The Orville has one of the strangest runs in TV history.
The comedy-drama debuted on FOX in 2017 and was quickly renewed for a second season.
The Orville Season 2 launched an entire year on from its freshman finale, which is pretty much unheard of by broadcast TV standards.
Then, the series locked in a 10-episode renewal… with the caveat that it would air as a Hulu exclusive.
However, the wait for fresh episodes was over three years.
Now, 14 months from the end of The Orville Season 3, there have been vague hints about the show’s future… until now.
Adrianne Palicki, who has been with the series since its premiere, has seemingly thrown cold water over potential new seasons of the FOX-turned-Hulu show.
While appearing on Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast, she said, “No, not doing that,” when asked about the potential of The Orville coming back.
The actress spoke about the difficulty of working on the show due to some logistical problems.
“I don’t know, truly, the answer to that,” the Friday Night Lights alum offered of the show’s future.
“I think there’s talk that it could possibly be something that certain people want to do, but it’s a really difficult show to shoot, man,” she confessed, adding that:
“We shot 33 episodes in six years.”
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Palicki admitted there would be so much time between seasons because Seth MacFarlane wanted to write everything himself.
While many TV shows have embraced one person writing every script, it’s not usually something we hear about on a show that started its life on a broadcast network.
It’s typical for a team of writers to break stories and be given their own episodes to write.
“It became an actual issue because there would be so much time in between seasons because Seth [MacFarlane] wanted to write everything himself,” Palicki said.
“So it would just take so much time,” she said before adding that she and the other actors were struggling because of so much downtime.
“At one point, we were like, we have to fight the studio to give us a holding fee or something,” she added.
“J. Lee was eating saltines and Gatorade at one point because we just couldn’t afford anything. It was horrible.”
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While the series is one of the better of the last 10 years, it’s disheartening hearing how MacFarlane’s decision to pen the scripts affected the people who were the face of the show.
There’s a high chance that the cast is out of contract now, especially 14 months from the last episode, so even if Hulu — or another outlet — is interested in bringing it back, there’s no telling who would be interested.
There’s also the possibility that things would have to change before people would sign on that dotted line.
The Orville Season 3 was filled with wild moments, but with how it ended, maybe a movie would be the best course of action to wrap things up.
We don’t know whether that’s even a possibility because we don’t know the numbers for the show on Hulu.
The lack of updates doesn’t give us the fuzzies that it will return, but after hearing about how the cast feels, Hulu may have been skeptical about renewing it in case some of the cast didn’t want to return.
MacFarlane has been vocal about wanting to bring the series back, but right now, it doesn’t seem like something that will actually happen.
What are your thoughts on Palicki’s experience working on The Orville?
Do you think it’s time to let this show go?
Hit the comments.
Paul Dailly is the Associate Editor for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.