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Orville may have originally been marketed as Star Trek parodies from a spiritual background Family guySeth MacFarlane, but by the time the third season finally aired in 2022, it had long since evolved into one of the best sci-fi shows of the decade. Season 3’s sixth episode, “Twice in a Lifetime,” proved that the series, which features a discussion of aliens urinating in the pilot, was capable of emotional highs that most shows never reach. To this day, fans debate the ending of the episode and whether our heroes really made the right decision.
Twice in a lifetime
“Twice in a Lifetime” is a Gordon (Scott Grimes)-centric episode that serves as a sequel Orville Top Series 2, “Lasting Impressions”. It was then that Gordon created a holographic program based on information from a phone placed in a time capsule in Saratoga Springs, New York in 2015. A woman, Laura Huggins (Leighton Meester), becomes the woman of Gordon’s dreams and he falls in love with her digital entertainment, but ends up lets go
For the second time, instead of falling in love with a digital version of Laura, Gordon finds himself sent back in time thanks to Aronov’s device, which once again struggles with the time stream. Abandoned in 2015, Gordon searches for the real Laura Huggins, meets her, falls in love again, has children with her, and lives his perfect life. Orville, on a mission to save Gordon before he destroys the timeline, lands in 2025, where Ed (Seth MacFarlane) and Kelly (Adrianne Palicki) confront their navigator.
Act of Treason
Orville really hit its stride when the stories started to focus on the characters and less on playing with sci-fi tropes, but here, under the watchful eye of producer Brannon Braga, the man responsible for some Star Trek: The new generation best episodes, it’s a perfect mix of both. There is no real villain in “Twice in a Lifetime,” and the climax is an intense debate between Gordon, who tries to defend this perfect life, and Ed and Kelly, who insist that the timeline must be preserved.
Given how the season two finale works, it’s ironic that Ed and Kelly take the stance they do, especially when Gordon explains that he spent three years alone in the wilderness, avoiding any human contact to help keep the timeline intact. In another series, Ed and Kelly would end up winning over Gordon with a better, logical argument about the needs of the many. But Orville is constructed differently, and the real resolution is a shocking, heartbreaking act of betrayal.
Refueled and ready to jump through time again, Orville returns to 2015, before Gordon met Laura, and picks him up from the wild after only four months, and this version of Gordon is happy to be back. 2025 Gordon returned to his family, hugged them, told them he loved them and enjoyed a few moments before they were all erased from the timeline as 2015 Gordon was transported back to 2422. There Ed and Kelly explain the year 2015 Gordon, what really happened, how he found Laura, and how he lived his dream life in the past.
No one is right and no one is wrong
There are a considerable number of them Orville fans who see Ed and Kelly as villains because they robbed Gordon of his perfect life and then told him about it so that he would feel the loss again for the first time when he returned/turned around at the right time. Given their past adventures in a timeline that changed the future twice, I find it hypocritical and cruel to do this to Gordon.
Seth MacFarlane he continued to record in interviews and appearances because, in his opinion, we never saw the life Laura would have had Gordon not appeared in the past. Was her life better, or did Gordon’s arrival change her future and lead her down a completely different path? The worst thing about MacFarlane’s take is also what he does Orville so good at being right but i feel bad and this moral conundrum makes the series so fascinating years later.
There are other episodes Orvilleespecially both parts of “Identity”, which are some people’s favorites, but nothing hits as hard as “Twice in a Lifetime”. Gordon, a comic character who covers up his insecurities with alcohol, rarely took center stage, and when he did, Scott Grimes made sure to give a damn in every scene, giving us one of the greatest science fiction when the time travel episodes were filmed.
