The Orville

The sci-fi dramedy takes place in the 25th century and stars creator Seth MacFarlane as Mercer, an officer rising in the space ranks and who discovers his wife ...

You can watch The Orville: New Horizons online exclusively on Hulu, which costs $7 per month with ads or $13 monthly without ads. After decamping from Fox, The Orville: New Horizons premieres its third and final season online today on Hulu. His promising career is jeopardized after his divorce sends him spiraling into emotional turmoil, but things take a turn when he is chosen to lead a new exploration through the Planetary Union (an alliance among Earth and other planets). When his ex-wife, Commander Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki), is assigned to serve as first officer, the former couple must reconcile and work together in running the ship.

With the launch of Season 3, The Orville wasted no time exploring dramatically intense topics. Seth MacFarlane, Penny Johnson Jerald react.

“As we went along, what we were finding was the same thing that the audience was finding, that what they were really responding to was the people. Surveying that heart-to-heart, Penny Johnson Jerald tells TVLine, “My takeaway from that is you really need someone to bounce off of in life. “There’s nothing you can’t write for Penny. She’s brilliant.” Afterward, Claire cued Isaac to acknowledge what he had done, but he kept reciting statistics about how his absence would not affect the crew’s efficiency. and Claire herself then breaking down as she used the same tech to revisit a past date with her onetime Kaylon suitor. Up until this point, Isaac as an artificial lifeform maintained that being the target of such hate bothered him not at all.

Here's how you can blast off to New Horizons with the triumphant return of Seth MacFarlane's The Orville, where it's streaming, and what it's about.

And if you appreciate the satire of The Orville, check out Galaxy Quest, a film based on the cast of a fictional TV series being transported to a real-life intergalactic battle. There’s also a bit of meta-humor, with a character at the end of the trailer seeming to comment on the show’s hiatus saying, “definitely worth the wait”. There’s also plenty of humor, including a fun Star Wars reference in the middle of the video. The fate of The Orville’s third season was difficult to determine for quite a while, with the COVID-19 pandemic halting production back in October 2019. After three years of waiting, the third season of Seth MacFarlane’s sci-fi comedy adventure The Orville is finally here. His wife also happens to be his second in command, Kelly Grayson ( Adrianne Palicki), and the two, along with a crew of both humans and aliens, navigate their personal relationships while also attempting to maintain their professional standing.

The Hulu sci-fi series returns with "Electric Sheep," an episode that puts Dr. Claire Finn through the emotional wringer.

“And I think when the mom element comes in, the mom teaches her that there’s always more to learn. But it was good to be on the set so that I could have an outlet somewhere. To film that was a wonderful thing to do, but at the same time, a little depressing because of what I was going through in my personal life. It was grief-stricken, but something that you have to go through. As fans of the show will remember, Isaac’s home planet—Kaylon 1—is populated by robots who believe all biological life forms to be inferior, a point of view that led to a full-on war between the Kaylons and, well, everyone else during The Orville’s second season. Considering that it comes from the mind of Seth MacFarlane, you’d expect sci-fi series The Orville to lean more into comedy than drama.

The Orville: New Horizons levels up in both its craft and story as Seth MacFarlane's space series settles into a new home at Hulu.

And even with the Trek franchise experiencing a renaissance of sorts thanks to shows like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Discovery (ironically, the latter premiered around the same time as The Orville), New Horizons manages to carve out its place in the sci-fi streaming world by giving its characters just as much focus as its visuals. He is also a host on Into the Spider-Cast. The standout of the episode is Anne Winters as newcomer Charly Burke, who blames Issac for losing her friend during the Kaylons’ initial attack. MacFarlane, who wrote and directed “Electric Sheep”, looks to have pulled inspiration from J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek films while staging this opening and that same level of craft continues to permeate the hour-long running time, including a sequence where Orville pilot Gordon Malloy ( Scott Grimes) flies a sleek shuttlecraft through a training simulation. Despite the best efforts of Orville Captain Ed Mercer (MacFarlane) and first officer Commander Kelly Grayson ( Adrianne Palicki), things get to the point where the usually calm and collected Issac makes a decision that shocks the Orville crew — especially Dr. Claire Finn ( Penny Johnson Jerald). Tensions aboard the ship are high concerning crew member Issac ( Mark Jackson) — especially since Issac’s fellow machines, the Kaylon, have launched an interstellar assault against all organic life that’s claimed the lives of friends and family.

The Orville creator, director, and star Seth MacFarlane reveals how the show has changed since it last aired on Fox and what fans can expect from the new ...

And I love the fact that you can tell a story about anything. You can treat this little bottle world as a real place in that regard, yeah. And if you can keep that priority intact, then you can earn the right to maybe be a little opinionated under the top. It has to come from each character's mouth in a specific way, so that's a pure joy to be at that stage. I know you're putting a lot of yourself into it, so tell me like what that's meant to you. I think the show has consistently been great about keeping focused on character, even when it's got a great sort of plot conceit or a sci-fi hook. The West Wing was a show that – again, I'm dating myself, but that comes to mind as a show that somehow navigated the time constraints and somehow was able to create real moments that weren't just people talking, and then move on to the next scene and there's no time to breathe there. And this is a time where I think people need to be saying something and hearing something that's a little deeper than just a good, ripping adventure. And that's something that we really try to lean into anywhere we can this season. And then as far as the shift to Hulu, that was really about...From a directorial standpoint, that's really where the changes were. Though there are still a solid share of affectionate jabs at the genre's conventions, MacFarlane reveals that he's preferring to mine comedy from the show's characters and use the science-fiction framework to explore deeper, more subtle concerns. Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, well, certainly the pandemic allowed people to find the show in a way that they maybe hadn't had the chance to, early on.

The opener of Hulu's The Orville: New Horizons deals with the immediate aftermath of the Kaylon invasion & touches on some heavy themes.

MacFarlane, who directed and wrote the episode, knocked this out of the galaxy because professionalism only goes so far when it comes to heart-wrenching loss on a grand scale. As word gets around quickly, we learn from Isaac that's been a recurrence from multiple members of the crew opening showing their disgust from his continued presence. The aftermath sees the significant resentment and hatred toward Isaac for his actions and mortal being including a mess hall story from the newest bridge officer Ensign Charly Burke (Anne Winters), who shares what happened with her during the conflict losing her best friend on her previous ship.