Don’t give up hope, “The Orville” fans: A new season might not be light years away after all.
Seth MacFarlane, who created and stars in the sci-fi series, shed light on the show’s status when speaking with The Hollywood Reporter this week: “I will be honest with you: Season 4 is written. It’s just a question of when we have the time to produce it.”
He added that “the 10 scripts are done,” which indicates that we can expect Season 4 to have 10 episodes, but “I’m the problem,” he admits. “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.” (MacFarlane is currently promoting Season 2 of the Peacock comedy “Ted,” on top of working on his Fox animated comedies “Family Guy” and “American Dad!,” along with various other projects.)
The Orville has been stuck in limbo for a while now
“The Orville” stars Seth MacFarlane as Ed Mercer, the captain of a starship in the 25th century. Adrianne Palicki co-stars as Mercer’s first officer and ex-wife Kelly Grayson. Penny Johnson Jerald plays chief medical officer Claire Finn, with Scott Grimes as Lieutenant Gordon Malloy and Peter Macon as alien second officer Bortus.
Debuting in 2017 on Fox, “The Orville” ran for two seasons there and then moved to Hulu for a third season, dubbed “The Orville: New Horizons.” Season 3 aired in 2022, and in the four years since, MacFarlane has kept the dream of a new season alive, telling TVLine in 2024 that “nobody has told me that it’s dead from the network, so we’re proceeding under those auspices.” Palicki, though, has said she won’t be back for a potential Season 4, calling it “a really difficult show to shoot” and citing the need to be available for other projects while the show remains in limbo.
Will Season 4 of “The Orville” be worth the wait? Let us know if you’re still holding out hope in a comment below.