At long last, fans of Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville will get to watch the show’s third season. Hulu announced today that the show will debut on its platform on March 10th, 2022, and when it does, it’ll come with a bit of a name change: The Orville: New Horizons.
The series is an irreverent take on the type of episodic space opera that Star Trek is best known for. It premiered way back in 2017 on Fox, and follows Captain Ed Mercer, the commander of the USS Orville, an exploratory spaceship that’s part of the Planetary Union in the 25th Century. Like Star Trek, they visit new worlds and alien civilizations—but with a bit more of a satirical edge. While the first season was a little rough, the second garnered more critical acclaim.
In July 2019, after Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, word broke that the series had been renewed for a third season, and that when it returned, it would have a new home: Hulu. That season was expected to debut sometime in 2020, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, production on the season shut down and didn’t conclude until last month.
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And that is a wrap on season 3 of The Orville! Thank you to our incredible cast and crew for all their tireless and brilliant work, and I sincerely hope this is not the last time we all go to space. #TheOrville
— Seth MacFarlane (@SethMacFarlane) August 11, 2021
Now, we’ll finally get to see it. Hulu released a teaser revealing the season’s premiere, showing off the empty bridge of the Orville, featuring voiceovers from the crew as a camera slowly pans through the chairs…before a red alert status flips on!
The teaser gives us plenty to chew over: the show’s subtitle, New Horizons, could signal anything from the show’s new home, to the new adventures of its crew—or maybe something entirely different like a change in format or style? Whatever it ends up looking like, we’ll find out in March 2022.
