Star Trek: Lower Decks prides itself on embracing the various supporting figures from earlier Star Trek shows. The animated series typically brings back ensigns and underlings for a curtain call, as well as an update on their status in Starfleet or elsewhere. Sonya Gomez, for example, captains her own ship in Season 2, Episode 10, “First First Contact.” This comes after she famously spilled hot chocolate on Captain Picard as a lowly ensign in Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2, Episode 16, “Q Who.”
Of all such characters, however, none rose higher in the Star Trek universe than Rom and Leeta, the erstwhile employees of Quark’s bar from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. They fell in love on the eve of The Dominion War, and departed the space station at the end of the series after Rom was named Grand Nagus, the de facto ruler of The Ferengi Alliance. The trailer for Lower Decks Season 4 promises to check in on them, and may provide a telling glimpse of how much things have changed on Ferenginar since they arrived.
Leeta and Rom Were Deep Space Nine’s Star-Crossed Lovers
Rom is Quark’s long-suffering brother, a failure at business who works as a repairman and waiter in his sibling’s bar. Leeta works there as a dabo girl, which is an attractive woman (of various species) paid to wear a tight dress and distract the players from the game. Both of them creep into Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on little cat’s feet, with Rom present more or less as a background character in the series premiere. Leeta also first appears as Doctor Bashir’s romantic interest in Season 3, Episode 22, “Explorers.” They fall in love and get engaged during the series’ fifth season, as The Dominion plans an invasion of The Alpha Quadrant: making them de facto stand-ins for ordinary people caught up in a much larger conflict.
In true Lower Decks fashion, both are much more than they seem. Leeta is an amateur sociologist and her time at the dabo table makes her an astute observer of human nature. While Rom is a terrible financier, he’s a brilliant engineer, eventually quitting Quark’s and joining the Bajoran militia where he excels. Indeed, he quietly saves the entire Alpha Quadrant in Season 5, Episode 26, “Call to Arms” by conceiving the self-replicating mines to seal off the wormhole from the invaders. He’s also uncommonly kind for a Ferengi, which may be why Leeta finds him so attractive. He supports his son Nog joining Starfleet and adores his mother Moogie, who’s busy undermining the Ferengi’s systemic misogyny.
That makes them both the effective rulers of The Ferengi Alliance in Season 7, Episode 24, “The Dogs of War,” as Moogie marries the existing Grand Nagus Zek and convinces him to step aside in favor of Rom. The show also suggests that big changes are coming with them. Rom possesses a text — written by Zek under the influence of the wormhole Prophets in Season 3, Episode 16, “Prophet Motive” — that’s basically the Ferengi version of The Communist Manifesto. With Rom now ruling the Alliance, his species’ predatory capitalism may be in for a systemic shock.
Lower Decks Reveals Leeta and Rom as Ferenginar’s Power Couple
The couple is slated to return in Lower Decks Season 4, and trailer speaks volumes about them despite just a second or two of screen time. It depicts a blissful Rom swinging the Grand Nagus’s cane like Johnny Carson with a golf club while Leeta stands behind him with a datapad and a knowing smile. The former is the face, the latter the brains, and with the Bajoran clearly in a powerful position, Ferenginar’s systemic sexism has already started to crumble.
Lower Decks will doubtless reveal more details about how The Alliance has changed with a reform-minded former waiter on the throne. But their very presence on the series continues the show’s wonderful tradition of giving supporting characters their proper due. None climbed so high from such humble roots as these two.
Season 4 of Star Trek: Lower Decks premieres Sept. 7, 2023 on Paramount+.