It's a Protostar-class vessel, as she correctly calls it. Other vessels of the same design take the class name of the lead ship (prototype), usually.
The Solum civil war already happened during S2. Ascencia staged a military coup (notice how "the elders" from early in the season are captives at the end of the season, together with Ilturan) and late in the season Ilturan, young Ascencia and presumably "the elders" and other allies organised a counter-coup. The sensors from Voyager seemed to record large fires on the surface at some places, so she may even have used orbital bombardment.
And it's safe to say the civil war ended, in this timeline, with Asencia "burning out" and then being captured, followed by the attack of the loom. It seems Ilthuran's faction won the war this time, with heavy damage but not near to the extent from the original timeline the Diviner came from.
The war is avoidable, Ascencia is limited in her thinking and couldn't find an alternative future using Wesley's tools, but Wesley surely would have (he had to dig deep to find a good future for his own universe, after all). In any case, the war happened but it was much shorter and much less destructive. Ascenia didn't like the outcome, still.
Note that there is no predestination paradox here. To the contrary, they had to move heaven and earth to get the Protostar in its original position on Tars Lamora, while in a predestination paradox it would have been there no matter what they did or didn't do. As Gwyn said, the future isn't written and only the past needs to remain the same. And if it doesn't, apparently the loom come.
I hope they were far away from the Federation during Picard S3. A cross-over with Lower Decks would be cool though. Pity LD is a bit behind in the timeline, or we could have had the Cerritos bringing Gwyn to Solum (in an LD episode) or coming at the end of the season to do the "Second Contact" stuff.Though it's a slim chance, I hope they do a season 3. It would be interesting to see what the kids were up to during Season 3 of Picard. I think a (family-friendly) Lower Decks crossover would also be cool.
The Hagemans did stuck Gwyn in the captain's chair from the pilot episode on (she was also the very first to claim to be the captain), though, and they kept doing it through most of season 1A. Gwyn always took charge whenever Dal was unavailable or otherwise not being effective. During S1, she was still grateful for being accepted after being an antagonist of sorts to the others for a while, and didn't often challenge Dal. During S2, she was more assertive on that front, notably in the episode with the Kazon.
I would pick Gwyn over Dal as leader, she is more knowledgeable and more measured/diplomatic. Maybe the more logical choice, outside of a fullblown Starfleet officer, would actually be Majel.
No, because the Diviner travels back through time using the wormhole of which one end is at his reality (where Gwyn does not exist, as Ascencia likes to remind her) and the other end somewhere during TNG S3 near Tars Lamora. The original Diviner would presumably still travel back from his reality (the destroyed Solum; in fact we see him say that they will send back a 100 ships right after Chakotay escapes with the Protostar) and arrive at Tars Lamora.
In the S2 timeline, the civil war stops short of completely wrecking Solum and Ilthuran's faction wins. Also an important difference: Starfleet actually helps rather than citing the Prime Directive and saying "though luck, we won't lift a finger to help". Even young Ascencia sides with him, which makes me wonder what original Ascencia did. Was she also initially pro-Federation, as the Diviner?
On the money with the last sentence! Though arguably the Diviner and the Redeemer were from the original, "prime" timeline, and the timeline from S2 has split off from that because the Diviner created Gwyn and made Tars Lamora into a slave colony. And he ultimately reached his goal: stopping the civil war on Solum from destroying the planet and his species.
For an earlier animated series they (mostly) wrote, Trollhunters, everything was planned out in advance (3 seasons, I think, in that case). I suspect that they planned the major lines of Prodigy's arc also 100% in advance.
It was an excellent ending to the series that shows that serialised storytelling works if the writers take care to plan (not everything, but at least the outline of major events and arcs) and care about crafting a story that makes internal sense and has a payoff.
Allthough it was a bit abrupt, I agree that Gwyn is the better choice as captain (Janeway apparently was quietly impressed after seeing Gwyn in action a few times, and she knows Dal well because she was literally in his shoes and saw some of his antics this season).
The reasoning to just give them the Protostar-class seems suspect though. Not useful for anything but exploration? Having an ultrafast courier vessel would be mighty handy for the usual TNG style missions, or to quickly react to emergencies. Maybe we should take it as a slight concession to the exploration types (I can see Jellico's side of the argument, though) and it might be a good diplomatic move toward the Vau N'akat, whom Janeway and others in Starfleet probably hope to make members or at least allies.
It's a nice move though, that they are essentially back where they started: doing their thing on their own ship, only now with official Starfleet backing. I don't think they could have had a better ending, if this is indeed the last we see of Prodigy.
