Bill Nighy and Rosemarie DeWitt Join 'Starfleet Academy' Season 2

By Elena Vasquez

Bill Nighy and Rosemarie DeWitt will guest star in Season 2 of "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy." Paramount+ announced the casting on Saturday during the "Star Trek" panel at New York Comic-Con.

Nighy will play Nyk Ake, the estranged father of Holly Hunter's character Nahla. DeWitt takes the role of Laytha Sadal, the First Lady of Betazed and mother of Tarima, played by Zoë Steiner. First-look photos of both actors accompanied the announcement.

What do the new roles mean for the cadets?

The two castings anchor the show's second year in family stakes. Nighy's Nyk Ake brings an estranged-parent storyline to Nahla, Hunter's central character. DeWitt's Laytha Sadal ties Tarima to Betazed, a planet long established in "Star Trek" lore as the homeworld of the telepathic Betazoid species.

Both actors arrive as the series enters its final run. As Variety exclusively reported in March, Season 2 will be the show's last.

The panel featured Hunter alongside cast members Sandro Rosta, Bella Shepard, Karim Diané and Robert Picardo. Co-showrunners and executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau also appeared.

When does Season 2 premiere?

Paramount+ has set a launch window of March 2027 for the second season. No exact premiere date has been announced. That timeline gives the series roughly a two-year gap from its first-season rollout on the platform.

What happens aboard the USS Athena?

The official Season 2 logline lays out the arc:

• The cadets enter their second year aboard the USS Athena.
• Their "ideals of leadership, friendship, romance and morality are put to the test."
• Storylines include "budding rivalries, shaky diplomatic negotiations" and "a fiercely competitive schoolwide tournament."
• A mysterious new cadet arrives, one "whose existence raises questions that could have consequences far beyond the classroom."

The logline's closing phrase signals the stakes will extend past Starfleet Academy itself.

Why the final-season label matters

Season 2 doubles as the series finale, compressing every storyline the showrunners have built into one eight-episode-scale send-off. For a franchise that spans nearly six decades of television, "Starfleet Academy" will close its chapter in March 2027 with two veteran screen actors, Nighy and DeWitt, joining a cast led by an Academy Award winner in Hunter.

The March 2027 premiere gives Kurtzman and Landau a defined endpoint to resolve the cadets' arcs, the Athena's tournament, and the mystery of the new arrival.