My Borg tweets yesterday about the #StarTrekPicard finale got a lot of questions about the Borg story in season 2 featuring Jurati and what impact that had on the Borg and the queen in season 3. So let’s clarify and sort out what we saw and what it all means.

In 2375, Voyager returned home thanks to the help of Admiral Janeway who infected the Borg Queen with a neurolythic pathogen. The Borg’s transwarp hub was destroyed, and the Collective seemed to go quiet.

Over the next 20 years, there were limited encounters between Starfleet ships and the Borg. The USS Protostar encountered a dormant Borg Cube in the mid-2380s, and at some point a Cube (maybe the same one) is incapacitated after assimilating a Zhat Vash ship.

We now know during this time the Borg Queen was badly injured by Janeway’s pathogen. She began consuming the rest of the Collective to sustain her essence while she waited for her ultimate failsafe plan to become active, and the child of Jean-Luc Picard to fulfill her purpose.

All of this happened, and nothing about the plot of season 2 changes it. The Borg Queen encountered in that season, Jurati’s journey with her, and their Borg Collective, are separate and distinct from the Borg Queen of our timeline.

What does that look like? Q went back in time and changed history by interfering with the Europa Mission at a critical juncture on the road between the Federation and something much darker.

Q made it so that the Picard in the alternate future was the Picard of history before it was altered. In the alternate timeline Picard perceives himself to wake up in, the fascistic Confederation of Planets had destroyed the Borg and captured the Queen.

This alternate timeline Borg Queen merged with Dr. Agnes Jurati after going back in time to 2024 during the events of season 2, and together they decided to found a new Borg Collective based on fellowship and consent rather than forcible assimilation.

With the timeline restored to normal, does this mean they’re the only Borg now? No, absolutely not. They are a new separate and special thing. During the Battle of Wolf 359? These Borg are somewhere else recruiting new members.

Indeed, the Federation doesn’t encounter them until the events of season 2 when they arrive to help the Federation save lives in the face of the opening of a wormhole/transwarp conduit/whatever.

Need more proof? Captain Shaw basically lays all this out with one line in “No Win Scenario.”

“Forget about all that weird shit on the Stargazer. The real Borg are still out there!”

He just didn’t know how close they were.

And so, when Picard and Jack defeat the Borg Collective, they defeat the Collective we first met in “Q Who?” and the Queen we first met in “Star Trek First Contact.”

Meanwhile, the Jurati Borg, or Borgati if you will, are still out there. Being very different from the Borg we’ve met before.

The End.