Will New Star Trek: Discovery Episodes Feature Evil Captain Tilly?

Star Trek: Discovery ’s mid-season finale, “Into the Forest I Go,” airs this Sunday, Nov. 12. The second half of DSC ’s first season will premiere Jan. 7, 2018, with new episode “Despite Yourself.” But while major revelations are likely in the upcoming finale, one of the biggest hints as to what’s in store next year came in the most recent episode, “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum.”

After losing a ferocious battle, the Discovery uses its experimental spore drive to warp to safety. We’ve already seen signs that interacting with the star drive’s mycelial network is detrimental to Lieutenant Stamets’ mental health, and as he comes out of the spore chamber disoriented it looks like he’s deteriorating. “What are you doing down here, Captain?” he asks Cadet Tilly, just about the least captain person aboard.

Later, discussing the incident with Tilly in the mess hall, Stamets admits, “One minute I know where I am, who you are, what I’m doing. But then, what I know changes.”

We already learned in “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad,” that Stamets’ interaction with the universal mycelial network placed him outside of the typical space-time experience — that’s how he was able to defeat Mudd’s time loop machine. But this new information syncs even better with the end of an earlier episode, “Choose Your Pain.”

That episode ended quietly, with Stamets and Culber brushing their teeth, but when Stamets walked away from the mirror, his reflection lingered. There couldn’t be a clearer hint that Star Trek: Discovery has a Mirror Universe episode in store for us. Combined with his confusion in “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” it sure looks like we’ll encounter Captain Sylvia Tilly in the upcoming Mirror Dimension episode.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Mirror Dimension, it was first introduced in Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Mirror, Mirror.” It’s an evil universe, where Spock has a goatee and Captain Kirk assassinates all of his rivals for the captain’s chair. The alternate dimension made several more appearances in episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.

Cadet Tilly is the perfect character for this sort of episode, which thrives on inverting well-drawn characters. Mary Wiseman’s Cadet Tilly is one of the most amiable, buoyant and enthusiastic people aboard the Discovery, so an episode that twists her up into a tyrannical captain promises to be a dramatic spectacle.

Captain Tilly’s moment might even come in the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery “Chapter 2.” Here’s the official episode description:

“In Chapter 2, while in unfamiliar territory, the USS Discovery crew is forced to get creative in their next efforts to survive opposing and unprecedented forces and return home.”

The description for the “Chapter 2” premiere suggests that the Discovery’s battle against the Klingon Sarcophagus ship doesn’t end well, forcing Discovery to retreat. Could the “unfamiliar territory” be more than just an unexpected region of space? It seems possible the stress of combat forced on Stamets as he tries to navigate the mycelial network could easily wind up with the Discovery in the Mirror Dimension.