The first Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 teaser has arrived!

On Saturday, April 9, 2022, the first teaser for Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 arrived, starring Ensigns Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Bradward Boimler (Jack Quaid), D’Vana Tendi (Noël Wells), and Samathan Rutherford (Eugene Cordero). For season 3, it looks like the Lower Deckers must go even LOWER and spring the U.S.S. Cerritos from spacedock to save their beloved Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis). The teaser trailer really proves that Lower Deckers stick together—even Delta Shift.

The explosive season 2 finale, "First First Contact," ended with a cliffhanger, seeing Captain Freeman get arrested for allegedly destroying the Pakled Planet by denoting a Varuvian bomb on its surface. Although the crew of the Cerritos knows that Starfleet Intelligence's allegation against the beloved Captain Freeman must be false, after all, she was busy getting drunk in support of a successful First Contact mission with the Lapeerians, marking the Cerritos' captain's first First Contact mission for the Federation.

Captain Freeman is also celebrating that she is due for a promotion, to add insult to injury. In the second season finale, she also learns that Starfleet is promoting her to a better class of ship after successfully handling the first season's Pakled encounter. Although she declines the promotion to stay with her loyal Cali-class crew, she doesn't get to celebrate with her bridge officers for long before Starfleet Intelligence arrests her for destroying the Pakled planet... Hmmm something smells like peanuts? Or a dirty clothes hamper? Am I right?

Related: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Plot, Cast, and Everything Else We Know

In addition to the short teaser, Paramount+ also released a teaser poster depicting Peanut Hamper (Kether Donohue), the little exocomp. Peanut Hamper was originally introduced (and last seen) in the first season finale of Lower Decks, “No Small Parts.”

In that episode, it seemed as though Peanut Hamper might have been the perfect candidate to save the day in a battle against the Pakleds. However, instead of saving the day, Peanut Hamper beamed themselves away from Cerritos, abandoning the crew to their fates. Naturally, Freeman and her crew survived, but at the end of the episode, Peanut Hamper is still floating in space, making futile calls for help.

Does the new poster, which depicted Peanut Hamper floating in a debris field, suggest that the diminutive robot will be returning in the next season? If this is the case, is it possible the vindictive little bastard is responsible for destroying Pakled Planet, the crime for which Freeman is now on trial?

It’s easy to imagine the Pakleds trolling the debris after the battle, searching for proprietary Federation tech. Alternatively, Peanut Hamper might have been picked up by General Dorg, the Klingon captain who was revealed to be giving the Pakleds weapons in “wej Duj,” or perhaps the robot teamed up with Badgey (Jack McBrayer), the homicidal hologram programmed by Ensign Samanthan Rutherford.

Whatever the reason for Peanut Hamper’s return, it’s a sure sign of trouble for our Lower Deckers! Watch the entire Star Trek: Lower Decks teaser below:

Rebecca Kaplan (she/he) has a JD and an MS but believes comics do more good than law. His work can be found at Prism Comics, MovieWeb, Geek Girl Authority, PanelxPanel, StarTrek.com and Comics Bookcase, and in Double Challenge: Being LGBTQ and a Minority, which she co-authored with his wife, Avery Kaplan.