Did The Orville: New Horizons just create its own Q?

The post contains spoilers from The Orville: New Horizons “Mortality Paradox.” 

Back in season one of The Orville, in the episode “Mad Idolatry,” Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki) made a mistake that ended up turning a planet into worshippers…of her. An entire religion was built around her. But a lot has happened onThe Orville since then that no one has ever really thought about the repercussions. I mean, the crew has been busy fighting the Krill and the Kaylon. But there were repercusions from that mistake, and they showed up in “Mortality Paradox” in the form of Dinal, an immortal being who told Captain Mercer (Seth MacFarlance) and the away team that her planet had achieved immortality, although, it isn’t really specified if their immortality would have happened without Kelly’s influence. It might not have anything to do with her, after all.

After putting Mercer and the small contingent from his crew through a series of trials so that death could be experienced through their eyes, a being from the planet, Dinal, appears and assures them they were never in any danger. In fact, everthing that had happened to the crew was because this highly-evolved race has become bored with immortality. Who does that remind you of?

The Orville: New Horizons might be taking a page from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Q (played by John de Lancie) was a member of an immortal race of beings known as the Q Continuum. And, in his boredom with immortality, he liked to play games, mostly with Captain Picard, games that, to him, were nothing more than fun. But they often had huge consequences.

While the hallucinations the crew suffered becasue of Dinal and her people’s attempt to see mortality didn’t cause any lasting consequences, she wasn’t fully satisfied. And one got the immediate impression that the crew would see more of her. If she and her people can go anywhere, do anything, and live forever, then The Orville: New Horizons has created its own Q. And with the Kaylon, those creatures from “Shadow Realms,” and possibly even the Krill to contend with this season, I’d say the series might be going just a tad overboard with villains. But this is definitely a wait and see game, although, something tells me Dinal isn’t going to be anywhere near as helpful as Q was at the end of season two of Star Trek: Picard.