The Orville Season 3 Restarts Filming Next Month

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The Orville Season 3 Restarts Filming Next Month

After being delayed by the coronavirus pandemic earlier this year, Seth MacFarlane's The Orville will resume production on season 3 next month.

Hulu's The Orville will finally resume production on season 3 next month. Seth MacFarlane's Star Trek-esque show first premiered on Fox in 2017, and despite being greeted with negative reviews from critics, The Orville scored one of the network's biggest premieres in recent memory. As a result, The Orville season 2 arrived in 2018, and the series was eventually renewed for season 3. Not long after, it was revealed The Orville will make the jump to Hulu for its third batch of episodes. Fans expected it to arrive this fall after filming began late last year, but the coronavirus pandemic halted progress back in March.

The Orville follows MacFarlane's Captain Ed Mercer as he takes command of the USS Orville in the 25th century. His first officer is his ex-wife Kelly (Adrianne Palicki), and the two must learn to put aside their differences as they lead the Orville into the far reaches of space. The series also stars Penny Johnson Jerald, Scott Grimes, Peter Macon, Jessica Szohr, J. Lee, and Mark Jackson. Marketed right from the start as a blatant homage/parody of Star Trek, The Orville has even managed to feature several Trek actors in various roles throughout its run.

Per TrekMovie.com, production on The Orville season 3 will resume the first week of December. As the season had been just under halfway complete at the time of its shutdown and the crew will have to implement COVID guidelines, it's expected that The Orville will take an additional five or six months to complete. A break is scheduled for around Christmas, but work will resume in January.

The Orville is hardly the only television show to suffer production delays as a result of the pandemic. For example, Disney+'s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was bumped from its August premiere slot because of suspended production, and two of Netflix's biggest shows, Stranger Things and The Witcher, are primed to arrive later than expected. However, recent months have seen several shows get back to work, and The Orville shouldn't run into many issues as long as it takes its COVID guidelines seriously.

Provided production on The Orville season 3 remains on its currently set schedule, fans can expect it to drop on Hulu in the latter half of 2021. Depending on how long things go, it could even be pushed to early 2022, which would make for quite the lengthy gap between seasons. Nevertheless, it's promising that The Orville is preparing to take off once more, and fans are likely pleased to hear progress is still being made. Expect it to get a proper release window once production nears its end.