REVIEW: ‘Solar Opposites’ Halloween Special Resurrects a Spooky Season Legend

Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan are at it again as the Solar Opposites Halloween Special gets ready to kick off spooky season on HULU. The hit animated series debut its third season this past July, as the Schlorpian family adjusting to Earth culture continues to be a comfort binge watch for fans.

The show is about four aliens who crash-land on Earth and are now attempting to assimilate into American society while trying to fix their ship before their pupa transforms into their final phase and terraforms the planet. The team, comprised of Korvo (Justin Roiland), Terry (Thomas Middleditch), Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone), and Jesse (Mary Mack), combine the comedy of viewing human culture through the eyes of extraterrestrials while using their sci-fi technology to cope with the throes of modern life.

This Halloween special marks the second one-shot seasonally themed episode that the show has taken on, with the first being the wildly ridiculous Christmas special. Solar Opposites is a show that lives and dies on its reliance on pop-culture-related humor fused with whacky sci-fi hijinks, and interspersed of course with some survivalist narratives through the shrunken people who live in Yumyulack’s wall (I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence). So a Halloween-themed episode is extremely up their alley.

Given how passionate the horror community is, and the myriad of popular scary films that exist, it’s completely plausible that the show has more than enough source material to rip on for at least the next decade at a minimum. This is exactly why I find such joy in the show. Its ability to take a thing, explore it, and twist it to understand how to laugh at it is a fantastic skill that has served both creators incredibly well. As two of the minds behind Rick and Morty (which is now in its 6th season), and McMahan leading his own hit animated series on Paramount+, Star Trek Lower Decks (currently also in its third season), their boundless approach to embracing pop-culture at every level and finding the humor within it has allowed them a seemingly endless well of ideas to call on.

The Halloween special focuses on Terry and Jesse’s desire to decorate for the holiday amidst Korvo’s downright fear and prohibition of anything scary or decorative being in the house. When Korvo finally agrees to allow one decoration, the family decides to crank the sci-fi dial up to 100 and recreate the crypt keeper. If you’re familiar with this show then you’re showing your age, as this particular character originates from the 1989 series Tales from the Crypt. The show was an anthology-based horror series inspired by the comics of the 50s. What’s especially wonderful is that the Solar Opposites Halloween Special not only “dug up” the character of the crypt keeper, but they also brought back the original voice actor, John Kassir, to play him.

While the episode is a fun experience, it did feel a little long in parts and lacked in the usual raucous comedic stylings. The concept is absolutely there, but the dialogue just doesn’t to live up to the high bar the show has set in the past. However, as a one-off special, I don’t think this will turn any fans off the series. If anything, this unexpected little nugget of an episode is a nice surprise and a good reminder to go back and binge all three seasons of Solar Opposites.

The Solar Opposites Halloween Special will air exclusively on HULU on Monday, October 3rd.