Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is leaning even harder into its “anything goes” creative streak for season 4, this time by turning the U.S.S. Enterprise crew into puppets built by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. The reveal happened during the franchise’s Hall H presentation at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, where a teaser video showed Anson Mount’s Captain Christopher Pike “Muppet-ized” in the captain’s chair, complete with that signature hair, and playing the moment for comedy.
According to the official announcement, the puppet installment is a full puppet-themed episode in season 4, with the Enterprise crew portrayed as puppets created by Henson’s famed workshop. The episode is directed by Jordan Canning (known for Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock), which is a pretty perfect match for something this technically specific and tonally weird in the best way.
What’s important here is that this isn’t just a quick visual gag. The showrunners have said the puppet episode demanded its own specialized planning track, with a dedicated puppeteering team and a separate set of production conversations, work they estimate took more than six months to pull off. Cast members who’ve seen what they filmed described it with the kind of “this is insane but joyful” energy you’d expect from a series that already proved it can make big swings land.
If you’ve been watching Strange New Worlds, the puppet-verse leap also fits the pattern. The show has made a point of treating Star Trek like a flexible sandbox rather than one rigid tone: musical ambitions, animation crossovers, mystery-style genre riffs — the works. The season 4 puppet experiment is basically the next escalation of that identity, and it’s being positioned as a real episode with story and stakes, not just a promo stunt.
Timing-wise, season 4 has wrapped production, while season 3 was rolling out on Paramount+ weekly after premiering in July 2025. Reporting tied to the SDCC reveal points to season 4 arriving in 2026, with the puppet episode as one of its headline “event” swings.
