Warning! Spoilers from Seasons 1 and 2 of The Orville are in the article below. The Orville: New Horizons will debut on Hulu on Thursday, June 2, 2022.
Three years and one month is a long time for a spaceship to just disappear. But that’s how long The Orville has been “missing in action” from our screens due to a hiatus exacerbated by a network swap (Fox to Hulu) and COVID production delays. When it returns on June 2 on Hulu, it will have a slightly adjusted title, The Orville: New Horizons. But it will pick up from where the Season 2 finale, "The Road Not Taken," left off.
Existing audiences will also find a more serious sci-fi drama awaiting them. From Season 2 forward, the comedy was less on the nose and that carries through in the aftermath of Dr. Claire Finn’s (Penny Johnson Jerald) successful time travel tinkering which restored the timeline that keeps the crew together and prevents The Orville from being destroyed. However, the devastating Kaylon conflict is still a very big thing that everyone is still processing in the third season premiere. In fact, “Electric Sheep” was written and directed by series creator Seth MacFarlane and he says it encapsulates the revised direction of the series they’ve been moving towards since Season 1.
“Like a lot of shows, historically, Season 3 is when you really kind of figure out who you are. And I think that's very much true for The Orville Season 1,” MacFarlane says candidly to IGN regarding the show’s creative journey. “We were trying a balancing act that in some ways was successful at times, and in other ways was really an obstacle to pure storytelling. When we liberated ourselves from the need to have a punchline every episode and really let the comedy come from the personalities of these characters, now that people know them, we found that it worked a lot better. The show was a lot more fully formed, and a lot more entertaining. You can start to really expand and dig in deep because they're there with you and that's what Season 3 is.”
But there’s been an ironic upheaval in the landscape of space exploration television shows since The Orville premiered mere weeks ahead of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017. At that time, there hadn’t been a new episodic Trek since 2005. And now there are five Star Trek series in rotation on Paramount+. The gap The Orville intended to fill is now quite sated, so has that changed MacFarlane and his writer’s overall goals regarding the series?
“No, I think even now, we very much exist in our own space,” MacFarlane says with confidence. “And I think that's gonna be the takeaway for a lot of people from Season 3. Yes, it's a crowded landscape but I can safely say there is not a show on the air, or even in this genre, that is existing in the same space as we are. This is a show that I hope sci-fi fans will embrace wholeheartedly. But going into something like this, in the back of my mind I’m like, ‘Could my mom watch this show and find something in it that she can latch on to?’ Usually, that has to do with policing yourself and making sure that you're telling stories about the people, so that it's never about a premise or a sci-fi concept. And we're aggressively people centric.”
Having suffered its longest lag between season returns, MacFarlane says initially there wasn’t much to celebrate with the elongated production delays due to COVID. Aside from post production and the score getting extra runway, the scripts were locked. “For the most part, after a certain period of time, we ran out of work to do,” MacFarlane admits.
I can safely say there is not a show on the air, or in this genre, that is existing in the same space as we are
But then a specific advantage did make itself apparent, that audiences were finding the show on Hulu, much like what happened with MacFarlane’s once canceled then resuscitated animated series, Family Guy. “The Orville had time to kind of ferment and to sit out there and let people discover it,” he explains.
And new audiences were able to see that The Orville wasn’t what they were expecting. “When we premiered on Fox, there was a really aggressive push by the network to bill us as this “wacky” sci-fi show, and that's really not what we are,” MacFarlane asserts. “We're something very different, so once the dust kind of cleared and the show was just out there on Hulu ready for consumption, it built and broadened our audience.”
MacFarlane says he’s excited for fans to dive in with “Electric Sheep,” which is a very Isaac-centric episode that has the artificial, non-biological Kaylon Orville engineer absorbing the dark fall out of the war his kind unleashed on humanity. It confronts head on how you coexist with someone who has been party to doing terrible things?” He compares the main narrative to the real events of today. “It's like, let's say you're married to a guy who was there on January 6?” he says in comparison. “How do you live with that guy? He's still human. He's not some monster from another planet. He's still a person. But he's done a terrible thing. How do you find a way to coexist with people who are so different from you, and that's an overarching theme of the season as a whole.”
He continues, “It's fascinating to write because our instinct, particularly nowadays, is to reduce everything to black and white, good and evil. Yet in reality, nothing is like that. Nothing in life is simple. Everything has texture and nuance. And everything has layers like an onion. Digging into the complexities of that and the vagaries of how to wrestle with the ethics of good and evil, when there isn't pure good and there isn't pure evil, that's a big part of the conundrums that the characters face on the show throughout the season.”
The first episode back is dedicated to Norm Macdonald
On a personal note, MacFarlane is also happy that this season of The Orville will feature the last character role for the recently passed comedian, Norm Macdonald, who voices Lieutenant Yaphit. “The first episode back is dedicated to Norm,” he shared. “It's sad to have lost him. And at the same time, I'm very grateful that he left us with all of these great Yaphet bits that have yet to come. The fact that The Orville has the privilege of doling out the last comedy moments that he left us in these recordings, we're lucky. We're lucky that he was a part of the show, and we're lucky that he's in this third season.”
As to what might be next for The Orville, MacFarlane says that it is entirely based on viewership. “I'm certainly open to it,” he enthuses. “But it's not a cheap show to make, as you've seen. It's fairly scopey. There really has to be a response that makes it worthwhile for the studio to do more. But there's an infinite number of stories that you can tell with this kind of a world. As a writer, it's the most fun I've ever had on any show that I've worked on. I don't think I've ever enjoyed the writing process more. I probably never should have been in comedy. I should have been sci-fi,” he laughs.” So yeah, I would absolutely do more.”
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Three years and one month is a long time for a spaceship to just disappear. But that’s how long The Orville has been “missing in action” from our screens due to a hiatus exacerbated by a network swap (Fox to Hulu) and COVID production delays. When it returns on June 2 on Hulu, it will have a slightly adjusted title, The Orville: New Horizons. But it will pick up from where the Season 2 finale, "The Road Not Taken," left off.
Existing audiences will also find a more serious sci-fi drama awaiting them. From Season 2 forward, the comedy was less on the nose and that carries through in the aftermath of Dr. Claire Finn’s (Penny Johnson Jerald) successful time travel tinkering which restored the timeline that keeps the crew together and prevents The Orville from being destroyed. However, the devastating Kaylon conflict is still a very big thing that everyone is still processing in the third season premiere. In fact, “Electric Sheep” was written and directed by series creator Seth MacFarlane and he says it encapsulates the revised direction of the series they’ve been moving towards since Season 1.
“Like a lot of shows, historically, Season 3 is when you really kind of figure out who you are. And I think that's very much true for The Orville Season 1,” MacFarlane says candidly to IGN regarding the show’s creative journey. “We were trying a balancing act that in some ways was successful at times, and in other ways was really an obstacle to pure storytelling. When we liberated ourselves from the need to have a punchline every episode and really let the comedy come from the personalities of these characters, now that people know them, we found that it worked a lot better. The show was a lot more fully formed, and a lot more entertaining. You can start to really expand and dig in deep because they're there with you and that's what Season 3 is.”
But there’s been an ironic upheaval in the landscape of space exploration television shows since The Orville premiered mere weeks ahead of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017. At that time, there hadn’t been a new episodic Trek since 2005. And now there are five Star Trek series in rotation on Paramount+. The gap The Orville intended to fill is now quite sated, so has that changed MacFarlane and his writer’s overall goals regarding the series?
“No, I think even now, we very much exist in our own space,” MacFarlane says with confidence. “And I think that's gonna be the takeaway for a lot of people from Season 3. Yes, it's a crowded landscape but I can safely say there is not a show on the air, or even in this genre, that is existing in the same space as we are. This is a show that I hope sci-fi fans will embrace wholeheartedly. But going into something like this, in the back of my mind I’m like, ‘Could my mom watch this show and find something in it that she can latch on to?’ Usually, that has to do with policing yourself and making sure that you're telling stories about the people, so that it's never about a premise or a sci-fi concept. And we're aggressively people centric.”
Having suffered its longest lag between season returns, MacFarlane says initially there wasn’t much to celebrate with the elongated production delays due to COVID. Aside from post production and the score getting extra runway, the scripts were locked. “For the most part, after a certain period of time, we ran out of work to do,” MacFarlane admits.
I can safely say there is not a show on the air, or in this genre, that is existing in the same space as we are
But then a specific advantage did make itself apparent, that audiences were finding the show on Hulu, much like what happened with MacFarlane’s once canceled then resuscitated animated series, Family Guy. “The Orville had time to kind of ferment and to sit out there and let people discover it,” he explains.
And new audiences were able to see that The Orville wasn’t what they were expecting. “When we premiered on Fox, there was a really aggressive push by the network to bill us as this “wacky” sci-fi show, and that's really not what we are,” MacFarlane asserts. “We're something very different, so once the dust kind of cleared and the show was just out there on Hulu ready for consumption, it built and broadened our audience.”
MacFarlane says he’s excited for fans to dive in with “Electric Sheep,” which is a very Isaac-centric episode that has the artificial, non-biological Kaylon Orville engineer absorbing the dark fall out of the war his kind unleashed on humanity. It confronts head on how you coexist with someone who has been party to doing terrible things?” He compares the main narrative to the real events of today. “It's like, let's say you're married to a guy who was there on January 6?” he says in comparison. “How do you live with that guy? He's still human. He's not some monster from another planet. He's still a person. But he's done a terrible thing. How do you find a way to coexist with people who are so different from you, and that's an overarching theme of the season as a whole.”
He continues, “It's fascinating to write because our instinct, particularly nowadays, is to reduce everything to black and white, good and evil. Yet in reality, nothing is like that. Nothing in life is simple. Everything has texture and nuance. And everything has layers like an onion. Digging into the complexities of that and the vagaries of how to wrestle with the ethics of good and evil, when there isn't pure good and there isn't pure evil, that's a big part of the conundrums that the characters face on the show throughout the season.”
The first episode back is dedicated to Norm Macdonald
On a personal note, MacFarlane is also happy that this season of The Orville will feature the last character role for the recently passed comedian, Norm Macdonald, who voices Lieutenant Yaphit. “The first episode back is dedicated to Norm,” he shared. “It's sad to have lost him. And at the same time, I'm very grateful that he left us with all of these great Yaphet bits that have yet to come. The fact that The Orville has the privilege of doling out the last comedy moments that he left us in these recordings, we're lucky. We're lucky that he was a part of the show, and we're lucky that he's in this third season.”
As to what might be next for The Orville, MacFarlane says that it is entirely based on viewership. “I'm certainly open to it,” he enthuses. “But it's not a cheap show to make, as you've seen. It's fairly scopey. There really has to be a response that makes it worthwhile for the studio to do more. But there's an infinite number of stories that you can tell with this kind of a world. As a writer, it's the most fun I've ever had on any show that I've worked on. I don't think I've ever enjoyed the writing process more. I probably never should have been in comedy. I should have been sci-fi,” he laughs.” So yeah, I would absolutely do more.”
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