The Orville: Halston Sage’s Exit Explained

Why did Halston Sage leave The Orville? Halston Sage’s Orville crewmember Lieutenant Alara Kitan was a fixture on the Fox sci-fi comedy since the show’s season 1 debut in 2017. As the starship’s chief of security, Alara was responsible for the safety of everybody aboard the USS Orville and while she started out pretty inexperienced, she evolved into a more than capable lieutenant throughout the first season.

As a member of the Xelayan alien race, Alara possessed a superhuman strength which she explained was a product of her home planet having a higher gravitational pull compared to most, which results in Xelayans demonstrating enhanced strength in places with Earth-like gravity. That particular asset proved useful more than once during Alara’s time as part of The Orville’s crew as they found themselves up against various nefarious aliens like Dorahlian zealot Hamelac (Robert Knepper) or Krill spy Derek Ashton (Sean Cook).

Unfortunately, it was Alara’s unique Xelayan super-strength that led to her departure from the USS Orville crew. In The Orville’s season 2 episode “Home,” Alara discovered she was gradually becoming weaker as her body adjusted to lower gravity which required her to return to Xelaya to re-acclimatize and regain her strength. While recovering on her home planet, Alara reconnected with her family who had previously disapproved of her choice to join the military. Though the Orville’s chief medical officer Dr. Claire Finn (Penny Johnson Jerald, 24) developed a treatment that would allow Alara to recover while remaining aboard the ship, she decided to stay on Xelaya.

That explains Alara Kitan’s exit from The Orville, but why did Halston Sage leave the show? Truth be told, neither Fox nor show creator and executive producer Seth MacFarlane have given a clear reason as to why she was written out, and Sage herself seemed largely in the dark too. When asked if she chose to leave The Orville in a 2019 Television Critics Association panel, the actress simply stated, “It wasn’t about a choice. It was what was best for the show at the time.”

However, the door was left wide open for Halston Sage to return to The Orville and return she did in the show’s season 2 finale “The Road Not Taken” in which an alternate timeline plot allowed Alara Kitan to reappear. Executive producer David A. Goodman also stated in an interview with TrekMovie that the cast and crew of The Orville would love to see her return again. But now that Jessica Szohr’s character Talla Keyali has taken over as the USS Orville’s new Xelayan security chief and Sage is starring in crime drama Prodigal Son, coordinating another return might be a little difficult.