What’s in store for season four of Hulu’s Solar Opposites? The new season, which won’t arrive until 2023, will pick up with Korvo (voiced by series co-creator Justin Roiland) and Terry (voiced by Thomas Middleditch) forced to work an office job just to give the teenage angsty Pupa some structure in his life.
During a roundtable interview at the 2022 San Diego Comic-Con, series co-creator/executive producer Mike McMahan and executive producers Josh Bycel and Danielle Uhlarik delved into what fans of the critically acclaimed animated series can expect when Korvo and Terry attempt to work a normal job. They also discussed the Halloween Special, The Wall storyline, Hululand, and getting to dip their toes in all sorts of different genres within the animated series.
In a separate roundtable interview, co-creator Justin Roiland provided some insight into the much anticipated “A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” and why Korvo is terrified of that particular holiday.
Mike McMahan, Josh Bycel, and Danielle Uhlarik Interview
How would you describe the office environment in season four?
Josh Bycel: “I mean, for us as comedy writers we like to do things we never get to do. And usually, you’re given notes that are like, ‘Stay in your lane. Do what the show’s about,’ and on Solar Opposites we’re slipping dramas in there, we’re changing the tone of the show all the time. Because the leads are these aliens, we kind of let their naivete get to dictate what we’re going to do at any one season.
So, going into season four, we end season three by…it was kind of inspired by the last episode of the FX show The Shield where it was like be careful what you wish for. You’re safe but you’re stuck in this office environment. And so, at the beginning of season four, we’ve switched the genre of the format of the show from being a family comedy to being an office comedy. But our aliens are really bad at office stuff.”
Mike McMahan: “And of course being Solar Opposites, they work in the dumbest office ever.”
Josh Bycel: “It should feel like the worst episode of The Office in a funny way, basically.”
What will be happening with The Wall people?
Danielle Uhlarik: “So we’ve transitioned from a horror/monster sort of thing that we did in season three to a Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy kind of theme – very Cold War.”
Mike McMahan: “We end the last season on the rise of this theocracy…”
Danielle Uhlarik: “…with Sister Sisto, basically what religion has done inside The Wall. And then the thing that also got us really excited was we continue on with the SilverCops story in a really fun and surprising way. It’s got legs the same way The Wall did so we’re doing even more kind of drama spinoffs from that.”
Josh Bycel: “We’re doing as many spinoffs as we can. As Mike likes to say, it’s almost like we’re greenlighting our own mini-shows. We have our own Solar Opposites network.”
Mike McMahan: “Nobody would ever let us write a Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. We’re comedy writers; we’re idiots. Luckily if it’s little people who eat jellybeans and they’re doing it, it’s awesome. It’s just a dream to get to write that stuff. Plus, with 11 episodes we have more time to do alien stuff and extra weird drama stuff, so it’s never like the show isn’t what it was in the first place. It just keeps growing.”
Josh Bycel: “Once we got to 11 episodes, we were able to do one of my favorite episodes of season three, ‘99 Ships,’ which is where we get to see – we sort of extrapolate from the opening credits and we learn all this stuff about Schlorpians. That was when we got the extra episodes. Mike sort of had that in his back pocket for a while. So that’s what great about doing more episodes.”
You have a lot of creative freedom.
Danielle Uhlarik: “There are so many times in the room where we’re like, ‘We can’t possibly do that,’ and then we’re like, ‘So let’s figure out how to do it!’ One season we were trying to figure out the best, craziest fight scene we could. We kept trying to top it and then someone just adds, ‘What if we put a post-it and say Hulu didn’t give us enough budget.’ We laughed and then we’re like, ‘Let’s f**king do that!’”
Josh Bycel: “And then we have an episode where we go to Hululand. Hulu has been amazing, and we make fun of them all time and they’re the best partners.”
Mike McMahan: “Hululand – I’m glad you brought up because thematically there’s this weird thing where our sense of humor is things feel like we were made to do it, but nobody asked us to do it. Hulu never asked us to bring them up all the time. We just loved when The Simpsons made fun of Fox.”
Josh Bycel: “So, we were like, ‘We’re going to be the only people ever to mention Hulu in a show.’ We have all these products we mention in the show. They’re not paying us to be mentioned in the show. We’re doing it because it’s funny to us that a show so vulgar would then reference KFC where some KFC executive would have a biscuit drop out of their mouth if they saw that episode.
We’re dying to sell out, but no one will let us!”
After three seasons, how do you describe the series?
Mike McMahan: “This show is TV nerds loving what they do, getting to do things with no rules that we’ve never gotten to do before. That’s why you can never predict what’s going to happen in the show.”
What can you tease about the Halloween Special?
Josh Bycel: “We bring back an amazing sort of classic Halloween-ey scary movie character that no one’s talked about in forever.”
Danielle Uhlarik: “And nobody cares about.”
Josh Bycel: “We actually got the same person to do the voice so it’s going to be so much fun. We already have one for next year that’s going to be so much fun. We love doing specials.”
Justin Roiland: (in a separate interview): “Korvo is absolutely f**king terrified of anything to do with Halloween. Like, candy corn, even if you get some cotton and start stretching it and it starts to look like a spiderweb, he’s [terrified]. So, that’s sort of what it’s about but then it just goes to all these insane places ultimately.
I don’t know what all to say…and then I could also say ‘crypt keeper,’ but you could make of that what you will. (Laughing) I don’t know – that might actually be a spoiler. But it’s really, really, really fun. We also kind of love the formula of 11 normal episodes and then a special. We’re kind of clicking into that as the Solar rhythm for each year.”
Will we learn why Korvo hates Halloween?
Justin Roiland: “Yes, essentially. Well…yeah, yeah, kind of. I mean, listen, whenever we do an episode where we’re not going to learn backstory, we at least have some funny hand-wavy thing that satiates that for the audience. Like, the why of it all. We have a good team and we’re really cognizant of that stuff. We all have good taste in comedy and the stuff that we like to watch. I feel like we all have a good bead on when something’s really good and when something’s not.”
