This season of Star Trek: Picard is overflowing with Easter eggs and references to the franchise’s past. So far, the most fun Easter egg appeared in the season’s fourth episode, “The Watcher.” Some mild spoilers for season two follow, so fair warning if you’re not caught up with Star Trek: Picard.
This season, Picard and his allies, including Seven of Nine, traveled to the past. Specifically, the year 2024. They try to fix a temporal anomaly caused by Q—an anomaly that will cause their 25th-century utopia to collapse. Stuck in the past, a very annoyed Seven and Rafi encounter a punk rocker, blasting his music at full volume while on an LA commuter bus. Fans of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home may recognize the punk on the bus as the same one Kirk and Spock dealt with on a San Francisco bus back in 1986.
This time, when Seven asks him to turn it down, he sheepishly agrees. And he seemingly remembers that time a weird guy grabbed his neck and knocked him right out. Now, a YouTuber named Rick LeRoy put together a comparison video of “punk rock guy” in all his cinematic appearances. And you can watch it above.
Yes, the very same person who played him in The Voyage Home, Kirk Thatcher, portrayed punk rock dude in Picard. Back in 1986, Thatcher was an associate producer on Star Trek IV at only 24 years old. He’d already worked for ILM on films such as Return of the Jedi. He actually wrote and performed the punk song “I Hate You” just for this scene. He’s since directed several Muppets movies, including Muppets Haunted Mansion. In the Picard episode, he’s clearly still very into the “I Hate You” song. Although this is an updated version, with lyrics that now say “35 years later and everything’s the same.” Well, we can’t argue with that sentiment.
This is actually not the first time Kirk Thatcher has reprised his role as “punk guy.” He did a quick cameo in Spider-Man: Homecoming too. He still had the vintage boom box, but this version went gray. Maybe he was a multiversal variant? We’re just going to have to consider it our first Star Trek/Marvel cinematic crossover. Not the first Star Trek/Marvel crossover overall though. That was in the 90s, when the X-Men met the crew of the Enterprise. We have a feeling punk rock guy was there too somewhere, banging his head away.
