The Orville Season 4 Gets an Unexpected Update
A fourth season of The Orville is ready to go. There's just one problem.
After the Kelvin timeline emerged to revitalize Star Trek in 2009, there were hits and misses, but the most unlikely hit of all had nothing to do with the official content being pushed out by Paramount.
Inspired by The Original Series and The Next Generation, Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville was a love letter to Trek’s past, and after a wobbly first season in which the show struggled to find its tone amid jokes woven into the script by the Family Guy creator and his writing team, The Orville suddenly hit its stride. The next two seasons were straight up terrific, and Trek fans began to give it a chance.
Arguably, The Orville has since become known as the best “Star Trek” series of modern times, which is why it feels so frustrating that four years after The Orville: New Horizons debuted, a fourth season still hasn’t made its way to our screens. However, that doesn’t mean that any interest in making season 4 has waned. MacFarlane has confirmed in a recent interview with THR that he simply hasn’t found the time to do it.
“I will be honest with you: season 4 is written. It’s just a question of when we have the time to produce it,” MacFarlane said, adding, “The 10 scripts are done. I’m the problem. It’s [a matter of] when I can make that my year, with all the other stuff we have in the works. But we can hit the ground running when it happens.”
Set in the 25th century and following the exploratory missions of the titular spaceship, The Orville is shaped around the classic Trek model of an earnest crew encountering new civilizations, which naturally forces them to explore political dilemmas and ethical challenges across the galaxy. At the center of all this is MacFarlane’s Captain Ed Mercer, a capable but occasionally awkward leader who has to try and prove he’s got the stuff while also reckoning with the strengths and weaknesses of his crew, including ex-wife Commander Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki.)
The third season of The Orville debuted on Hulu to rave reviews in the wake of the Disney-Fox merger, and ever since its last bittersweet episode was released in 2022, fans have longed for a continuation. Hopefully, MacFarlane will find time to add season 4 to his busy schedule, but who knows how many cigarettes Bortus could smoke between now and then?