The Untold Truth Of Solar Opposites

Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan are the biggest names in animated sci-fi comedy — the former co-created Rick and Morty, and the latter is a longtime writer for the Adult Swim hit. In 2020, the duo took a break from inter-dimensional adventures to launch Hulu's Solar Opposites, about aliens who flee their home planet of Schlorp and crash land in American suburbia. 

Not blending in or hiding out like aliens in past TV shows, the Schlorpians wreak havoc and menace upon any Earthling unlucky enough to get in their way. Korvo and his easygoing, Earth-loving partner Terry head up this new kind of family which also includes Korvo's agitated replicant Yumulack and Terry's clone, the sweet and innocent Jesse. And then of course, there's the Pupa, the baby-meets-pet the aliens must protect and raise until it becomes the all-consuming force that will lead to the desecration and terraforming of Earth. You know, just regular sitcom stuff. Whether you're already a viewer or just starting out, here's everything there is to know about those spaced-out aliens from Solar Opposites.

The aliens' use of otherworldly technology isn't just joke fodder — it has serious ramifications. "We kept talking about [how] it would be funny if the sci-fi throwaway things [the aliens] did had repercussions," co-creator Mike McMahan told the Los Angeles Times. And thus, as detailed in an epic, standalone, and extremely dramatic episode, "The Wall" was built. Teenage replicant Yumyulack is often in a foul, human-hating mood, and anytime a person wrongs him, he zaps them with his shrink ray and puts them in the massive, multi-level vivarium in his bedroom wall. Inside that wall a brutal, highly-stratified post-apocalyptic society bent on survival at all costs develops, lorded over by the self-proclaimed Duke (Alfred Molina), until he escapes and freedom fighter Tim (Andy Daly) gets corrupted and fills the power vacuum.

"Basically, it was an idea we had really early on, even before we wrote the pilot," co-creator Justin Roiland told CinemaBlend, "to kind of slowly inch our way to a bigger story inside the Wall and treat the Wall like a high-stakes microcosm of society, where it's sort of post-apocalyptic and they have to shed all of their regular-world belief systems and roles." McMahan liked it because he could emulate HBO's The Wire. "You know, The Wire has like the dockworkers on one side and then the regular show on the other," he said. "And I've never seen that in an animated comedy before."

Every episode of Solar Opposites landed on Hulu in May 2020, when most of the U.S. was under local stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Eerily, the show's fourth episode touches on virus prevention. After Yumyulack and Jesse sprout plant parts out of their heads, they assume it's "a puberty thing," only for Korvo to explain that it's "just fungus you get for not washing your hands." Terry chimes in, "You gotta wash those hands!" Did Solar Opposites "predict" coronavirus, and a nationwide devotion to hand-washing? Probably not. This episode entered production almost a year before the age of the coronavirus began. "It's amazing, in all the animated shows I've worked on, how often it happens," writer Josh Bycel told the Los Angeles Times. "Where there's just a joke about somebody or something and then it ends up being very timely," Bycel added.

The coronavirus did affect production on the show's second season. By the time lockdowns were ordered, only the scripts were near completion. "We were able to send home the animators with computers," Bycel told Bubbleblabber. "It's worked well so far, but I don't know what's gonna happen once we have to send our material to Vancouver to get colored and all that stuff." Still, that makes Solar Opposites one of the first animated shows to be produced in staffers' homes.

The Pupa is just a baby, but is also the most important character in Solar Opposites. The other aliens are supposed to carefully raise the young creature to maturity, whereupon it will destroy Earth. Of course, once that happens, there's no more Solar Opposites, so until then, the Pupa goes on some wild solo, often silent adventures, such as getting caught up in a trafficking ring that deals in real animals that look like cartoon characters (the Pupa kind of resembles SpongeBob SquarePants). The character was inspired by a childhood favorite of co-creator Mike McMahan. "Growing up, I loved reading Mad magazine, especially the Sergio Aragones' little mini comic strips, like the wordless comic strips in the margin," he told CinemaBlend. "And when we were breaking stories, we wanted the Pupa... to kind of have these nonverbal adventures."

Also informing the character: McMahan trying to make sense of fatherhood. "At the time we were developing the show, my kid was brand new and I had been learning that I like being a dad but that part of being a dad is you both love and fear your kid at all times," McMahan told Inverse. "We wanted the Pupa to be a combination of what I was feeling of being a father but put into this kind of ludicrous sci-fi comedy lens."

Giving voice to Yumyulack and Jesse, the two young replicant characters on Solar Opposites: Sean Giambrone and Mary Mack. This project is extremely high-profile, and somewhat unlikely. Giambrone brings a palpable teenage energy to his role as angsty Yumulack because he is a teenager, and Solar Opposites is only his second main cast role on an animated series, following his time on Cartoon Network's Clarence. (He's best known for portraying Adam Goldberg on ABC's live-action The Goldbergs.) Mack is relatively new to voice acting, building on her career as a stand-up comedian with gigs on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Golan the Insatiable, and Trover Saves the Universe, a video game created by Solar Opposites' own Justin Roiland.

Despite having the chops for the roles, Giambone and Mack both were left perplexed that they actually got the job. "I just threw it out there, thinking, 'oh, nothing will come of this,' on a crappy iPhone," Mack told Afterbuzz TV of her literally phoned-in audition recording. "I listened back and, like, I can't even believe they let this go through because I would've turned it off were I them." Giambrone also admitted that he sent it a terrible, phone-captured voice sample. "They probably said, 'who has the worst recording of all the people who auditioned for this show?' and it's probably you and I," Mack theorized.

Modern-day, adult-oriented, animated comedies have a lot more in common than humor that works on multiple levels and often grotesque-looking characters. It's seemingly standard operating procedure that a cartoon show changes up something in its opening credits from episode to episode. For The Simpsons, it's the last shot, where something weird happens with the family's couch, on Futurama it was a changing tagline, and on Bob's Burgers, the business next door to the titular restaurant is always different.

"We wanted something like that just because we're big fans of all that stuff," Solar Opposites co-creator Mike McMahan told Syfy Wire. This show's ever-changing opening bit? At the end of Korvo's expositional monologue, he rants about various grievances he has with Earth. While only eight total could be used, McMahan wrote plenty for voice actor Justin Roiland to use. "I ended up writing like 30 or 40 things for Justin to riff on and every one of them made us laugh." The running bit nearly had another level to it, with a plan to use a different guest voice actor each episode. "It was asking somebody to build a character and know the show, and then asking an audience to bear with that. It just wasn't flowing," McMahan explained.