One thing The Orville has always had on the newer Star Trek shows (and a lot of shows in general) is that you didn’t have to get a subscription to a streaming service to watch it. For two seasons, The Orville was old-school; all you had to do was have network TV and you could watch the Star Trek-ish show for free. But not anymore. Season 3 of The Orville will not air on Fox on live TV, but instead, be streamed exclusively on Hulu.
On Saturday, at San Diego Comic-Con, Orville creator and star Seth MacFarlane said that the third season of the show would move to it Hulu, exclusively. Some outlets (like TrekMovie) have pointed out that Fox (the parent network of The Orville) is now part of Disney, following the large merger earlier this year. Essentially, it seems that putting The Orville on a streaming-only network might be out of the hands of the people who run the show, and perhaps, in the hands of Disney. Still, it will also be interesting to see how many of the shows loyal (and vocal) fans will follow the show to Hulu, if they don’t already have a subscription.
Figuring out the future of space travel will never really be tackled by a show like The Orville, but, determining the future of which streaming channels will dominate in the next decade might begin right now with all our favorite genre shows. Will you pay for CBS-All Access to watch Star Trek, and Netflix to watch Stranger Things and The Witcher, and now Hulu to watch Handmaid’s Tale and The Orville?
All of these shows are worthwhile, but, other than the CW shows, The Orville was the last big sci-fi stalwart to stay on a regular network. And now, it looks like that retro-version of the future is over.
There is no season 3 debut date set for The Orville. Yet.
