Seth MacFarlane has surprised everyone with The Orville. While many expected the series to follow in the footsteps of Family Guy and Ted, the show delivered heartfelt storylines, drama and a more subtle humor across two seasons at Fox before the company merged with Disney. Now the show is currently airing its third season under the new title, The Orville: New Horizons on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ in the U.K. and other territories. In the latest episode it returned to a transgender topic it originally tackled in its first season, and creator MacFarlane recently reflected on the reaction to the episode while speaking to The Hollywood Reporter.

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In the fifth episode of the show’s latest season, MacFarlane has revisited the Moclan culture to tackle the often controversial subject of transgender acceptance. In the series, the Moclans are an alien race who have their gender altered immediately after birth to have their sex changed to male. In the new episode, the teenage child of Bortus and Klyden, played by Peter Macon and Chad L. Coleman respectively, tells them that she identifies as a female and wants to have the surgery reversed to become female again. After originally touching on this story back in the first season, MacFarlane explained how he felt it was time to return to it again. He said:

“In many ways, when you get this far into a series, the characters and the universe guide you. We had established Bortus; we had established Klyden; we had, to some degree, established Topa, and certainly established the rest of the crew’s relationship to those characters. In a strange way, the universe of The Orville guided the writer’s room in this direction. It seems the most organic way to let her story play out, and when I was writing the draft, I found that it was not a simple thing to do, but breezy enough process that it was a good indicator that we were on the right track. This episode was a pleasure to write because when I got into it, all indications were that the story had been broken properly and responsibly and with care.”

Seth MacFarlane Has Found Social Media Responses Gratifying

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Seth MacFarlane has been checking in on the social media responses to the series and in particular the responses to some of the tougher subjects that are tackled by The Orville. While his other shows have been known to court controversy for their crude and offensive humor, The Orville has always taken a different approach. Talking about how he has been looking at fan reactions, MacFarlane said:

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“Yeah, I have, actually, and it’s very gratifying. With this kind of material, you’re always threading a needle, and in the past, there are things that we perhaps did not handle as expertly as we could. That’s part of the learning process — certainly with any show, you find your footing — but I’ve been really gratified by the reaction from the fans. They’ve really taken it as a conversation starter. I hope that The Orville never feels like we’re on a soapbox. That’s never our intention — our intention is to entertain and to begin a thoughtful conversation. But for this episode, at least, it seems as though that’s been the general reaction. People have taken it as a character story that is allegorical — it takes place in this alien world — but is also the impetus of a much more human conversation.”