At the recent "Star Trek" Las Vegas convention, actor Scott Grimes, who plays Lt. Gordon Malloy on "The Orville," revealed to a small — and stunned — crowd that season 4 of the show is set to begin pre-production at some point early in 2025.
Absolutely no one was expecting this, so no video of the big announcement seems to exist on social media. But it has been confirmed on The Planetary Union Network: 'The Orville' Official Fan Podcast. Moreover, that same group wrote on Reddit, "Seth [MacFarlane, the show's creator] hasn't made an official announcement on any of his direct social media, but we do work directly for production/him. S4 is happening. No one can give an accurate timeline on when it will release yet, though."
The announcement was also confirmed by Colin Krapp, the administrator of "The Orville" fan page on Facebook, who posted after the announcement, "A big THANK YOU to Scott Grimes for announcing this at STLV last night so I can finally say it openly (I’ve known for a month)."
Krapp also stressed that pre-production— designing and building sets, scouting locations and, most importantly, polishing the script — will begin in 2025. So, we may still have to wait quite a while before the first episode arrives.
Related: 'The Orville' started as a spoof, but it has evolved into so much more
Will the old sets at Fox Studios be reused? Do they even still exist? Will "The Orville" start using the "Volume" LED surround-screen that's being used for "Star Trek" and the live action "Star Wars" spin-off shows?
The annual "Star Trek" Las Vegas convention is not at the top of most sci-fi fans' radar, but this year there was an unusually big turnout of talent from a variety of sci-fi shows. In fact, most of the cast of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" showed up, along with others like Grimes. Given the reduction in the number of events over the last few years or so, any con, it seems, is worth clinging to.
The Disney D23 Fan Event begins on Friday (Aug. 9), so it's possible there might be an additional announcement or two over the weekend. And New York Comic Con begins on Oct. 17, so there could be more news drops a couple of months from now.
Interestingly, it was exactly two years ago that we got to see the last episode of "The Orville" season 3, and you might recall that Isaac (Mark Jackson) married Dr. Claire Finn (Penny Johnson Jerald) after proposing in the middle of the mess hall. Whoever said romance was dead on Kaylon-1?
As for the future of Isaac and Dr. Finn, well, we can only speculate. There are still many plot threads that could be incorporated into the fourth season, not least of which is the revealed identity of Heveena's operatives on Moclus, the future of relations with the Krill and the Moclans and whether or not Lysella will join the crew.
The first three seasons of "The Orville" are available to watch on Disney Plus in most countries. Viewers in Latin American can watch on Star Plus.
