I'm speculating based on all of the released materials we have, just as (I assume) everyone else is. Hence why I noted that I'm expecting these things, and that I am presuming.
Oh is presumably one of them? A woman who looks like a young Oh was seen in the initiation rite trailer.
Oh I hope not... though part of me wants to see the meltdown on the forums if Control and Discovery are brought into Picard somehow. I'll be on the front lines leading the charge
I thought the theory already was it's Control again re: those visions Oh gave to Jurati. I'm referring back to the theory the Borg and Control are connected, or end up connected. That would be the Resurgence Of The Borg™, being supplimented by Control to become an all new threat.
This is definitely something I'm curious about in Picard, how much of a threat the Borg actually are now. That one scientist (I think in the second episode) seemed to be nervous that the artifact could reconnect with the collective, and the whole thing with those indicator lights and if they change color you should run...so the Borg still seem to be some kind of a threat. But at the end of Voyager, the ship made it back to the Alpha Quadrant with all the Borg upgrades Seven had made, plus the anti-Borg tech that Admiral Janeway brought from the future, so theoretically the Federation should be much better equipped to face them. Normally I wouldn't expect any of this to be touched upon, however Kirsten Beyer doesn't seem to be shying away from the Voyager references in Picard so I can't believe this isn't something the writers are thinking about.
And those sparks look like welding, i.e. they are fixing the ship! Shit is going down in this episode
The Borg are still a threat. I'm hoping, somehow, the writers can hand wave the events of Voyager so that the Borg did a "self-correction" and stopped being controlled by a singular entity chasing petty ambitions and coming up with dumb ass plans to assimilate Earth in the past etc
I would expect that they have had the best part of 20 years to analyze the tech used by Voyager from scans of the ship & weapons etc so by this point unless that tech has been developed further it may be useless as they will have adapted.
They are a threat but not to the extent that we saw at Wolf 359, technology has moved on and some of it was inspired by the Borg themselves. I don't think we will see any ablative armor or transphasic torpedoes as they would make the Borg a joke, which they most definitely are not. The Borg cube filled with XB's could end up being allies of Picard (he called them victims not monsters), depending on what Seven does in the episode. The danger is that the Borg could send more Cubes if a connection is re-established but I don't think that is the direction the show is going to take. There is still the possibility we may get slapped with Control again but that is one possibility among many, Burnham does have the suit so she or Georgiou could go back and warn the Vulcans before the schism, alternatively similarities in the visual imagery could just be coincidence. That is the problem when you start messing with time, you can pretty much do or undo anything.
I do hope that the show makes the Borg a big threat again. And I think the best way to do that would be to show that the Borg have adapted to the transphasic torpedo and ablative armor tech that Voyager brought back. After all, the greatest strength of the Borg is their ability to adapt quickly. Having Starfleet easily defeat a single Borg cube would be a terrible idea because it would wussify the Borg even more. A single Borg cube should be very difficult to defeat. It should require a large fleet of ships to even have a chance at stopping it. That would make the Borg menacing again. And in terms of ground combat, Borg drones should be like zombies that just keep coming and coming and are very difficult to stop. After all, the Borg are basically technological zombies.