Only thing i'm certain of is that Narek won't die, because i think it's very likely that his character ark will be about redeeming himself and joining Picard's crew at some point. Which may bring an interesting dynamic into play with Elnor, who as a de facto Qowat Milat is supposed to be his mortal enemy. If someone dies in this season, it's most likely Narissa. She has absolutely no redeeming qualities and i guess she will be defeated at the end of this season.
That would make better ending to me as well. I always had hoped that Jaime Lannister would've survived in 'Game of Thrones' as beneath his family name and evil deeds he had done earlier, he has many redeeming qualities, while I don't mind seeing Cersei died a very horrible death for all the evil things she did. Alas, it didn't turned that way in GoT series finale (at least in D&D's interpretation). Here's hoping Narek, the 'Jaime' of the Picard-verse - would have had a much better fate .
The show absolutely could carry on with the new characters, in the same way that just about every other Star Trek show there has ever been was carried by brand new characters from the start. None of them had established characters from previous shows, nor was anything of the kind required. This show could absolutely do likewise. That said, however, if that was the intention, I think the show would have been structured very differently than it is. If the intention was to write Picard out and have the new characters carry the show forward, they would all be far more prominent than they have been so far. As it is, the show is built very much around Picard's story and the plot arc that took him on this journey, with the new characters not really getting a great deal of individual focus so far, in comparison. So, if the plan was to keep the show going beyond Stewart's involvement, there would be a lot more groundwork to lay before that could happen.
Most TV shows start and carry on with a bunch of newbie characters. Every single Star Trek show except PIC did.
Some would say, that Discovery would even be better off without it's main lead... some... yeah... definitely not me... yeah...
A) I hope not, because she's hawt! B) The qualities you mention are just why she should return. They need one unredeemable character like that, especially if Narek is redeemed. Eventually one sibling will have to kill the other.
But those are two different things. Just because a person/ villain is more than one-note, doen't make them redeemable. For example, I would hate it if they (the crew/ show) forgave Jurati and Narek and basically accept them as good guys who just believed in the wrong things (or even the right things) and... oops. I'm prepared that this is exactly what will happen. You know, if the only alternative is lynching the murderer by a vigilante, I might actually prefer that!
I would be very surprised if they killed off any of the LEAD legacy characters (Picard, Seven, Will, Deanna). But my money's on any combination of Jurati, Oh, Narek and Rizzo.
DSC would be better if they knew how craft a decent, thematically-stable plot. But I digress. 'Cause this ain't the place to discuss that.
He'll appear in ghost form and speak to Elnor, imparting words of cryptic wisdom. "The Borg Queen is more machine than woman."
I don't want to derail the thread by debating the tangent of a tangent. I'll just say that it needn't have been structured as a continuation, they could have invented entirely new characters for the main ones (and almost did), but they opted not to, and leave it at that.
But before the retronyms were added, both shows were simply titled Star Trek. And animated continuations of live action shows were pretty common in the '70s.