WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 6 of Star Trek: Picard, "The Impossible Box," now streaming on CBS All Access.
Up to this point, Star Trek: Picard has contained heightened drama, mind-bending twists, and pulse-pounding action. Now the CBS All Access show brings in a romantic element, with a surprising fling between main characters Agnes Jurati and Cristóbal Rios.
Their encounter comes near the beginning of "The Impossible Box," the most recent episode of the sci-fi series. Passing the time before arriving at the Borg cube Artifact, Rios occupies himself by dribbling a soccer ball. Jurati enters the scene, emotionally distraught yet distant from the death of her colleague and former lover, Bruce Maddox.
"Why do you like space?" she asks the brooding pilot. "It’s cold, it’s empty, and it wants to kill you." Before he can let out a meaningful answer, she pulls him in for a kiss, a tender moment between the two characters.
Though they then banter back and forth about the experience of sleeping with a captain, Jurati begins to physically and emotionally pull away from Rios. Her self-proclaimed superpower is sensing mistakes as she's making them, but they both agree that prowess is useless in the throes of passion. When digging deeper, she talks about her current state of mind, which is not too dissimilar from her thoughts on space.
"I feel hollow, hopeless," she says, "lonely, afraid." On that last word, she grabs Rios again for a kiss, with an almost panic to her physicality. Her efforts renewed, she wordlessly takes his hand, leading him to the bedroom and hopefully to a place where she can escape the existentialism surrounding her.
It's safe to say nobody saw a relationship between Jurati and Rios coming, though the two shared a couple of scenes since they became part of Picard's mission to rescue android Soji from the clutches of the Romulans. An early scene in Episode 4 has her interrupting his reading to talk about the surprising boredom with the emptiness of space. And in Episode 5, Rios helps Jurati fight her way out of a pesky holographic advertisement on the way to Freecloud, and she playfully punches him in return. However, these interactions seemed to highlight more of a brother/sister relationship, less of a romantic one.
Given Jurati's recent turn, though, it makes sense why she found himself in the arms of a man who enjoys reading about the "existential pain living with the consciousness of death and how it defines us as human beings." The end of Episode 5 had the series' biggest twist to date. Alone with Maddox, Jurati tells him she must atone for her assistance in creating Soji and her twin sister Dahj, killing him through a flurry of tears. It is assumed she was brought into the anti-android conspiracy with the Zhat Vash cabal and select members of Starfleet before coming aboard the La Sirena.
When Jurati finds Rios with that soccer ball, she's in an extremely vulnerable place. She's a fish out of water in so many ways, both as an Earth native in space for the first time and a scientist trying to play the role of a double agent. Something she was a key part in creating may serve as the destroyer of an entire race, if not the galaxy, completely changing her worldview about the good she was doing. And she had to snuff out someone she loves when she was most vulnerable, officially getting blood on her hands. Rios, who carries his own issues from a troubled past, seems like the most understanding soul for her in this time of need.
The aforementioned scene is the only time the coupling is referenced, save a moment later when the candid Elnor senses a distinct tension between them during a briefing. And for all this postulating, it could have just been a flash in the pan hookup, something for Jurati to indulge in when she felt most vulnerable. But more likely than not, this is a connection she can use to her advantage.
Now that her motives have been revealed, if Jurati is indeed working with the Zhat Vash, her mission will involve helping destroy Soji and any other synths they can find. She could try to recruit Rios to her cause to ambush Soji from another side. Or she can exploit his position as captain to overthrow Picard and spoil his rescue mission. Whatever's to come, her romantic fling with Rios is yet another chapter in the complicated novel that is Agnes Jurati.
Star Trek: Picard stars Patrick Stewart, Alison Pill, Michelle Hurd, Evan Evagora, Isa Briones, Santiago Cabrera and Harry Treadaway. A new episode arrives each Thursday on CBS All Access.