10 Star Trek Twists You Never Saw Coming

Season One of Discovery was notably more sombre than we had come to expect for Star Trek. A lot of this darker tone came from the top: Captain Gabriel Lorca. There was a reason for this. Lorca was, in fact, from the Mirror Universe and had taken over the life (and perhaps taken the life) of his Prime counterpart. Sure, some fans spotted this a mile off, but many were left wondering until the last moment.

The big reveal didn’t come until the twelfth episode of the season, Vaulting Ambition, but it had been telegraphed throughout. There was his relationship with Michael Burnham, recruiting her from prison after saving her life, and doting on her from then on. It turned out Lorca had had a more…intimate relationship with mirror Burnham.

Lorca equally seemed to have a few gaps in his memory regarding his past with Admiral Cornwell, and she noticed a change in his personality. He slept with a phaser under his pillow, and, at the same time, we see a triangular scar on his back (from an agonizer). Lorca’s un-Starfleet approach to all-things is also as glaring as his sensitivity to light.

The actor, Jason Isaacs, delighted in the duplicity of the role. When asked by Entertainment Weekly what the twist meant for Prime Lorca’s fate, he jokingly replied (almost in character), "I’ve lied to all of the press constantly since the very first day […]. So why would you believe anything I say now?"