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The upcoming fifth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks is the end of the series on Paramount+… unless it isn’t. During the extensive Star Trek Universe panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, producer Alex Kurtzman and showrunner and series creator Mike McMahan offered no small amount of hope to fans who want to keep the USS Cerritos flying for some time to come.

After debuting the trailer for the fifth season — launching October 24 — two different fans asked questions about the future of the show. Firstly, it was asked if audiences should expect a level of closure on the final episode, similar to the time jump seen in the final episode of Star Trek: Discovery, and McMahan said that he had very deliberately not made a similar move. “You’re going to get a closure that feels like the end of a chapter, but you’re not going to get closure that feels like the end of the Cerritos and these characters,” he said.

That was immediately followed by someone asking if there was any way fans could help the show return for a sixth season, to which McMahan suggested “watch the hell out of this season when it airs and be very vocal.” (He also joked that he’d have more to say when he doesn’t work directly for Paramount+ anymore.) Alex Kurtzman, executive producer of the show, had a more practical (and surprising) answer: “Watch it twice, because actually, it does register.” He suggested watching an episode, and then just starting it over, “even if you don’t actually watch it, because it counts” in terms of the algorithms that decide such things.

There was another suggestion that both McMahan and Kurtzman made: decision makers pay attention to fan petitions. “Look what you did for Prodigy!” yelled Kurtzman, pointing to the fact that the cancelled series was picked up by Netflix after Paramount+ ended it after the first season.

Now you have your orders, Lower Decks fans. Get ready to make something happen October 24, when Star Trek: Lower Decks returns.

Get a fuller San Diego Comic-Con experience with a full rundown of our SDCC 2024 stories, as well as all the big SDCC 2024 news, how to make the most out of San Diego Comic-Con, and the real burning question: how much does it actually cost to go to SDCC?