The good news: The Orville finally has a return date! The bad news: it’s not until March 2022. For those who’d almost forgotten about the Seth MacFarlane sci-fi series — a Star Trek riff that ended up carving out its own corner of the loveable-weirdos-in-space genre — well, that’s not too surprising; the season two finale was all the way back in April 2019. In the interim, the show jumped from Fox to Hulu, and then the pandemic arrived to exponentially slow down the production process.
But finally, a date announcement, along with this brief teaser!
Notable: Hulu is billing this as The Orville: New Horizons, and it will be a weekly release rather than a binge drop; the first episode of season three will premiere in the U.S. on Thursday, March 10, 2022.
Despite that name alteration, it doesn’t sound like the show will be undergoing any drastic changes; Hulu’s description sounds like it will keep on keeping on at its new home: “Seth MacFarlane’s epic space adventure series The Orville returns exclusively as a Hulu original series. Set 400 years in the future, The Orville: New Horizons finds the crew of the U.S.S. Orville continuing their mission of exploration, as they navigate both the mysteries of the universe and the complexities of their own interpersonal relationships.”
The cast looks to be the same, too, with MacFarlane (Captain Ed Mercer), Adrianne Palicki (Commander Kelly Grayson), Penny Johnson Jerald (Dr. Claire Finn), Scott Grimes (Lt. Gordon Molloy), Peter Macon (Lt. Commander Bortus), J. Lee (Lt. Commander John LaMarr), Mark Jackson (Isaac the robot), Chad L. Coleman (Klyden), Jessica Szohr (Lt. Talla Keyali).
Hulu listed one new name: Anne Winters, who’ll play a new series regular named Charly Burke. Orville fans will also recall the show features a character voiced by Norm Macdonald, a gelatinous alien named Lieutenant Yaphit; so far there’s no word on how the show might pay tribute to the late actor.
MacFarlane himself shared the teaser on Twitter but without much more to go on; presumably, we’ll be getting an actual trailer and more details as the release date approaches. We’ll let you know more as we know it.
The Orville S3 airs on SBS VICELAND in Australia.