For the last five years, “Solar Opposites” has stood out as a perfect utopia for adult-animated sci-fi comedy in an already overpopulated media landscape — until the asteroid hit (the asteroid, of course, being Hulu deciding to cancel the show after six seasons).
As such, Monday marked both the Season 6 premiere and the series finale of Mike McMahan’s co-created sitcom, bringing a dramatic end to the stories of the central four aliens/replicants, as well as both The Wall and SilverCops. Ahead of the conclusion, stars Dan Stevens, Mary Mack, Sean Giambrone and EPs Josh Bycel and McMahan opened up to TheWrap about saying goodbye to Korvo, Terry, Jesse and Yumyulack.
“It’s a huge gift, every season of a show feels like a gift these days. There’s no guarantee of things going beyond one or two seasons sometimes, so the fact that we’ve had six is amazing and I’ve had a great time on these three seasons,” Stevens told TheWrap (after replacing original co-creator/star Justin Roiland in Season 4). “Of course, I’d love to do more, I think we all would. But that’s a good way to leave it, rather than everyone being sick of it.”
“I love revealing what we’ve been working to since Season 3, the ‘99 Ships’ episode where we set up the SilverCops and we’ve known how they were involved in the Solars’ backstory the whole time. We accelerated that a little bit because we found out this was going to be our last season, but I’m glad we got enough of a heads up to be able to have that satisfying conclusion,” McMahan said. “Nothing ever works out the way you think, and I think we’re going through that historically now. You always have to be vigilant and you’ve always got to be honest — like, honesty and integrity are more important than controlling people, even if it’s for their own good, like in The Wall.”
So what longtime plotlines are the voice actors excited for fans to finally see wrap up?
“The wall. I mean, geez, that’s a lot of drama and a lot of tension. It’s too much stress, so I’m glad that one is getting some closure, because people were panicking,” Mack said, while Giambrone added: “I’m excited for the Yumyulack-Jesse High School storyline, because the show kind of started off with them there, so there are some cool conclusions with that.”
“I think watching Korvo and Terry’s romantic relationship develop and deepen, you know, power shifts. It’s very it’s complex stuff. I think it’s a very satisfying onward journey for them,” Stevens shared. “It’s a beautiful dynamic. And, apparently, one of the few extraterrestrial queer relationships on television — hopefully not the last.”
“They’ve sort of gotten more and more human a little bit as they’ve gone. Mike always had this idea for them to lose their money, and I think having access to any money and diamonds they wanted set them apart from humans. Having them lose that allowed them to be a little bit more human. They had to go out and get jobs. The kids had to become smart kids, and they had it in them,” Bycel further noted. “I think that also allowed us to unleash what the Solars could really be in this world, finally, as they grow to sort of be used to living on Earth.”
But what about the possibility of “Solar Opposites” ever popping up in future episodes of its Adult Swim sister series? “It would be funny if we crossed over with ‘Rick and Morty,’ but our guys never got to meet Rick and Morty — a ‘Waiting for Godot’ thing where they were just, like, hanging out with Jerry the whole time or something,” McMahan hypothesized.
In the end, the team is just happy to have found a dedicated audience — even if the show and its iconic holiday specials are ending sooner than they imagined.
“This show started in the pandemic unexpectedly, and it turned into a show about watching a pair of aliens that argued all the time kind of slowly fall in love and find out that they could be a family. I always felt like the fandom was really on our side. We took a lot of chances with the show, we did a lot of crazy s–t that could have made people mad or could have confused them and our theory on this show is that our audience is smarter than anybody gives them credit for,” McMahan concluded. “Our audience wants to watch something that is challenging and weird and dumb in a smart way, as long as it is caring and earnest. We always pushed to try to make the show better in a million different ways, and it’s because the audience always rewarded us for taking chances, and I just think that that’s a really, really rare thing to have; fans show up and support when you’re doing something well.”
All six seasons of “Solar Opposites” are now streaming on Hulu.
