Locutus is Picard's most enduring nemesis - the echo of that violation has followed Picard through the original TNG run, the movies, and into the streaming era. So my first thought was that it'd be kind of kill steal for Shaw to be the one to finally put him down. But. If it comes down to a choice between, say, "killing" Locutus once and for all and going to save Jack, choosing to save Jack would be a big character moment for Picard. Though if Shaw got to take Locutus out, I'd expect it'd be a mutual takedown.
Or maybe whoever/whatever reactivates Locutus did it with the intention of JACK terminating him (Son kills father).
I already wrote this in the episode review. But given the infos from S03E07, Picard could’ve been a hybrid human/changeling ever since the events of the Dominion war. Maybe he was chosen to be the leader of the new changelings, but somehow his borg residue or tbe irumodic syndrome stopped the changeling from overtaking Picards mind. This would make Jack an offspring of a human/changeling/borg hybrid. Now they’re trying to reintegrate him into the great link and take over the minds of all solids. Maybe Tuvok was in fact Tuvok and he just got mentally compromised by the changeling who took over his body. And maybe almost everyone has already been taken over by the changelings. In the very end the crew of the Titan finds (with Jacks help) a cure to separate the changelings from their hosts…
Let’s see Vadic traps and tortures the Titan crew. The La Sirena (Worf and Raffi) swoops, picking up the TNG crew (including Riker and Troi) and the Titan crew (Seven, maybe Shaw) and warps out. Jack got captured by Vadic. The festivities of Frontier Day begins as our heroes head to the Fleet Museum for the restored E-D…
They stole Picard’s biological body, which I would guess still had some dormant Borg nanites that are not present in his cyborg body and he would be only Locutus now since the essence of Picard is in the cyborg. The Genesis machine might be used to revitalize Picard and Kirk. Either that or they need Jack’s blood (maybe containing Borg nanites present in Picard’s sperm and apparently inheritable by his offspring) to revitalize the original Picard/Locutus. Maybe the Changelings will end up getting more than they bargained for if they want a puppet they can use for their own ends and get a Locutus who tries to assimilate them instead.
Y'know - it's just now occurred to me (it may have to others, but I'm sometimes a bit slow on certain things)... Picard was Locutus for long enough, that it should have been an adequate amount of time for the Borg nanites to cure all his ailments, including Iromodic and Shalaft's Syndromes and whatever degenerative brain condition that caused him to die at the end of S1 (was it ever mentioned what that was, or an extension of the other Syndromes?). That was the whole point, and a cornerstone of the Borg's pursuit of "perfection" - a disease-free uni-mind. Shinzon, of course, never would have had the benefit of such a "cure", but Picard should have been perfectly fine later in life. Jack should be also be okay, as he would have been conceived long after BOBW and not received any of Picard's damaged DNA. If there are nanites still in him, I would think that they have continued their original programming of keeping the host body disease-free. Damn. That realization would have killed off a metric ass-ton of plotlines, wouldn't it?
Could his and Jack's irumodic syndrome be a result of the Kataan business from the Inner Light? Maybe that probe was a lot more sinister than it looked, and it was trying to rebuild the Kataan people in the 24th/25th century from within Picard's brain. That's why Jack keeps seeing visions of a network and people asking to connect with him. Doesn't explain why changelings or Vadic's boss would care about any of that though.
I suppose it is possible, with damage caused by some unknown physiological incompatibility between the Kataan probe's signal and the target humanoid's brain structure. However, there really is no on-screen evidence to suggest the probe was anything but a (relatively) benign interstellar time capsule of a dead race -- long-term physical and psychological ramifications of stuffing a lifetime of memories into someone's brain within a matter of minutes notwithstanding. The mileage may vary at the perception of how harmless such a device really is within that context. I doubt any of the writers at the time were looking that far down the rabbit hole with the story. There is, however, well-documented on-screen evidence of Borg nanoprobes healing their hosts (and their ships).
Tinfoil hat (and not in anyway serious) theory: This entire season is a sequal to the TNG episode "Lonely Among Us." The Picard beamed aboard at the end of that episode was not actually Picard at all, but another of the energy beings from the Nebula. It stole Picard's life to escape it's fellows, and we've actually been following the imposter ever since. The Face behind Vadic is actually the consciousness of the real Picard, returned to reclaim his body and take his revenge on the crew that abandoned him. But, learning that his real body has died, Picard Prime now intends to inhabit the body of his dopplegangers' offspring. Jack is a hybrid energy being/human. Beverly learned the truth while dating the Imposter, which is why she cut him out of her/Jack's life. The story will end with Beverly admitting she only ever loved the Imposter, never much liking Original Flavor Picard, and the real Picard will try murder her in a fit of rage. Which will cause Jack to unlock his true powers, banish Picard 1.0 to the astral plane, and evolve into the first Q.
Apologies if anyone has theorized this before, but as I've laid out in the episode discussion tonight, I'm beginning to feel like Jack is not actually Beverly's son. She's gone off the grid because she found Jack on Daystrom Station, cloned by Section 31 from Picard's DNA (as they had discovered the truth about his Irumodic Syndrome decades ago... his body is mainly kept at Daystrom to prevent others from figuring it out too) plus possibly Borg technology, changeling morphogenic enzymes and who knows what else, engineered into the perfect anti-changeling weapon in an attempt to contain Project Proteus. She broke him out and hid him outside the Federation, raising him in secret as her own son.
Seems as fair a bit of speculation as any. That said, speaking purely for myself, if Jack ends up being anything other than what he's been claimed to be thus far (the naturally conceived and honest to goodness child of Beverly and Jean-Luc Picard), I think we can say that Picard has well and truly jumped the shark. Not only would that be dishonest, lazy storytelling, but it would completely invalidate all of the emotional character work from the handful of quality episodes this season. In which case, I sincerely hope not a single one of these writers is ever allowed to work on Star Trek ever again.
The pah wraiths tried to do what the prophets did - have a half-human kid by taking over a human and then mating. Jack is the evil version of Ben Sisko.
I think he's a Pah-Wraith too. Those red eyes... I hope they bring back Sisko... That would be something!