Shocking Secrets Unveiled: The Untold Fate of Harry Kim in Star Trek: Voyager

Character deaths in TV series often occur due to conflicts between the actor and the showrunner, or the actor moving on to other projects. However, in sci-fi shows like Star Trek, death does not necessarily mean the end for a character, as there are numerous ways to bring them back to life. Ensign Harry Kim from Star Trek: Voyager serves as a prime example of this.

Out of all the characters on Voyager, Garrett Wang's Ensign Harry Kim experienced the most deaths, totaling four. This can be attributed to the inherent dangers of exploring uncharted areas of the galaxy. Serving as an operations officer on Voyager's bridge, Harry often faced the most challenging situations compared to the rest of the crew. Despite being denied the promotion and character development he deserved by the showrunners, Harry Kim managed to maintain a strong fan following throughout the entire run of Star Trek: Voyager.

"Emanations" (Season 1

In one of the initial episodes focused on Harry Kim, a Starfleet ensign, he has a close encounter with death. This particular episode showcases Harry's resourcefulness as Voyager explores the uncharted Delta Quadrant, leading them to encounter various unfamiliar beings and practices. "Emanations" highlights the crew's encounter with a species called the Vhnori and their burial grounds. The Vhnori people place the dying in a type of sarcophagus and transport them to the "next Emanation" through subspace vacuoles. However, the Vhnori are unaware of the destination. As long as Voyager remains near the burial site, bodies appear spontaneously on the ship.

While exploring the burial site within a ring system, the away team decides to beam away to avoid further disturbing the site. During the beaming process, a new vacuole opens and transports Harry to the planet where the bodies originate. As Harry becomes acquainted with Vhnori customs and rituals, he discovers their intention to study him since no one has ever returned from the "next Emanation." Ensign Kim makes the decision to swap places with a man named Hatil, who is destined for the next Emanation.

"Deadlock" (Season 2)

Voyager avoids wasting time dealing with temporal shifts or phase displacements. Instead, whenever something unusual occurs to the ship and its crew, it is often because Captain Janeway chose to investigate an intriguing anomaly. In the 21st episode of Season 2, Harry experiences what can be described as his most "permanent" demise. Unknowingly traversing a time shift, the anomaly creates an identical duplicate of the Voyager vessel and its crew, except both versions share the same antimatter core, leading to a multitude of complications. Adding to the predicament, Ensign Samantha Wildman gives birth to the first Federation child onboard Voyager and in the Delta Quadrant.

Both ships experience power failures and release proton bursts as a means to compensate. Consequently, both Voyagers encounter problems. The burst emitted by one Voyager inflicts severe damage on the other, resulting in multiple breaches in its hull. Unfortunately, Harry Kim, who belongs to what the audience would perceive as the Prime Voyager, becomes an unfortunate victim as he is pulled into the vacuum of space.

After learning about each other's existence, the two Voyagers make an attempt to align their phase variances in order to rejoin as one entity. Regrettably, the situation becomes worse, leading the Janeway from the heavily damaged Prime Voyager to conclude that self-destruction is the only way for one of the ships to survive. The Vidiians, who engage in organ harvesting, disrupt the entire plan, compelling the duplicate Voyager to activate its self-destruct sequence instead.

"Timeless" (Season 5)

Instead of allowing the Vidiians to successfully harvest organs from the entire bridge crew, Captain Janeway of the duplicate Voyager takes proactive measures. She sends Harry Kim from her ship, along with the newly born Naomi Wildman, to the Prime Voyager. There, Harry Kim continues to live the remainder of his days. It is important to note that the Harry Kim and Naomi Wildman who appear throughout the rest of the series are not actually part of the Prime reality.

As implied by the episode's title, time travel is a crucial element in this narrative. Viewers are introduced to an older version of Harry as the show adopts a non-linear approach, seamlessly transitioning between two different time periods. In the past, Harry developed an experimental quantum slipstream drive for the starship Voyager, aiming to propel the crew back to the Alpha Quadrant at an unprecedented speed. The original plan involved Chakotay and Harry piloting a shuttle ahead of Voyager, providing vital course corrections to prevent a potential disaster orchestrated by Tom Paris. The very existence of a future Harry and Chakotay strongly indicates that this catastrophic event did indeed occur.

Due to a miscalculation by Harry, the quantum slipstream drive malfunctioned, causing Voyager to veer off its desired route and crash into an icy planet. Future-Harry's plan was to send an accurate message to past-Harry in order to prevent the crash and save the starship. However, this violated the Temporal Prime Directive and created a conflict between Chakotay, Harry, and Starfleet.

While evading Starfleet and attempting to send the message to the past, the shuttle's warp core overloaded and exploded, resulting in the deaths of Harry and Chakotay. However, Harry managed to successfully send a message to past-Harry, instructing him on how to safely remove the shuttle and Voyager from the slipstream and return to normal space. Although they didn't reach home faster, they were able to preserve their lives.

"Endgame" (Season 7)

Now is not the appropriate moment to criticize the ending of Voyager, although perhaps a small amount of critique is in order. Similar to the episode "Timeless," Voyager's final episode, "Endgame," depicts Admiral Janeway, burdened with guilt, using time travel to rectify certain mistakes that resulted in her and her crew returning to the Alpha Quadrant. These errors also led to the deaths of Seven of Nine and Commander Chakotay. Consequently, the aged Admiral Janeway decides to employ Klingon technology to journey into the past, causing Starfleet, who disapprove of time travel, to pursue her. Captain Harry Kim (finally promoted!) becomes determined to track her down, while the Klingons also chase her due to her theft of their technology.

After much persuasion, Harry eventually grants Janeway permission to proceed. The last sight Harry has of her is watching Janeway vanish into a temporal vortex, where she ultimately sacrifices herself to the Borg in order to ensure the safe return of her crew with no casualties. In this instance, Harry does not die onscreen; instead, his demise is more metaphorical, as he "dies" along with the rest of his timeline, erased by Janeway's time-traveling endeavor.