Seth MacFarlane on why The Orville season 3 feels "like a reset" for the show

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Exclusive: Seth MacFarlane tells SFX about the expanded scope of his show, The Orville

The Orville
(Image credit: Disney/Hulu)

USS Orville has a bit of swagger about her this year. Yes, she’s had some work done, but it’s more than just cosmetic. The Orville season 3 – subtitled New Horizons – launches on Hulu instead of network television, meaning the show is grander than ever, and competing in the big league. Alongside some breathtaking effects and scenes that will make you cry, the crucial difference is that the production team are no longer constrained by “regular” episode lengths.

Creator, writer, and Captain Ed Mercer himself, Seth MacFarlane, felt naming the season was appropriate. "It seemed that because the show was going to be making such an uptick in scope, and in many ways, going to feel like a reset, it felt like it wanted something special," MacFarlane tells SFX magazine in the new issue, featuring Ms. Marvel and The Orville on the cover. "You had a new opening title, a new set, new costumes, a new look, just a new aesthetic that really competes in the world of streaming shows."

But fear not: "The show is still the show, but with some new aspects to it," executive producer Brannon Braga says, pointing out that it’s not just a matter of the show having a new home. "We’re getting to a point in the third season where the kinds of stories we wanted to tell were much broader and more ambitious in scope than even the first two seasons. Seth was feeling constrained by it. The show features a newly revamped Orville, a new crew member on the bridge, and what we think are bigger, more spectacular stories, not just in terms of the visuals and the action, but the emotions and the emotional fireworks as well."

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MacFarlane and Braga talk at length about The Orville: New Horizons in the current issue of SFX Magazine, which you can order through that link. The Orville: New Horizons premieres on Hulu (US) and Disney Plus (UK and other markets) on June 2.

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Darren Scott
Darren Scott
SFX Editor

I'm the Editor of SFX, the world's number one sci-fi, fantasy and horror magazine – available digitally and in print every four weeks since 1995. I've been editing magazines, and writing for numerous publications since before the Time War. Obviously SFX is the best one. I knew being a geek would work out fine.

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