The Orville, the sci-fi comedy series created by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, is returning for a third season. Fans have been concerned about the fate of a new season of the Hulu show amidst COVID restrictions for a while. But Hulu has revealed the first look of the show’s return as The Orville: New Dawn. Originally a Fox show, The Orville will now continue its space adventures as a Hulu original series.
The revealed first look photo prominently features the recurring characters Captain Ed Mercer (played by creator Seth MacFarlane), Commander Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki), the ‘bad boy’ pilot Lieutenant Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes), and the Artificial life-form Isaac (Marc Jackson) at the helm at their respective posts. The first look photo also features Admiral Halsey (Victor Garber) on the ship, possibly hinting that a significant incident is underway.
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Apart from the usual gang, the photo also shows the latest addition to the cast, the 13 Reasons Why actress Anne Winters. She will be playing the role of the new navigator of this exploratory vessel, Ensign Charly Burke. As fans might remember, the former navigator John LaMarr (J Lee) was promoted to Chief Engineer upon Commander Grayson’s suggestion in Season 1, Episode 11, leaving the post blank for a series of interim navigators.
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Although at a surface level The Orville is a sci-fi satire inspired heavily by the Star Trek franchise, it manages to achieve a lot more. The show delivers a constant social commentary and often breaks out of its genre as a satire and takes matters into its own hands. This is something Seth MacFarlane has explored to quite some extent in Family Guy as well.
As for why the show had to be moved to Hulu from its original broadcast network Fox, MacFarlane says that it is due to the resources needed to support the show’s production costs.
The Orville: New Dawn has already wrapped up filming, and is set to start streaming on March 10, 2022.
“The Orville has been a labor of love for me, and there are two companies which have supported that vision in a big way: 20th Century Fox Television, where I’ve had a deal since the start of my career, and FOX Broadcasting Company, now FOX Entertainment, which has been my broadcast home for over 20 years. My friends at the network understood what I was trying to do with this series, and they’ve done a spectacular job of marketing, launching and programming it for these past two seasons. But as the show has evolved and become more ambitious production-wise, I determined that I would not be able to deliver episodes until 2020, which would be challenging for the network.”
