Popverse's top stories of the day

• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Watch: Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]
• Dune: Prophecy's Desmond Hart explained: His secret identity, his past, and his possible future [SPOILERS]

If there’s one thing that longterm Star Trek fans are more than familiar with, it’s change — whether it’s shifting between eras of the franchise, the many different shows and crews to fall in love with, or simply understanding that, sometimes, your favorite characters might die (and then come back to life, if there’s a Genesis planet nearby), change has been a constant in Star Trek for decades… but 2025 is going to bring a level of change even Trek has never seen before.

Launching in March 2025, Star Trek: Lore War is a storyline years in the making, spanning both of IDW Publishing’s monthly Star Trek comic book series — Star Trek and Star Trek: Defiant — as well as a number of one-off tie-in issues. Lore, the possibly-insane android brother of The Next Generation’s Data has achieved godlike powers, and he’s using them to… well, basically recreate the universe as he sees fit. This isn’t going to turn out well for Benjamin Sisko and the crew of the USS Theseus — and it might go even worse for the crew of the stolen USS Defiant, who once counted Lore amongst their number.

"Everything you thought you knew about the Star Trek universe no longer exists,” editor Heather Antos teases about the 2025 comic book event. “The evil android Lore has rewritten the universe and roles have been switched, turned upside-down. Once-captains are now blue collar family men, hero warriors now villainous warlords, and dead mothers are alive and well. Star Trek: Lore War is X-Men's House of M crossed with Secret Wars — no crew is safe from Lore's reach. Even his own."

The storyline begins in Star Trek: Lore War #1, released March 26, 2025, before continuing into the ongoing Star Trek: Defiant and Star Trek series — with Star Trek #31 being the third chapter of the storyline. Why do we mention that particular issue? Because, courtesy of IDW, we have an exclusive look at the variant cover for the issue, courtesy of Megan Levens and Lee Loughridge:

Starting this Spring, 2025 looks set to be Lore’s year. Just get ready to live in it.

Space may be the final frontier, but there's no end to Popverse's love of the Star Trek universe. Hop aboard the starship Enterprise with our Star Trek watch order, explore strange new worlds with our upcoming Star Trek TV shows and movies list, seek out the new life of the franchise, and boldly go where no Star Trek film has ever gone before - with Quentin Tarantino?