Patrick Stewart Memes Taught the Whole Internet How to Facepalm

I have used Patrick Stewart’s face to say “I can’t believe you did that” more times than I’ve said it out loud, and I never once thanked him. Patrick Stewart passed on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles at 86, after a career that gave us Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Professor Charles Xavier. Patrick Stewart memes have been a second language online for about as long as there’s been an online, so it feels right to say thank you in that language.

The Facepalm Became a Universal Language

Chelsea Manning isn’t exaggerating by much. The Picard facepalm comes from a 1990 episode called Déjà Q, and it has since been used to react to roughly every bad decision humans have made. Fight Club fans, parents, people checking their bank balance. He covers all of us.

My favorite part is that he did it in real life too. At a 2012 convention, a fan got down on one knee to propose in the middle of a photo op with Stewart and his castmates, and the camera caught the captain mid-facepalm.

Why Do Annoyed Picard Memes Work for Literally Everything?

Annoyed Picard is the other half of the starter kit. One arm out, palm up, face completely done with you. It works on constellations, on loneliness, on reminding you to drink water, and it works because Stewart could make exasperation look dignified, which I have never once managed.

And then somebody rewatching the show in HD noticed what he was actually doing in that shot. According to that rewatcher, the most famous disgusted face online came from a classically trained Shakespearean reciting a sonnet, which is the most Patrick Stewart sentence I can think of.

Make It So, Forever

“Make it so” was Picard’s way of saying “do the thing,” and a whole branch of Patrick Stewart memes adopted it for birthdays, New Year’s resolutions and snow days. Stewart leaned in, too. When he wrote his memoir in 2023, he called it Making It So.

The make it so meme also got the full fan-edit treatment, including a snow-day version and one where the entire bridge crew is a Smurf. I didn’t know I needed Picard to be blue until today.

Did Anyone Enjoy Being the Joke More Than He Did?

This is the part of the Patrick Stewart memes story people keep sharing today. He was in on it. He told Top Gear it must be a terrible show if he was its most famous guest, joked on late-night TV about announcing he’s a socialist at fancy Beverly Hills dinner parties, and let Stephen Colbert ask whether he bathes in the blood of the innocent to stay young.

He also helped the Count on Sesame Street with his numbers, and he wore the rainbow socks that now get posted every time somebody claims older people can’t change. Ian McKellen called him the most respected and beloved actor of his generation. The internet would add funniest.

The Bridge Crew Got Memed Right Alongside Him

Picard was never alone up there, and plenty of the best star trek memes are really about the crew: Riker’s beard, Worf’s opinions on food, Wesley being Wesley. Somebody even swapped Picard’s and Riker’s faces, and I’m sorry to say I have seen it now.

Some of them land closer to the heart. The Tumblr post about losing without making a mistake still gets reblogged by people having a hard week, and the sci-fi versus fantasy joke is right: both genres were, for years, just Patrick Stewart in a chair giving orders.

And then there’s the fan art with Q telling Picard it’s time to go. I made it about four seconds before I had to put my phone down.

Somewhere right now, someone is posting a facepalm, and he’d tell you that’s a perfectly good way to be remembered.

I’ll admit I spent most of this afternoon rewatching old bridge scenes instead of working. Where I ended up after that was 42 Star Trek Memes That Will Kobayashi Maru You, then 30 Star Trek Memes To Beam Into Your Day, and finally 40 Sci-Fi Memes That Will Make You Proud to Be a Nerd. Engage.