Star Trek: 10 Things We Now Know About The Breen

Within ten minutes or so of Star Trek: Discovery's fifth season opener Red Directive, we'd already met L'ak and Moll, our antagonists with a heart and a cause. As they both demasked aboard the Romulan vessel, L'ak's features transformed from translucent CGI to solid prosthetics. We'd already seen the two faces of the Breen — for the first time ever — we just didn't know it yet!

It wasn't until the flashback sequences in Mirrors that we got to learn more about the two possible sides of the Breen. For the time being, these are generally being called the 'fluid' and 'solid' faces. In the second flashback to the Breen station, Moll asks L'ak to show her what he looks like, i.e. to show her his "other face," not his solid-face. L'ak appears uncomfortable and hesitates at first, saying, "It's just… It's not… me."

After Moll points out that both faces are a part of him, L'ak agrees to remove his mask, and we see his 'fluid' face again. This is all highly speculative at this point, and refrigeration or not, but perhaps the Breen suits serve as some form of containment vessel for their fluidic state? Otherwise, do they quickly turn solid? Maybe we're not talking solid versus liquid either, but more like solid versus Bose-Einstein or even Fermionic condensate? Now that's cold!!

When L'ak's uncle arrives on the scene, he also removes his helmet to reveal his fluidic form. "This… is Breen," he states rather categorically. Uncle Ruhn goes on to say that for L'ak to choose to maintain a solid form as he does is "an insult to [his] heritage". Heritage in this case means "the genetic code of the Yod-Thot," meaning "they who rule" and no doubt more so L'ak's direct line of descent from the dead emperor. For Ruhn, the Breen have "evolved" beyond "the need" for their solid-state form, and to hold it "makes you unfocused, inflexible and weak." L'ak gives a spirited defence, but he appears to be an outlier for believing that, as he puts it, "Both faces are part of us. If we deny half our nature, we deny it all."

Ultimately, as we saw in Erigah, L'ak quite literally spits in the face of Breen social dynamics and genetics, marked by his choice to use his solid face. Marked also, and equally literally, by his branded union — "marriage" — to Moll, called "an abomination" by Ruhn. Now that he's dead, the Progenitors' tech is his and Moll's only hope. Live long and L'ak?