Ep 302 Of The Orville: New Horizons-Shadow Realms Is An All Out Fright-Fest Of Hateful Alien Arachnid Proportions

The call to explore the unknown beckons the Planetary Union to negotiate with the Krill passage for The Orville to pass through Krill space to go see what’s never been seen before, at least by The Union. The Krill agree but with one hell of a warning; stay away from the dark area called the Shadow Realms, a place of pure evil described in minimal but vivid detail within their religious texts because if the crew goes there and things go awry, no one is coming to save them. Since no Krill has actually seen the demons and horrors described in the Anhkana the Orville officers, including Admiral Christie, decide the descriptions are part truth, part religious fervor, and head out to take a look for themselves. It doesn’t take long for that most damnable of distress calls to get picked up by the Orville which draws them to and inside what looks like a floating space station from Hell and you just know things are going to go south real quick.

 (Photo by: Michael Desmond/Hulu)

The alien structure has a breathable atmosphere with no life signs aboard so the crew begins to carefully explore the structure which seems to be of organic and non-lethal nature. Breaking the number one rule of exploring unknown aliens or alien structures (never lean in, something will always squirt, shoot, or puff out some weird spore or virus into your face) Admiral Christie unknowingly becomes infected with a DNA altering virus that, once he is aboard the Orville, causes him to become violently ill. Soon he begins to morph into a vicious arachnid/alien/human hybrid that once the metamorphosis is completed, takes over the ship while most of the senior officers are back on the space station trying to get a sample of whatever got ahold of the Admiral. What makes things even more exciting for everyone involved is that the hybrid is creating more hybrids on the ship while the team in the space station discovers that the distress call that was emanating from the station is now producing a homing signal which means someone or something is coming home soon.

Eventually, power is restored and the away team is back on the ship, but there are several crew members who have become infected with the virus and are now on the hunt for more bodies to infect. With all the care and precision in the world, Dr Clair has been testing and re-testing, and researching the new virus in hopes of controlling the spread and discovers a simple, science-based solution to stop the virus but in the process kills the creatures, which brings up another ethical dilemma involving consent. Is it ethical to kill someone who is infected with a pathogen that is killing and/or by some means destroying life, without their consent? Bottom line if you can’t negotiate with them, if they can’t safely be contained then yes just check all the boxes first.

Luckily, thanks to Clair’s relationship with the now not-so-good Admiral Christie, the hybrids were able to be negotiated with and left the ship without harming anyone else, but gave the crew a head’s up before leaving that they all will meet again, and next time there will be more of them. Once the Orville was back in Union territory the Shadow Realms was basically declared a No-Fly zone by Union and Krill alike, and we will all have nightmares involving spiders, aliens, and shadows on our ceilings for a long time to come.

Shadow Realms is a terrifyingly fun horror story that really dives into how an alien race with life outside of our specs, in the middle of nowhere, has evolved a way to bring other life forms, intelligent life forms, into their home to infect and then send out to spread their virus of life reconstructed. The cinematography is phenomenal, the storyline is fantastic, the action scenes are exciting and the music score is almost intoxicating.

Side note: The aliens may not be demons but the acknowledgment by alien Christie that they’re coming and bringing more with them means they’re hostile to some extent, but are they evil or is the virus bringing out what was already within the host? We shall see.

The Orville: New Horizons Ep 302 Shadow Realms can be streamed right here on Hulu along with Ep 301 Electric Sheep and all previous seasons.