The Orville Season 3 Trailer Reveals New Release Date

The Orville is finally coming back, with a new trailer for the series’ third season (titled The Orville: New Horizons) revealing that the fan-favorite Star Trek parody/homage is returning to your screens on June 2, 2022. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic meant that 2020 and 2021 were too soon for new episodes of The Orville to air. In September 2020, creator Seth MacFarlane offered an update on the show’s status, but it really just amounted to “soon, we promise.” This trailer marks the first look at new footage in quite a while, as well as the first official release date since the last episode aired in April 2019.

Part of the reason for the longer-than-usual delay is that Fox stopped broadcasting The Orville, with MacFarlane taking the project to Hulu. If you read between the lines back when the series left Fox, it seemed as though the decision came down to who was willing to offer more resources for production and promotion.

 “The Orville has been a labor of love for me, and there are two companies which have supported that vision in a big way: 20th Century Fox Television, where I’ve had a deal since the start of my career, and FOX Broadcasting Company, now FOX Entertainment, which has been my broadcast home for over 20 years,” MacFarlane said at the time. “My friends at the network understood what I was trying to do with this series, and they’ve done a spectacular job of marketing, launching and programming it for these past two seasons. But as the show has evolved and become more ambitious production-wise, I determined that I would not be able to deliver episodes until 2020, which would be challenging for the network.”

You can see the trailer below.

Fans have been kept satiated (as much as was possible, anyway) with comics from Dark Horse, which kept the characters alive and active while the show was off the air.

Meanwhile, the first look at anything New Horizons, an early still from production, gave fans a look at Capt. Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane, series creator), Cmdr. Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki), and Lt. Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes), and Isaac (Marc Jackson) at their posts on the ship’s bridge. Recurring guest star Admiral Halsey (Victor Garber) is also present. The photo also offers the first look at The Orville‘s newest cast member, Anne Winters (13 Reasons Why, Tyrant), as Ensign Charly Burke. The remaining two figures on the bridge are guest stars Bruce Boxleitner (Babylon 5) and Lisa Banes (Royal Pains, Nashville) as President Alcuzan and Senator Balask.

The Orville is returning on June 2, 2022.