Hulu’s brand new animated comedy, Solar Opposites, debuted on the streaming service early Friday morning, giving TV fans a new weekend binge to look forward to. When watching the trailer for the series, or even just seeing some promo photos on Hulu‘s front page, it’s easy to think that this new series will feel a lot like Rick and Morty. It’s got a similar art style, the comedy is geared towards adults, and it comes from an almost identical creative team. Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland and head writer Mike McMahan created Solar Opposites, with Roiland providing the voice for the lead character in both shows. They may feel like similar projects, but Solar Opposites and Rick and Morty couldn’t be more different.
Videos by ComicBook.com
ComicBook.com spoke to Roiland and McMahan about Solar Opposites ahead of its premiere, asking the creators about the inevitable comparisons this series will draw to their other animated hit. They both explained that, while the style of the animation may be the same, Solar Opposites isn’t nearly as dark as Rick and Morty, so they never really had to try to set the two titles apart while working on them.
“When we were writing this, we weren’t competing with Rick and Morty. We weren’t trying to distance ourselves and we weren’t trying to reference it,” McMahan told us. “We both love Rick and Morty and this Solar Opposites took a really long time for the development cycle and to finally end up on air. And we did many seasons of Rick and Morty. Like we were working on Solar before season three of Rick and Morty. The art style, to everybody else in the world is Rick and Morty art style, but to me and Justin, it’s just Justin’s art style.”
“We weren’t actively trying to find any similarities to Rick and Morty because we were making it separately in our minds,” he continued. Like it was a different kind of show, more of a sitcom, family, weird show than that dark Rick Sanchez driven, Rick and Morty. I mean we love Rick and Morty, it just wasn’t what we were trying to do with this and we still had a blast with it though.”
Great minds think alike, and it’s clear that both McMahan and Roiland were always on the same page about what they were trying to do with Solar Opposites, especially as it related to Rick and Morty. Roiland echoed McMahan’s sentiments about wanting to make a show that was lighter in tone, while explaining that they intentionally wanted these new characters to be nothing like Rick Sanchez.
“Well, to be honest with you, there wasn’t really an effort on our part to push the show away from Rick and Morty or closer to it or anything,” he said. “I never really thought that they were too close. So we just kind of did what we wanted to do. The look of the show, that’s sort of a foregone conclusion because I wasn’t going to change my style just because I was worried about comparisons. It was like, no, that doesn’t make sense. I was obviously thinking, ‘Okay, well Matt Groening did it with Futurama and of course now with Disenchantment.’ And that’s just his style.”
“But the characters are so different than Rick and Morty, Roiland added. “I mean, you know, Morty’s probably a little closer maybe to some of the characters. But Rick certainly is not. And on Rick and Morty there’s a lot of existentialism, there’s a lot of darkness. It’s a darker tone. And Rick is the reason for that. That character is incredibly complex. There’s a lot of shit going on you don’t know with him. That in and of itself makes a framework for a very different kind of show. “It’s not to say you can’t have a lot fun with that character on Rick and Morty. It’s silly. But that being what it is, it’s kind of just a different vibe. And on Solar we have these four aliens that are really not malicious. They’re pretty good hearted. They have good hearts. They have good intentions. They’re very confused about humanity. They don’t really understand culturally what’s right, what’s wrong.”
Are you looking forward to watching Solar Opposites this weekend? Let us know in the comments!
The entire first season of Solar Opposites is now streaming on Hulu.
