Star Trek can get weird sometimes, especially if you're Harry Kim. The character was done dirty by Voyager repeatedly, including one infamous episode in which he was killed off and replaced permanently by a duplicate. I had a chance to talk to actor Garrett Wang about this bizarre episode, "Deadlock," and his true feelings about how it played out.
As we prepare for upcoming Trek shows on the 2025 TV schedule, I had a chance to speak to Wang about his recent return as Harry Kim on Lower Decks and about some of his past times working on Voyager. This included talking about the time the Prime Timeline's Harry Kim was sucked out of a hull breach and died, and he was replaced by another version of himself from a ship of doppelgängers. Here is how Garrett Wang felt about it at the time:
I thought, ‘What just happened?’ But really, in my logical brain, I kept thinking, ‘OK, he is an exact duplicate of Prime Harry. There's no difference whatsoever.’ So it's fine. I'm OK with it. I'm not gonna think twice about that.
While Wang was miffed that Harry Kim was never promoted on Star Trek: Voyager, this WTF Voyager moment wasn't as big of an issue for him. As he said above, the characters are practically identical, with the same origin and background, so it's not like the other one had to do a ton of work to bring himself up to speed on this new universe. I'm glad to hear that, and I feel like Garrett Wang writing it off makes it easier for me to be alright with the change as a fan of Voyager.
As far as we know, Harry Kim is dead. That said, we've seen more bizarre things happen to Starfleet officers, and sometimes, an assured death isn't as permanent as the viewer thinks. Garrett Wang has a theory that Prime Kim survived being sucked out of the airlock and had a pitch for bringing the character back to the Star Trek universe:
My [imagined] storyline was the Prime Harry that gets sucked in the space is actually beamed aboard a floating Borg sphere that is actually kind of hanging out nearby, and they notice that Voyager is just discarding their youngest officers out of an airlock. And so they beam him aboard, and Borg Kim ends up becoming the secret weapon of the Borg Queen to get Seven of Nine back. So that was my idea for a future storyline of what could have happened.
Sure, Wang has a wild idea, but I can't sit here and act like I wouldn't want to see it. If the much-requested Star Trek: Legacy series ever happens, I would want Prime Borg Kim to be the first big bad that Captain Seven of Nine had to take on in the series. Not only would that be an awesome story, it would also give us another opportunity to see Wang as Kim!
For now, we get a healthy dose of Harry Kim in the Star Trek: Lower Decks episode "Fissure Quest." The episode has made waves for giving us a slew of Harrys from the multiverse, including one who was promoted. Those who haven't seen it yet should fire up that Paramount+ subscription immediately, especially if they're fans of Voyager.
Catch Star Trek: Lower Decks and Voyager on Paramount+, the home for most content from the franchise. With 2025 just around the corner, I'm thrilled to see Section 31 and Strange New Worlds Season 3, and hopefully, we get some other surprise announcements about what's ahead for Trek in the coming years.
