Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 Episode 3 Ending Explained: Enterprise Gets New Human Best Friends

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4, Episode 3 - "Human Best Friend"Lieutenant Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) and Lieutenant Montgomery Scott (Martin Quinn) go from enemies to human best friends in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4's balls-to-the-wall mock-up of The Hangover. Directed by Yana Gorskaya and written by Kathryn Lyn, "Human Best Friend" is like coming out of a drunken stupor into an even weirder and wonderful fever dream.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 3 is essentially a two-hander for Scotty and Erica, who stumble through an increasingly absurd scavenger hunt quest during the USS Enterprise alpha team's shore leave on Cesnar, a resort planet with an intoxicating atmosphere to put guests at ease. Aiding the bickering lieutenants is Dendru (Dave Foley), the resort's oddball host.

Among the compounding crises facing the hungover Ortegas and Scotty were finding their missing shuttle, discovering why important peace talks with the Rodaxians were moved up from two weeks to two hours, and, most important of all, coming to terms with why the Starship Enterprise's pilot and engineer shared mutual animosity.

Understanding the ending of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' "Human Best Friend" is our journey.

Scotty & Ortegas Save The Rodaxian Peace Talks & Become Human Best Friends

The heartwarming endgame of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4, episode 3 is Scotty and Erica Ortegas becoming human best friends. At odds throughout the episode, Erica and Scotty realize how alike they are: a pair of screw-ups with embarrassing failures at Starfleet Academy. For Ortegas, Scotty was a reflection of her own inadequacies, and he, in turn, resented her hostility and retaliated accordingly.

Every bizarre mystery Scotty and Ortegas encounter related to finding their missing shuttle in "Human Best Friend" is tied to the Rodaxian peace talks. While everyone assumed Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) rescheduled the conference, Chris was too far gone from Cesnar's psychedelics to have done it. The true culprit was a Rodaxian militant saboteur who was against peace between his people and the United Federation of Planets.

After Scotty found a bomb on their shuttle, he and Ortegas flew it away from the Starship Enterprise. An "incapacitated" Lieutenant Spock (Ethan Peck) and the human best friend the Vulcan believed was hallucinating, Lt. Commander James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley), beamed the Lieutenants back aboard just in the nick of time as the bomb exploded. Scotty's thumb was severed, but they were otherwise fine.

The saboteur's bomb backfired and ended up saving Captain Pike's disastrous performance hosting the peace conference. The hostile aliens mistook the explosion and resulting fireworks as the Rodaxians' ancient formal rite of peace. Impressed by Pike's commitment to their culture, the Rodaxians reversed course and peace with the Federation was successfully negotiated.

However, the truly important peace that was forged in "Human Best Friend" was between Erica and Scotty. The USS Enterprise's helmsman and engineer feuding was an interesting twist to the starship's usual harmony. The Lieutenants becoming friends is pure Star Trek, which has always espoused turning enemies into friends.

"Human Best Friends" is also a winning showcase for Melissa Navia and Martin Quinn as a comedy duo. Whether bickering or palling around, Scotty and Ortegas are an on-screen dream team, and they now join Star Trek's proud pantheon of best friends... including Kirk and Spock.

Spock Tells Kirk All Of His Secrets

The prevalent B-story in "Human Best Friend" belongs to Spock, who spent the whole episode believing that he was hallucinating Lt. Commander James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley). Playing board games and getting warm hugs from Kirk while he was "incapacitated," Spock was shocked when Kirk, his human best friend, revealed that he was real all along. What was really happening with Kirk?

Piecing together the reality of Kirk in "Human Best Friend," we have to take James at his word that he was also vacationing on Cesnar when he "ran into" Spock. From there, the duo spent all their time together in Spock's room while the Vulcan thought he was hallucinating Jim. Spock's logic was fried by Cesnar's intoxicating air to the point where he only saw Ortegas and Scotty as plants.

Accepting the all-too-convenient plot absurdity that Kirk just happened to be on shore leave at the same place at the same time, and then independently followed Spock back aboard the Enterprise, Kirk was evidently messing with his Vulcan best friend the whole time, out of Scotty and Ortegas' eyeshot. Meanwhile, it's unclear if Cesnar's atmosphere also warped Kirk's mind, or why not if it didn't.

Still, Kirk found hanging with an unguarded Spock irresistible. Certainly, James was not going to leave once Spock confessed his "secrets" to him. Spock only did so believing he was safely bearing his soul to his imaginary "human best friend," and the Vulcan Science Officer was understandably alarmed when he realized he told the real Kirk "everything."

What secrets, exactly, did Spock tell Kirk? Because if the inebriated Vulcan told his future Captain "everything," that would presumably include facts Kirk, canonically, isn't supposed to know, like that Ambassador Sarek is his father, he has a half-brother named Sybok, and his adopted sister, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), vanished 930 years into the future.

However, Spock also mentioned he unloaded his "fears, hopes and dreams" on Kirk, so perhaps what the troubled Vulcan confessed was more personal about himself, specifically, rather than factoids about his estranged family and Memory Alpha-style details.

Maybe what Spock revealed was his true feelings about his inner conflict between his human and Vulcan sides, and his despair over his romances with T'Pring (Gia Sandhu), Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush), and Lt. La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), their mutual. "Secrets" about La'an alone would certainly be enticing enough for Kirk to stick around.

Pike’s Enterprise Crew Needed Their Shore Leave Journeys

The USS Enterprise's alpha shift was in desperate need of their shore leave vacation on a resort planet. Captain Pike had kept his crew relentlessly on duty for over six months, and everyone was frayed at the edges. While each Enterprise crew member played their part in Scotty and Ortegas' investigation, each character's bizarre and comedic story also revealed why their states of mind required R&R.

High from Cesnar's intoxicating atmosphere, Captain Pike forgot mourning Captain Marie Batel (Melanie Scrofano) and the pressures of leading tense diplomacy with the Rodaxians. Instead, Pike decided to get a face tattoo for... reasons that probably made sense to Chris when he was high. Pike also sleeved his arm, allowing Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to show Anson Mount's real-life ink.

Commander Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn) is perpetually tightly-wound and was forced to be even more in control since Captain Pike was showing signs of physical and emotional fatigue. Una's shore leave let her cut loose and belt out Klingon power ballads. ("Total Eclipse of the Heart" might actually be better in the original Klingon.)

Dr. Joseph M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Nurse Christine Chapel were also falling apart before they got to Cesnar. The high-as-a-kite M'Benga indulged his secret skill (or lack thereof) at being a flashy bartender like Tom Cruise in Cocktail. Meanwhile, Chapel finally had some fun by going nuts playing intergalactic bingo and picking fights with old ladies who were space vampires.

Lt. La'an Noonien-Singh has been harboring her secret fears that her now-active augment DNA is negatively affecting her, but the resort world's psychedelics only brought out La'an's "even scarier" aggressiveness. Noonien-Singh went from pummeling ambo-juitsu students to taking over a group of ruffians and leading gang wars.

The Starship Enterprise crewmember who needed to shed her inhibitions the most was Ensign Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding). The resort planet brought out the party girl Uhura that Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome) knew was there all along. It was a refreshing twist for the work-oriented Communications Officer to be free of her responsibilities and only care about her "journey."

Erica Ortegas and Scotty actually became friends before the end of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' "Human Best Friend." High from inhaling "the dragon" intended for the whole resort, Erica and a Mugato costume-wearing Scotty were adorably buds as they stumbled upon the Rodaxian saboteur's secret plot and recorded a video for their future selves. They're the two best human best friends that anyone could have.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 4's new episodes premiere Thursdays on Paramount+.