Star Trek: 10 Best Odo Episodes

The third season opens with the two-parter The Search, in which the brand new shiny USS Defiant is issued to the crew of DS9, along with a Romulan engineer and a brand new head of Starfleet Security, Michael Eddington. Odo, annoyed by his apparent ousting, accompanies the Defiant on its mission into the Gamma Quadrant to discover more about the Dominion. When there, he finds himself drawn increasingly towards the Omarion Nebula although he cannot explain why.

As the Defiant pushes further and further into Dominion space, they are hunted and attacked, having to leave behind crew members and suffer critical damage. Odo takes Kira onto an escape shuttle and leaves the Defiant to its fate, heading deeper into the Omarion Nebula. When there, they find a planet with a truly massive lake upon it, a lake made from the Great Link, Odo's own people. He is overjoyed to have found them, to have the chance not to be an outsider anymore, to reunite with those that sent him out into the stars.

But all is not as it seems. The Great Link reveal that they are The Founders, the masters of the Dominion and that they are responsible for enslaving majority of the Gamma Quadrant. Odo, his joy crushed and his heart damaged, decides that it is best to remain with his friends.

While clearly an important story for Odo, this two-parter also brings the sheer threat of the Dominion into a much grander scale. While the audience saw how dangerous the Jem'Hadar were in the previous episode, now they have to contend with whom they serve.