In last week’s episode of Seth MacFarlane‘s The Orville, titled “Home,” the USS Orville’s security officer Lt. Alara Kitan abruptly resigned her post so that she could return to her home planet. The reason given? Alara is a Xelayan, a race whose home planet exerts a great deal of gravity on them and thereby gives them increased strength in lower-gravity environments, like the one on Earth. However, over time Xelayans begin to degrade in these lower-gravity environments and must return home to be revived.
Why was Halston Sage written off The Orville in season 2?
This was the narrative’s reason for Alara’s departure. Yet when ComicBook.com asked FOX if Halston Sage, the actress who plays Alara, was officially gone for good, the network confirmed that she was. After the entire first season and only the first two episodes of the second, the American actress is no longer a part of MacFarlane’s Star Trek fever dream, and no official reason has been given to explain why.
To be fair to MacFarlane and The Orville team, Sage’s exit was given an entire episode to explain in equally expositional and moving fashion. Even so, ComicBook.com and other outlets have noted that Jessica Szohr, who was announced as a new regular cast member a few months ago, is playing a new character named Talla who may also be a Xelayan. In other words, it’s beginning to sound like Alara (and Sage) were replaced with a simple switcheroo.
Will Halston Sage ever return to The Orville?
In confirming Sage’s exit from the show, FOX also revealed that should she ever want to return to the series, or if the opportunity ever presents itself in the narrative, that door is still open. Yet the abruptness of her and her character’s departure from the show have left many fans wondering if something else had happened (or was happening) behind the scenes. No one involved in the production has said anything to contradict FOX’s statement so far, and Sage has not addressed the matter at all on social media.
New episodes of The Orville air Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on FOX.
