Warrior and 5 other genre shows in danger of getting canceled in 2024

3. The Orville season 4 (Hulu)

It is hard to parse out the fate of The Orville, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane’s affectionate tribute to Star Trek. The show started way back on Fox in 2018. After season 2, Fox did what Fox does best and cancelled the show, but The Orville found a new home on Hulu. Now subtitled New Horizons, the third season of the show was streaming-only, and it was better and more confident than every before.

It also took three years to get to the screen. Season 2 aired in 2019 and New Horizons premiered in 2022. The show still hasn’t been renewed for a fourth season, so if it ever does return, fans are in for another long wait.

But will it? That is tricky to figure out, in part because different cast and crew members have given difference signals. Early in 2023, MacFarlane said he was “cautiously optimistic” that there was good news around the corner. However, more recently, star Adrianne Palicki (Kelly Grayson) talked about how the show could be a “horrible” experience to make, in part because actors were left hanging so long between seasons waiting to hear if they still had jobs. If she was on the fence about returning before, this new extended wait won’t help.

But then, even more recently, star J. Lee (John LaMarr) hinted that there was more story yet to tell on The Orville. So it’s been like ping-pong. The temperature of the room has changed depending on when you check it.

Personally, I’d love it if The Orville returned. It’s a bold, earnest, fun and funny science fiction series that engages directly with big questions about politics, religion, war, family and technology in ways that recall sci-fi shows of old. The Orville definitely has passionate fans (sign this petition if you’re one of them), but whether passion will be enough to convince Disney to renew the show is an open question.