episodes that also work for casual viewers.

Paul Wesley, who plays Jim Kirk, appears frequently in Season 4. Wesley was originally added to the cast while Anson Mount, who plays Captain Pike, was on paternity leave (Engadget). Mount's Captain Pike is still the center of the show, but Kirk's larger role reflects a cast that has shifted since the first season.

Filming for Season 4 was officially underway by March 2025, when cast members shared a photo from the set to mark the start (StarTrek.com). Paramount+ had already confirmed in June 2025 that the show's fifth season will be its last (StarTrek.com). That makes Season 4 the second-to-last season, so these episodes need to work on their own while also setting up a final storyline.

The note about uneven quality is worth paying attention to. Strange New Worlds has built its name on trying different tones and formats, sometimes within a single episode. When those attempts work, the results can be memorable, as the reviewer's praise of Episode 6 suggests. When they do not work, the drop-off is more noticeable because the episodes are so different from each other.

The broader context is that Paramount+ has put a lot of money into the Star Trek franchise, and this creative ambition is both what makes the show distinctive and what makes it risky. A puppet episode and a horror episode in the same season is not a safe, data-driven content plan. It is a bet that viewers will stick with the show even when the style changes sharply from week to week, and that the cast and the Star Trek setting are strong enough to hold it all together. How Season 4 is received will likely depend on whether the best episodes are good enough to make up for the ones that do not land as well.

All 10 episodes will be available exclusively on Paramount+ (TrekMovie). With one season left before the series ends, the time for Strange New Worlds to secure its place in the Star Trek legacy is getting shorter.