The showrunner and star of The Orville still hopes that the show may continue. 

It’s heading towards 18 months since the last episode of The Orville Series 3 landed on Hulu (and internationally on Disney+).

Dubbed The Orville: New Horizons, it was an effective second lease of life for the show which has previously been made for Fox.

The show, from Seth MacFarlane, began as a comic 90s Star Trek homage, but soon grew into something more substantial with stories that had plenty of dramatic heft – albeit with its comic sensibilities still intact.

However, while reports surfaced in November that Adrianne Palicki, the show’s Commander Kelly Grayson, felt a renewal was now unlikely with the cast finding the show’s intermittent schedule difficult, it appears that the series’ creator and star still hopes for more.

Seth MacFarlane, who also writes and directs the show, is currently out on the promotional rounds for his upcoming TED prequel series, spun out of the two successful movies about the foul-mouthed bear. Naturally, questions have turned to his other projects.

Speaking to The Wrap on the subject of The Orville he said:

“All I can tell you is that there is no official death certificate for ‘The Orville’ It is still with us. I can’t go any further than that at the moment. There are too many factors.”

The piece also goes on to quote Scott Grimes, who stars in TED but also plays the Orville’s helmsman Gordon Malloy, who says:

“I do know that we are still talking about it. It’s not dead in any sort of way whatsoever. It’s just about when, where and how and building the stuff again. I’m excited because it’s one of the greatest things to work on. So I just have my fingers crossed. And I know Seth wants to do it and that usually holds a lot of power. And I hope he gets to because it’s one of his babies that he just loves and it’s a blast to work on.”

We’ll keep you posted on The Orville and we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed!

In the meantime, the show’s first three seasons can be found in the UK on Disney+.