It wouldn’t be shocking to see The Orville renewed on Hulu for one reason

Star Trek fans should be optimistic about The Orville’s chances of getting renewed.

Right now in the world of science fiction, there are two shows that seem to be near-perfect circles when it comes to the Ven Diagram of fandoms. Those two circles are Star Trek and the Orville. They’re nearly identical in what they offer with a few differences.

The Orville was a very intense comedy that modeled itself after Star Trek’s glory years in the 90s but slowly morphed itself into a series that, while still laden with Seth MacFarlane-branded humor, became far more about paying respect to Trek. Star Trek has moved on from trying to be the bastion of idealism that Gene Roddenberry had envisioned and became twisted and deformed under the weight of a cynical group of writers.

Despite the Orville being more Trek than Trek these days, its future, like Treks is up in the air with the current upheaval surrounding the strikes possibly ending, the wasted money by not coming to a deal sooner, and in the Orville’s case, lingering concerns of cancellation.

Trek, likewise has to deal with the fact that a lot of what it is and has been known to be since Discovery launched is very much coming to an end. Not for the same reasons, as Star Trek has been one of the most expensive properties to make for Paramount. It’s becoming weighted and bloated and with the streaming service bleeding money, big-budgeted shows that Trek contains are getting axed.

And while Star Trek is losing parts to the machine, The Orville may just be looking at a new life.

The Orville is on the right network

No one in the streaming game, aside from Hulu where the Orville airs, and Netflix is making money. And that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. No one network has the resources or the catalog of content aside from Disney to warrant having its own service. But they’ve ruined their biggest money makers by over-saturating the market and watering down the product.

As for everyone else, they hid their content behind expensive paywalls and since they didn’t have enough properties on their own to have a successful service, they over-invested in properties that did well on Netflix and the like, only to find out that they don’t have the audience necessary to carry the brand. Sure, on Netflix Star Trek did gangbusters in ratings, but that’s because Netflix has a substantially higher subscriber base, so more people had the opportunity to watch shows like Voyager and Deep Space Nine.

Now, not so much.

So when it comes to The Orville, fans should be happy that they’re on a network that is actually making a profit. Star Trek is on a streaming service that over-invested in them thinking they were going to be a bigger deal than they were; they weren’t. And due to that, now shows are being axed left and right to save money and recoup losses that CBA All-Access and Paramount+ will likely never make back on the franchise.

Hulu, on the other hand, isn’t forced to cut any shows due to budget issues. They’re healthy financially, unlike so many other streaming services. By all accounts, The Orville performed well on Hulu, maybe on par with most of the current Trek series, but since Hulu doesn’t need to cut costs to appease shareholders and investors, there’s no reason to think The Orville won’t get a fourth season; that is unless MacFarlane is done with the show.

That’s the only real reason it makes sense to not do a fourth season. None of this is to say that a fourth season is definitely happening, but things look better for The Orville than other sci-fi properties currently.