Star Trek Picard: Every Easter Egg & Hidden Reference From 'Maps And Legends'

Back on "The Artifact", Soji meets Naáshala Kunamadéstifee (not a typo), a Trill also assigned to work on the former Borg death machine, now the Romulan Reclamation Site. Kunamadéstifee is the same race as Deep Space Nine's Jazia and Ezri Dax. There are numerous other aliens in the cube, including a few Andorians (see TOS: "Journey to Babel" and General Shran in Star Trek: Enterprise).

Narek tells Kunamadéstifee that the cube was intentionally separated from the Borg Collective following submatrix collapse. This fairly mundane description seems to indicate that the Borg are still around and kicking, despite the destruction of their transwarp hub in Voyager's series finale "Endgame". Apparently that was just another temporary setback in the Borg's long history of (momentary) defeats.

The Romulans (part of the Romulan Free State now that the Romulan Star Empire has fallen) are stripping the cube for its valuable cybernetic technology. This includes the tech physically attached to former drones (X-Bs), which is surgically removed in a procedure a lot gooier and bloodier than when we previously saw this operation in Voyager's "The Gift".

Lieutenant Rizzo, aka Romulan Zhat Vash agent disguised as a human, comes to visit her brother, Narek, on the cube via holographic communicator. Holo-communicators were used sparingly in Trek's 24th century, most notably in the DS9 episodes "For the Uniform" and "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", but were a big thing in the 23rd century as seen in Star Trek: Discovery. The hologram seen here (and in DS9) is more advanced than in Discovery, which used a much more Star Wars-style hologram effect, fitting the hundred difference in technology.

Apparently Rizzo, Oh, and the Zhat Vash are after a "nest" of synthetic lifeforms. So what or who's in this nest? More Dahj and Sojis? More Datas, Lores, and B-4s? Maybe even Data's old android mom. It's a thing, see TNG's "Inhertiance".