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The Orville sets off for Season 2.5 in Dark Horse Comics' new 'Launch Day' miniseries
While TV's The Orville has finally docked after its successful sophomore outing on Fox and is awaiting its next mission when it eventually relaunches on Hulu, Dark Horse Comics is offering fans a brand-new The Orville miniseries to blast off into this summer — and SYFY WIRE has a special exclusive preview to get you through the temporal displacement.
Production on Season 3 of Seth MacFarlane's comedic space fantasy has been postponed due to the ongoing pandemic but is expected to resume this fall. No release date has been announced as yet. Similar to Dark Horse's The Orville: Season 1.5 in 2019, these fresh tales consist of two-issue "episodes" sandwiched between the second and third seasons of The Orville.
Written by The Orville executive producer David A. Goodman (Futurama, Star Trek: Enterprise), with spacey artwork via David Cabeza and Michael Atiyeh, The Orville: Launch Day #1 acts as a pseudo Season 2.5 and arrives on Sept. 2 to satiate acolytes of the cult sci-fi show.
The plotline centers around a Krill fleet encroaching upon Union territory. When Captain Mercer and his intrepid USS Orville crew intercept the purposeful intruders they learn the eight Krill spaceships are en route to a puzzling planet in the Alibar System that seceded from the Union ages ago.
A strange, moon-sized structure is apparently discovered above the planet emitting a large amount of quantum interference, and the Krill are determined to obliterate the object before the potential weapon is deployed. But is it actually a weapon, or something else completely?
"After more than a year of the Season 2 finale, it's great to let fans get aboard The Orville again," Cabeza tells SYFY WIRE. "They'll read two new exciting stories that David Goodman and I created of our crew with all the flavour of the TV show. Ed and Kelly have exciting adventures on a new world in the first story, with the always threatening appearance of the Krill; then the second one, focused on Talla, is a very interesting story that will let fans know more about her character. I really liked drawing these issues and hope the readers and fans enjoy them!"
Now strap in and check out our exclusive six-page preview of Dark Horse's The Orville: Launch Day #1 in the full gallery below and mark your calendar for its imminent arrival on Sept. 2!
