Solar Opposites Renewed For Season 4 By Hulu

Ahead of the third season that won't arrive until next year, Hulu has announced that the adult animated series Solar Opposites has been renewed for a fourth season. Solar Opposites premiered in 2020 and, according to a press release from the streamer, was the "most watched Hulu Original comedy premiere of the year." The series is also Certified Fresh by Rotten Tomatoes. Justin Roiland (Rick & Morty) and Mike McMahan co-created the series and are executive producers alongside Josh Bycel (McMahan and Bycel co-showrun the series).

Fans of the animated series had one special surprise waiting for them at the end of the second batch of episodes when it was teased that a holiday special was on the way. It was unclear at the time if there actually was a special in the works or if this was the show's trademark meta-humor at work, but nope, it's real and it's happening. There's no release window for the holiday special yet, but Roiland has said that the comedy of the standalone episode will rival some of the funniest bits in his other series, Rick and Morty.

"It's amazing," Roiland told Syfy Wire. "I know that doesn't say anything. I said before that's the first time I've laughed in the booth to the point where it took me 10 minutes to get through a line of dialogue. The last time that happened was on the 'Pickle Rick' episode of Rick and Morty. I don't know if it was just the mood I was in, combined with that line hitting me a specific way. But it's just such an absurd concept. It's so Christmas-y and holiday [themed]. It's so f***in' awesome. No sh**, I think it might be my favorite episode of the entire Season 2... The other thing I can say about it is that it introduces a specific sci-fi tech that if we wanted to, we could do a lot more with it. It's just great."

While juggling both Rick & Morty (which is a few seasons into its mammoth seven season order from a few years ago) and Solar Opposites, Roiland has previously opened up on the different between making the two shows despite them sharing a clear sensibility (and his voice for the lead characters).

Speaking with SlashFilm previously, Roiland said: "On Rick and Morty, there are more iterative steps. We're looking at things, polishing, punching up, and changing pretty consistently throughout an episode's life. From breaking the story in the writers room, to outline, to script, to thumbnails, to animatics, to color, in every one of those stages, depending on the episode, there's pretty significant rewrites and relaunches."

He continued, "On Solar Opposites, we wanted the show to be as good as it can be, but let's tackled it head-on and didn't put it through all those extra stages of iteration. Let's move quicker and see what happens. It was almost like an experiment. Let's make this show that's very different than Rick and Morty. It's absent of the existentialism and the darker elements and make it a lighter show tonally."

The series is officially described as follows: "Solar Opposites centers around a team of four aliens who escape their exploding home world only to crash land into a move-in ready home in suburban America. They are evenly split on whether Earth is awful or awesome. Korvo (Justin Roiland) and Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone) only see the pollution, crass consumerism, and human frailty while Terry (Thomas Middleditch) and Jesse (Mary Mack) love humans and all their TV, junk food and fun stuff. Their mission: protect the Pupa, a living super computer that will one day evolve into its true form, consume them and terraform the Earth."

You can watch the first two seasons of Solar Opposites on Hulu now with season three premiering in 2022.