What is the Discovery Artefact? (S5 Theory)

The trailer dropped for Star Trek Discovery Season 5 so let's break it down and analyse the scenes we see and come up with some theories. It looks like there is a ancient artifact, a chase involving the couriers and Romulan history. Is it the supernova? The Borg? The Iconians? Let's look at the evidence.

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This Video is for critical purposes with commentary.

[Centurian]

Rick: I'm not going to say it's Iconians.
Also Rick: So here's why I think it's Iconians.

[CaptainSovereign]

Starfleet:Ah yes, Iconians. The very advanced species allegedly waiting in dark space. We have dismissed that claim.

[ArchOfWinter]

In the Star Trek future, there will be a popular 'history' holo program about ancient aliens and there is this one returning 'expert' with a weird hairdo that always says everything is because of Iconian.

[glennlaroche]

That's a self-dealing stembolt in front of the puzzle box---we finally find out what they do!!!

[tyneskipper]

is the answer "a maguffin that the script writers will forget about halfway through the series?"

[STNuevo]

The greatest threat the universe has ever seen - these are the Pakled

[FistOfFiori]

I know the "Iconians!" mentions can be a running joke, but it'd be poetic to have the latest point of the Star Trek timeline that we've seen include one of the franchise's oldest races timeline wise, like a bookend (for now, until Starfleet Academy anyway...).

[maybetoby]

"surviving members of the Iconian Empire" were already mentioned as being a thing in season 4. I personally think that mention is all we're ever going to get of them.

[DarthTriffid]

And something needs to happen that results in Disco being parked in a nebula for centuries....

[DanielSolis]

History Channel meme: "It's ICONIANS"

[jaxogaytor]

It’s an ancient cache of self sealing stembolts

[Taeschi]

maybe the kelvin timeline romulan mining ship (basically returned remains of it after it got shot back into the anomaly in kelvin timeline)

[Bondoz]

I thought you might also refer to the poster art and the glyphs there and how that fits in...
Thanks for a great breakdown

[DeadFilmsINC]

If it walks like an Iconian if it sounds like an Iconian & if it looks like an Iconian then it must be an Iconian! 😮❤🖖

[meswoopnoseenothing]

Would be fun for it to be iconians considering how disconnected the universe is after the burn, a universal gateway would be cool

[Peaceforall]

What about the phasing cloak.

It makes the user Iinvincible; pretty powerful to me.

And it goes back to tng and it was a scout ship.

I could see that originally the phased cloak came from iconians originally which we weren’t told during tng; possible?

[Rasc]

Thank you for telling me that Discovery S5 has a trailer as somehow Youtube didn't recommend that to me even though I watch your Star Trek videos all the time though lol

[seansteinbacher]

The artifact could be from the Tkon empire also.

[nonamegiven]

Honestly my gut is saying The Chase/Progenitors for some reason even tho i don't think it's going to be them.

[Taeschi]

it could be iconian gates - it could also be the borg adapted traversal technology from voyager that was installed in the artefact cube. (sicarians i think they were named)