The Orville hasn't been on the air since season 3 ended in 2022, and although there have been reports of the show returning for another run, there is no concrete evidence that season 4 has been greenlit. Regardless, MacFarlane seems determined to keep his space opera alive.
Although The Orville started out by paying homage to/parodying the Star Trek franchise, the show has become a brilliant sci-fi saga in its own right. It moved away from its laugh-a-minute roots and started to provide audiences with more balanced storylines that had no shortage of deeply emotional moments.
MacFarlane's involvement with the show goes far beyond simply starring as Captain Ed Mercer. He also created The Orville, produces it, and is one of its primary scriptwriters. His workload away from The Orville with projects like Family Guy and Ted is likely part of the reason why The Orville season 4 is taking so long. However, fans of the show can still enjoy new entries into the canon that they probably haven't yet encountered.
Canon The Orville novella from 2022 is available in print for the first time
The Orville season 3, which was softly rebranded as The Orville: New Horizons, had its filming schedule disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, as was true of countless other productions at the time. For The Orville, this meant one episode had to be cut to save time. The episode in question, Sympathy for the Devil, did remain part of season 3's larger story, but as a digital novella written by Seth MacFarlane. It could only originally be accessed via Hulu and Disney+.
The literary episode was buried away in The Orville's "extras" section on both platforms. For a very long time, it wasn't possible to buy a physical copy of the book. Now, three years later, fans can experience Sympathy for the Devil without needing to stare at a device screen. So, on your next rewatch of The Orville, you can read the canon novella between episodes 8 and 9 of season 3, which is where Sympathy for the Devil was originally supposed to be placed in New Horizons' running order.
The Orville has added to its canon in other ways, too
It's certainly a relief to finally be able to own a physical copy of The Orville season 3's "lost" episode, but the show is already no stranger to fleshing out the saga away from the small screen. MacFarlane's space opera expanded into a multi-media franchise in 2019 when canon comic books started to be published alongside the show.
Like Sympathy for the Devil, the comics happen between adventures that can be seen by watching The Orville. Unlike Sympathy for the Devil, the comic book runs are often more substantial than the 35 pages of MacFarlane's 2022 novella. Then again, the stories in the comics were released in their intended medium, whereas MacFarlane had to improvise to get his canon The Orville book into existence by adapting a script after the show's COVID-related struggles.