The Orville Is Coming To Another Popular Streaming Service
The Orville is making a move!
Earlier this year, The Orville‘s new season premiered exclusively on Hulu for the first time, rather than on Fox. This past weekend we learned Hulu won’t be the show’s only streaming home anymore. On Wednesday, August 10, The Orville will begin streaming on Disney+.
As reported by Cinema Blend, while fans were hoping of news of a season 4 renewal for The Orville coming out of San Diego Comic-Con, instead what they got was the news of the show streaming on Disney+. Some fans are apparently not very happy about The Orville‘s appearance on the Disney streamer, but according to Jon Cassar — who directed half of The Orville: New Horizons‘ episodes — this is only good news. “[L]ook, it just gives you more people,” Cassar said. “People who don’t have Hulu and just have Disney+.”
Cassar makes a good point. In case you didn’t know, there’s been some serious carnage at The CW this year. Most of the network’s DC superhero series got the axe along with Riverdale, In the Dark, The 4400, Dynasty, and Charmed. One of the contributing factors many observers have noted is the rise of HBO Max as a competitor in the streaming marketplace. Wanting to bolster its own streaming service, The CW’s parent company Warner Bros. took the network’s offerings off Netflix. Unfortunately, series like Riverdale and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow benefitted a lot from the exposure offered by the still more popular streaming service. Likewise, with The Orville on Disney+, the series will reach a wider audience which can help guarantee its longevity. Not to mention that unlike Warner Bros. and Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ are both under the same corporation’s umbrella, meaning the folks in charge of deciding whether or not the series continues can look at all the viewing data from both streamers.
Unfortunately, there are signs that it’s already too late for The Orville season 4. Deadline reported in April that the cast — including the lead and creator Seth MacFarlane — was moving on to other projects. For a while there was a big question mark regarding whether or not fans would even get a third season. The break between season 2 and 3 was over three years, and while Covid certainly played its part in the delays, there was also the network swap from Fox to Hulu which left MacFarlane with a long list of insults for the show’s original network.
If The Orville doesn’t see a fourth season, then at least it will seemingly end on a high note. The penultimate episode of season 3, “Domino,” streams this week with the finale set to premiere next Thursday. So far fans and critics appear to be thrilled with the new episodes, praising its increased production quality and its tackling of difficult subjects.
Some fans love The Orville so much, in fact, they think Seth MacFarlane should take over the franchise it pays tribute to — Star Trek. There’s an online petition circulating to get the Family Guy creator to take over the reins of Trek, mainly from fans who seem to bemoan the fact that somehow — over the course of 56 years, three animated series, eight live-action series, 13 films; and more non-canonical books, comics, video games than we care to mention here — Star Trek has changed.
