Tom Constantino - Co-Producer on season 3 of The Orville - recently offered us a curious nugget via Twitter:

Hey folks, been editing today…. BUT despite some misinformation to the contrary, #TheOrville #S4 is still TBD. It will depend on audience appetite and the #S3 response, so anything can happen!

Misinformation?

Scrolling through replies we found someone offering a link to a YouTube video where two actors are said to have claimed that season 3 is Orville's last.

Did they? A little bit, yeah.

The Actors' Claims

For your convenience we've included time-stamped links to the video for each of those actors' claims.

On May 28 Scott Grimes (Gordon Malloy) was interviewed in a podcast and had this to say:

It's gonna most likely the last season cos we're kinda wrapping it up and then hopefully maybe we'll do some movies. That's my wish and his wish and...

Probably isn't definitely, but even for an actor to say that a show is probably going to end is very unusual.

Commentary on anything end-of-show is normally left to showrunners or service providers. For an actor to say that one is probably going to end would indicate that this was a common belief among the cast. Not even remotely a secret.

More convincingly, Adrianne Palicki (Kelly Grayson) was recently interviewed in another podcast and had this to say:

It's not going to be out until 2022 and it is our final season....I'll miss everyone. That was actually, that was definitely a family for sure. We spent so much time together on that ship.

All official statements from execs have up until this point pegged season 4 as a maybe.

Seth's Future on The Orville

Giant Freakin Robot claim to have an insider source who informed them that Seth MacFarlane (Ed Mercer) wants to leave the show and Hulu doesn't want to continue without him.

Everyone knows Seth is a huge Star Trek fan and many would have seen teenage him playing a Starfleet captain in a fan film. It's difficult to imagine any Trekkie wanting to step away from the helm of a fantastic, popular and successful sci-fi franchise which is on par with Star Trek.

On the other hand he was already a huge success in the entertainment industry. He could conceivably have other projects he'd like to devote time to and which might also be more lucrative.

There's also the Discovery factor, which launched at the same time.

Orville wasn't only better than Discovery, it was also fundamentally much more Star Trek. Many fans briefly mourned the loss of the original and jumped over to its convenient replacement.

While that worked out nicely for those fans, we have to wonder how Seth feels about that. Because he's also a huge Star Trek fan and entirely unwittingly contributed to its.... it might be premature to say demise, but it has derailed.

Can We Trust the Official Word?

Tom has re-iterated their official position of season 4 being a maybe and stressed that it would be contingent on season 3 success.

While it's true that season 3 viewer numbers could be a major factor for renewal, this is also something they might tell us if they know there'll be no season 4 but still want lots of people to tune in for season 3.

This is what we'd expect from a content provider. Viewers are their bread and butter.

We would prefer to see The Orville continue for many years and have our fingers crossed but are less hopeful after having looked into this.

[ Main Image: The Orville Season 3. Credit: Fuzzy Door Producations via Twitter. ]

References

Constantino, Tom [@TomConstantino] (October 15, 2021). Hey folks, been editing today…. Twitter.

Keane, Liana (January 10, 2021). Exclusive: The Orville isn't cancelled, Seth MacFarlane Is Quitting On It. Giant Freakin Robot. 

Kirk, James (December 1, 2017). Seth macfarlane as teenager in star trek fan film with his friends. YouTube.

Justin [@XTheSepX] (October 15, 2021). Well according to 2 of your actors that was not the case... Twitter.