If you’ve ever watched Rick and Morty and thought, This is great, but I wish it was even MORE untethered from reality, then this is the show for you. Solar Opposites premiered as a Hulu original in May 2020 and mostly flew under the radar. That’s a shame because, despite living in the shadow (and controversy) of Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites is also a great science fiction show in its own right. Now that it’s made the leap to everyone’s go-to streamer, Netflix, there’s really no excuse
Writer Mike McMahan was always the glue holding Rick and Morty together. (I’m not saying the show went downhill because he left shortly after winning an Emmy for his work as producer on the “Pickle Rick” episode, but I’m also not not saying that.) McMahan went on to create Lower Decks, the animated Star Trek spinoff that Trekkers are obsessed with and nobody else seems to be aware of. However, his purest work is Solar Opposites.
The raunchy animated series co-created by McMahan and Justin Roiland follows an extraterrestrial family-ish unit who flee their doomed planet and arrive on Earth with plans to colonize. The core cast includes Roiland (later recast, more on that shortly) as Korvo and Thomas Middleditch as Terry, who lead the mission and act as parental units to their clones Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone) and Jess (Mary Mack). There’s also a baby, which is actually an engineered “Pupa” being that will eventually evolve into its final form and terraform the entire Earth.
The premise of Solar Opposites is that the aliens want to study Earth and its human inhabitants so they can conquer it. What that actually means is a series of unrelated and absurd events, mostly due to various members of the core cast getting distracted from their mission by something on Earth. (In the pilot, they become obsessed with an in-universe TV show called Funbucket; in another episode, Terry and Korvo build themselves a man cave.)
The show really shines, however, when it goes totally off the rails. Throughout season 1, Yumyulack begins shrinking various humans and capturing them in a giant ant farm, eventually leading to a brilliant bottle episode that explores the Mad Max-esque society that’s formed within the terrarium. Solar Opposites also delights in the occasional, one-off holiday special; I still sometimes find myself thinking about the 2021 Christmas episode that manages to turn Arnold Schwarzenegger’s holiday romp Jingle All the Way into a sci-fi horror story.
It’s also worth noting that when both Rick and Morty and Solar Opposites jettisoned Justin Roiland over allegations of sexual misconduct, the two shows went in wildly different directions. Rick and Morty launched a nationwide search to find two unknown voice actors who could perfectly replicate the title roles. Meanwhile, Solar Opposites simply cast Legion’s Dan Stevens as Korvo and let him do his thing.
Ultimately, Solar Opposites can be best described as Rick and Morty without the heady influence of Dan Harmon. It’s definitely not as smart, but it’s still a hilarious send-up of all your favorite sci-fi tropes and stories. And if that sounds appealing, you know what to do next.
Solar Opposites is now streaming on both Netflix and Hulu.