The Orville
The Orville has had a pretty wild journey over the past three years, starting on FOX, moving to Hulu where much more creative freedom (and a bigger budget) opened the show to new creative heights. But all everyone wants to know is if season 4 is coming because of it all.
Things are about to get even weirder with The Orville’s life trajectory, and the next step could determine how and when that fourth season takes place. It has been announced that all three seasons of the show will head to Disney Plus on August 10, which will make it the third place it airs in its short lifespan.
Seth Macfarlane told TVLine that the odds are about 50-50 whether season 4 is happening now, but that Disney Plus could be the deciding factor needed to green-light and produce season 4:
“My hope is that when the show comes out on Disney+, the people who haven’t discovered it yet will suddenly give it a chance,” MacFarlane said. “That’s a potential game changer for us.”
In many ways, The Orville feels right for Disney Plus, which is looking to expand its horizons beyond its current lineup of Star Wars, Marvel, and children’s programming. The Orville is one of the best sci-fi series on TV right now, at least in terms of audiences and critics, and continued investment in it could make it a real rival to something like Star Trek on Paramount Plus.
The Orville: New Horizons – Seth MacFarlane’s epic space adventure series “The Orville” returns … [+]
The tricky part with The Orville is selling the show, because it looks like like a Seth Macfarlane-based parody of Star Trek, but it’s not at all. While it has comedic elements, it’s vastly expanded in scope and the kind of issues it tackles. And as it progressed, it got a bigger budget that stopped it from looking like an SNL sketch to something that rivals every other major sci-fi production on TV.
I recently wrote about my own trial going through seasons 1-3 of the show in about two weeks, which drastically changed my own perception of it, as I didn’t expect to be as involved as I was, nor to agree with the consensus that yes, there are few better sci-fi series on TV these days (especially now that The Expanse has wrapped up).
In theory, this feels like it could be a potentially good fit for the Disney catalog, but again, the tricky part might be building that initial audience, and it’s going to take a lot of promotion and work at the end of Disney Plus to make it happen. to make people give it a try.
We’ll see what happens, but hopefully those chances of coin flip renewal will fall in The Orville’s favor once it arrives on Disney Plus and expands its audience again.
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