Star Trek Unveils First Look At New Villain Species

Published Oct 5, 2026, 9:30 PM EDT

Nicolas Ayala is a Senior Writer for the Comics team at ScreenRant, with over five years of experience writing about Superhero media, action movies, and TV shows. 

The next major Star Trek antagonist comes one step closer to revealing their real appearance. Despite the franchise's low-budget origins, dozens of extraterrestrial beings and alien species have established themselves as recurring threats. Among the wildest beings are the Tholians, who require extreme temperatures exceeding two hundred degrees Celsius to survive, which causes their physical bodies to crack when exposed to room-temperature conditions. The Tholians communicate through high-frequency clicks and sensor telemetry, and during ship combat, they coordinate multiple vessels to create energy-weaving containment grids around targeted starships, trapping their enemies.

Even stranger than the Tholians, the Borg are the single most dangerous antagonists in Star Trek. The cybernetic hive mind seeks to achieve perfection through the forcible assimilation of biological life and technology, and they strip away their victims' personal identity to turn individuals into drones. Captives are forced to fight their former crewmates, and all diplomacy fails to do anything against the Borg's single-minded directive, so their opponents are left facing a mechanical swarm that renders most combat strategies futile in seconds.

Parallel to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy's uncharted planets and new characters, the franchise explores new corners of the universe with the arrival of a brand-new antagonist.

Star Trek #4; Written By Christopher Cantwell; Art By Dennis Menheere

IDW Entertainment's Star Trek takes place fourteen million light-years from home, far beyond the known quadrants, where Captain Seven of Nine commands the Enterprise-G in uncharted territories. Naturally, Captain Seven and her crew are bound to cross paths with unprecedented antagonists, primarily the Hidden, first teased in Marco Rudy's variant cover for Star Trek #4. The artwork features a massive monolithic silhouette behind a distressed Seven, its void-like face opening directly into an expanse full of stars as angled neon-orange slits above concentric red energy lines tease the Hidden's actual physical appearance.

Narrative clues in this issue hint at a dire situation for the Enterprise-G crew, as the Enterprise's warp drives fail and all dilithium chambers empty instantaneously. The Hidden's void-like form suggests an even bigger danger, as it might have unprecedented control over physics, possibly being able to fold space or seal off travel corridors like the Epsilon Corridor. The severe distress on Seven of Nine's face in Marco Rudy's Star Trek #4 variant cover points toward brutal space-time attacks, or at least sensory overloads, that could incapacitate anybody in the Hidden's path. In other words, Starfleet may be confronting one of the most powerful Star Trek antagonists to date.

Star Trek Has Left The Bar High For Villains

Star Trek's Antagonists Welcome A New Standout Villain

Antagonists in Star Trek range from complex political figures to surreal forces of the universe. Species 8472 presents nightmare terrors from fluidic space that crush fleet defenses effortlessly, while the Founders of the Dominion take the opposite approach, exploiting their shapeshifting biology to infiltrate enemy governments from within, and nuanced individual foes like Gul Dukat use nothing but charm to mask their authoritarian ambition. Sixty real-world years' worth of lore sets an exceptionally high bar for any new villain entering Star Trek's extensive lore.

Even with their true nature still cloaked in mystery, the Hidden already have the qualities they needed to stand out among Star Trek's countless other threats. Star Trek's new setting, fourteen million light-years away from Earth, breaks free from the franchise's typical disputes. Far away from all other villains, the Hidden present themselves as a mysterious void-like being, with vibrant energy lines that may represent an unknown type of energy, and their terrifying ability to drain dilithium chambers renders advanced starships utterly helpless. Although the Hidden's ultimate motives are still unconfirmed, these early glimpses promise a truly unique enemy in a franchise already famous for its villains.

What do you expect from the Hidden?

Star Trek #4 is available January 20 from IDW Entertainment