Why Did Alara Leave The Orville? The Real Answer Is Frustrating

Like the Star Trek series it pays tribute to, a big part of the magic behind "The Orville," Seth MacFarlane's genre-hopping love letter to the optimistic side of spacefaring sci-fi, are the characters that inhabit its world. One character that quickly won fans' hearts only to leave the series far too soon was the Orville's original chief of security: one Lieutenant Alara Kitan (Halston Sage).

As someone who hails from the extremely high-gravity planet Xelaya, Alara possesses superhuman strength when she's in a gravity range standard for most races in the Planetary Union, making her an ideal person for handling Union security. As mentioned on "Old Wounds," at just 23 years old, Alara is already a senior officer on the Orville before Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane) takes over as captain.

During her time with Mercer's crew, Alara proved herself both a highly qualified officer and an essential member of the Orville family — which made the Xelayan's Season 2 exit that much more emotional. It's a departure made even more frustrating by the fact that the show's producers and even Sage herself have done little to clarify the reasons behind. But the good news is that with a 4th season of "The Orville" on the horizon, there's a chance we might get to see more of this dearly missed fan-favorite "Orville" character in the future.

As Halston Sage beamed to a journalist at Paleyfest around the time "The Orville" Season 1 launched, she absolutely loved playing Alara. "I think my favorite thing about the script was that I hadn't ever read a character like Alara for someone my age ever," Sage told Shine on Media, emphasizing the character's role as protector of everyone aboard the ship despite Alara's youth, age, and small size before adding, "It's I think everyone's dream to play a version of a superhero."

While her super strength often comes in handy for getting the crew past impenetrable doors, Alara continually proves herself far more than just a convenient pickle jar opener, even earning the Sapphire Star for bravery after saving Ed and the ship's first officer Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki). And yet, despite the bravery and insight she brings to her job, Alara sometimes finds herself riddled with self-doubt and guilt, like when she loses Officer Payne on "Firestorm." With the support of her Orville family, she finds the fortitude to overcome those feelings and recommit to her role — which is part of what makes it so heartbreaking when Alara eventually has to leave for health reasons.

After a season of building relationships as Isaac's (Mark Jackson) Friday night arm-wrestling buddy and Dr. Claire Finn's (Penny Johnson Jerald) Obi-Wan, Alara broke "The Orville" fans' hearts when she abruptly had to leave the ship and return to her homeworld at the beginning of Season 2. After unexpectedly suffering a broken arm on the Season 2 episode "Home" — something that shouldn't happen due to her Xelayan physiology —, Alara learns she's been suffering from a deterioration in muscle mass, bone density, and overall strength. Finn diagnoses her condition as atrophy due to exposure to long-term human gravity, emphasizing that Alara's case is unusually bad, most likely due to the young age at which she left Xelaya. According to Claire, the only hope for Alara to regain her strength begins with returning to her homeworld, where she can begin the slow and difficult process of reacclimating to Xelaya's gravity.

It's emotional news for the Orville crew, but it's devastating for Alara, who, while intelligent by human standards, is considered intellectually below average among Xelayans. After years of dismissing her unsupportive, anti-military parents' condescending belief that she joined the Planetary Union because she just wasn't good enough for a Xelayan education, Alara has no choice but to give up on her dreams and return home.

Although Alara originally plans to work hard on her recovery and get back to the Union as quickly as possible, she decides to stay on Xelaya after reconnecting with her family. In her heartbreaking goodbye to Captain Mercer, Alara tells him, "You were my family. You and this entire crew, but I found something on Xelaya," adding, "And now I have a chance to experience it for myself, I've already missed out on so much time."

Although Alara's spot as Chief of Security would be filled by fellow Xelayan Talla Keyali (Jessica Szohr), she would always be missed. But Alara popping up both on the Season 2 finale and again on Season 3 has given fans hope for her potential return on the show's upcoming 4th season.

On the Season 2 finale "The Road Not Taken," the Alara we get to see is not the one we know. Rather, this Alara is an alternate timeline version created by a much younger Kelly's decision to miss her date with Ed, a crisis first initiated in "Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow." The event is set off when Isaac's time travel research pulls a younger Kelly into the present, where she is faced with a future carved out by decisions she has yet to make. In the darker timeline where the Kaylon have taken over, Alara shows up as a Resistance fighter. Although the timeline ostensibly gets resolved with a handy little Claire-aided paradox, the fact that it's one of the two alternate timelines on the series leaves open the possibility that somewhere out there in the spacetime continuum, another rebel Alara could be waiting to bump into the Orville crew.

And then there's the even more likely possibility that Alara will return to her old crew, particularly given her apparently good health and spirits when she shows up at the end of Season 3 for Claire and Isaac's wedding ("Future Unknown"). Although Claire mentions that Alara can only spend a "limited time" in human gravity each year and Alara has taken a job working on Xelayan outpost design, a lot of adventures can happen in a limited time each year.

Although Alara was written off the show without any clear explanation for Halston Sage's departure, there was plenty of room for speculation among fan communities at the time. For many, it was hard to imagine the relationship between Sage and MacFarlane did not play a role in the actor's exit, either through her decision to leave or the show forcing her off. Despite a nearly 20-year age gap, the co-stars were allegedly confirmed to be dating — at least for a short time — in 2019.

However, there's no evidence of bad blood between the pair, and certainly nothing to suggest Sage was pushed out maliciously. In fact, Alara's goodbye episode was filmed before she was spotted around town with MacFarlane. And even when initially announcing the actor's exit, Fox said writers would be open to bringing her back in the future. And in 2019, co-executive producer David A. Goodman told TrekMovie.com the writers would love to have her return whenever it fit the story: "Halston is a friend of the show. We love her and would definitely want to figure out ways that she can come back." That hardly sounds like someone who left because of tension with the show's creator. Sage would also quash any suggestion that she left the series to take another role on a Television Critics Association panel for "Prodigal Son." According to Sage, "When 'Orville' ended, I was just out there auditioning like everyone else."

Much like Alara's once-absent eyebrows before her prosthetic redesign, it appears the showrunners probably just wanted to go in another direction with the Orville security chief. As Sage told the panel, "It was what was best for the show at the time."

Since leaving "The Orville," Halston Sage seems to have had no trouble landing steady gigs. Almost immediately after leaving the sci-fi series, the actor took on the lead role of Ainsley Whitly, an ambitious serial killer's daughter, on "Prodigal Son," where she appeared alongside Tom Payne, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Michael Sheen.

Sage has also appeared in a number of films since her 2019 exit, including the Mindy Kaling comedy-drama "Late Night," a romantic comedy called "The Last Summer," and a cameo as Dazzler in the X-Men film "Dark Phoenix." In 2023, Sage took the eponymous main role in the Marcia Gay Harden-starring "Daughter of the Bridge." That same year, she served as executive producer and starred in "The List," an independent film about an engaged couple who decide to pursue their "free pass" lists before tying the knot. According to Deadline, the actor will also appear in an upcoming pet-centric rom-com called "The Pet Nup" with Jaime Pressly of "My Name is Earl" fame.

As Sage's career seems to be veering dangerously close to permanent typecasting among the queens of "terrible yet great" rom-com movies, that's just one more reason to bring Alara back to "The Orville." In a ship as big as the Orville, there's always room for one more Xelayan.