[Exclusive Interview] Mike McMahan, Josh Bycel, and Sydney Ryan On Honeymoon Hijinks, SilverCops, Expanding The Wall & Their Halloween Sequel Story In ‘Solar Opposites’ Season 5
It’s not easy to keep a series fresh, fun, and freaky when it’s in its fifth season, yet Solar Opposites feels perpetually ready to reinvent sitcom tropes and rise to the challenge. The Solars have become increasingly acclimated to not just life on Earth, but life on Earth as a family, which has led to satisfying storytelling that’s in a league of its own. The Solars, both as individuals and as a unit, continue to grow, but the same is true for Solar Opposites and its ability to eschew expectations and redefine how seasonal television works. Solar Opposites has made room for multiple overarching and intersecting narratives that threaten to consume each other, only to push the series to even more rewarding places. In season five, Solar Opposites is at the top of its game and there are still no signs of its anarchist comedy slowing down.
In honor of Solar Opposites’ exceptional fifth season, the animated comedy’s executive producers, Mike McMahan, Josh Bycel, and Sydney Ryan, get candid on the series’ ever-expanding universe, deconstructing the Solars’ evolving family dynamics, how to keep The Wall interesting, what’s ahead for Dodge Charger and the SilverCops’ Scourge War, and if the Cryptkeeper or a different slasher mascot will be around to help usher in the Halloween season.
Daniel Kurland: Five seasons can be a real turning point for a lot of television series where it becomes more of a challenge to tell new stories. Five seasons in, do you find it harder or easier to break new stories that don’t feel repetitive in Solar Opposites? Has that process changed at all?
Mike McMahan: The show became so much easier to write once Terry and Korvo got married in the Valentine’s Day episode. Now, we can just let them be so freaking horny and funny and we don’t have to dance around it anymore. It feels like we’ve finally gotten to the core of where Korvo really lives. We’re in this great spot where he’s like this bossy pain in the ass, but he fucking love his hot husband. That’s a really funny tone to generate stories. It really helped free up the writers room. We just wrote season six and, in both seasons, it’s been so helpful to not have this “will they/won’t they” dynamic anymore. We can just write a show about a queer couple with kids, and that’s the least subversive thing about the show. It’s been so freeing to have that and let it be the show’s identity.
Also, obviously, Dan Stevens’ voice is so beautiful and it’s a delight to have him say the most disgusting, stupid things that come out of Korvo’ mouth. It’s always really funny. I think seasons five and six are really special. That Valentine’s Day episode really unlocked in us the ability to kind of let the show truly be what it is.
Daniel Kurland: Yeah, I was just saying that you wouldn’t think that a marriage would be this major catalyst for the show, but it really evolves the characters’ dynamic in a fun way. Similarly, this season also introduces JK-7, not just as a pet, but as a fun foil for Pupa and someone who can share stories with him. Can you talk a little on this character’s creation and what he brings to the show’s storytelling?
Josh Bycel: We always talk about how we’re writers and people who make TV, but we also love TV. We’ve always loved – from way back in the day – this sort of idea that TV shows always have to introduce new characters every couple seasons. Some cute little kid or an aunt who comes out of nowhere or whatever. We did it once on Solar Opposites with Little Buddy, but we really wanted to have a new character. We even call it out in an episode. We wanted someone who was on the Pupa’s level. Someone who talked the Pupa’s language who was literally on their eye-level, but also on their level. It was also, for us, an homage to write a character like BB-8 or R2-D2. We love Star Wars and now we’re sort of like this bastard stepchild of Disney who can’t mention Star Wars. So this was our homage to those movies, too.
Mike McMahan: The Pupa was originally created because I had a new baby, who we cast as the Pupa, when we first developed the show. The bits that we did with the Pupa were supposed to feel like the gags in MAD Magazine where you had like the Sergio Aragonés comics in the margins. I really wanted something in the show that just had visual comedy to it. Now, JK-7 provides the same thing and they’re like Calvin and Hobbes a little bit. They’re this fun pair. Since we’ve started production on Solar Opposites, I’ve had a second younger son who’s always paired up with my son, who the Pupa is based on, so it’s sort of like the chaos that my two kids get into when we’re writing those characters. It just felt like a natural, funny way to have another main character who is basically non-verbal and be able to tell sci-fi jokes with them.
My favorite episode from the season might be the madcap madness of “The Sci-Fi Rollerblades” and that you guys do what’s essentially a full-length riff on Wile E. Coyote vs. Road Runner. Where did this idea come from, how did it develop, and are you proud that you committed to the bit for the full episode, rather than just a few minutes with this idea?
Mike McMahan: Yeah, a real pedigree to Solar Opposites is doing things and playing with the scale of a joke that on another show would only be one scene, or a one-off, or like a cutaway gag. Like, the Wall, for instance. The original Wall idea that we pitched–in the first pitch before we had even sold the show was like, “What if Itchy & Scratchy took over The Simpsons and you couldn’t tell which show you were watching? Who is the B-story?” And so, we did that episode last season where the Solar Opposites become blind and invisible and the whole thing is kind of like a stage-play. And that might be one of the best episodes we’ve ever made. We can take a concept – a simple concept – and be like, “Hey, let’s do a nod to Chuck Jones. Let’s do a nod to Looney Tunes,” but then it just keeps going for a really long time. That’s the type of really funny thing that you can only do in Solar Opposites. It’s a really effective story. It’s really fucking funny.
The artists and everybody had to change how they made the show. The musicians had to become like foley artists for the sound effects. We put a ton of work into that. It came out so funny and great. There’s kind of no other show that can really take on that big of a change for no reason other than the fact that it’s cool and fun to do. That’s what Solar Opposites is all about.
Daniel Kurland: Yeah. I got so excited as soon as I heard the music in that one because I was like, “Oh, they’re fully committing to this!” It’s wonderful.
Josh Bycel: Oh yeah, we never don’t fully commit. I know that’s not great English, but when we want to do something, we are in.
Sydney Ryan: We had a full orchestra for that episode in order to do it right.
Daniel Kurland: The growing expanded universe of Solar Opposites with The Wall and SilverCops material has always been one of my favorite elements of the show and how you’re almost like your own self-sustaining TV network. Has it proven to be challenging to find the right balance with the Wall and SilverCops material? Can you talk about that process at all and if you’d like to add a new “series” to the mix next season?
Mike McMahan: I think we’re always learning, right? We’re always trying to do something unexpected that is something that will delight the audience, but we also never want to be boring. We never want to repeat ourselves. We’re always changing genres and you’ll see that this season there’s a little less SilverCops than before because the SilverCops stuff has an end to it. The first day I pitched SilverCops to the room, I was like, “This is the beginning, middle, and end of it.” And we’re approaching the end now. So we’re being a little more careful about how we drop those in. You’ll also see a lot of stuff in season five that’s actually a big pitch for stuff that happens in season six. The Wall story in season five getting turned into a western in the backyard has some pretty groundbreaking stuff that happens in the finale that leads to possibly our best Wall stuff ever in season six. We’re always learning and trying to follow our instincts on this stuff. There’s no grand genius plan of how much there should be because it’s all subjective.
Some people love The Wall and they’re like, “Why are the Solars getting in the way?” And other people are like, “I love the Solars. Why does the Wall keep getting in the way?” To me, it’s all going to come together and, eventually, it won’t feel separate anymore. If you want to get a bit of a hint on how that’s going to be –on how the Wall, SilverCops, and the Solars are all combined – the Rosetta Stone for it all is the “99 Ships” episode we did a couple of years ago in season three. That episode world-builds the galaxy out and how the Shlorpians exist within it. There’s a little hint at the end of that episode regarding where this all leads to that has been in the works for five or six years. I think seasons five and six really pay off in a cool way. If you’ve been watching the whole time and wondering where it’s all going then go back and rewatch “99 Ships.” There’s some good stuff that’s tucked away in that episode.
Daniel Kurland: You do a great job with that this season when you introduce the Solars’ original Shlorpian team leader, but have it carry over into the next season instead of wrapping it up this year.
Josh Bycel: He definitely comes back.
Daniel Kurland: You’ve got another Halloween special coming up. Can you confirm if the Cryptkeeper – or any other horror mascots – will appear and if you considered any other new holidays to celebrate before returning to Halloween?
Sydney Ryan: It is a direct sequel to the last one that we did. The Cryptkeeper does not return, but it does definitely play off of the last episode. It kind of follows the trope of The Santa Clause Tim Allen movie.
Mike McMahan: The structure of the episode is the same as The Santa Clause structure, but it’s a Halloween episode
Josh Bycel: And it’s a direct sequel, which you don’t see in a lot of TV specials.
Mike McMahan: Yeah, it turns out that they shouldn’t have killed the Great Pumpkin. That’s what they learn in this episode, which comes back to bite them in the ass a little bit. If people are going to tuck in and watch that episode,then it probably wouldn’t hurt to watch the original Halloween episode and then go right into the new one. Then you’ve got a classic hour of Halloween TV to keep you warm.
Josh Bycel: But we should bring back the Cryptkeeper at some point, but not in a Halloween episode. He should just come back in a regular episode.
Daniel Kurland: I love that. Do you think you’ll continue to try to feature other holidays as the show goes on?
Mike McMahan: I would love to do that. I really want to do another Christmas special. I think Christmas specials are the most pure TV. Like, you’ll never get more TV than a Christmas special. I wouldn’t mind a Casimir Pulaski Day holiday special. I’m a Chicago guy and I think that doing a really weird one-off like that would be hilarious. We love Hulu and we love that they make a big deal out of these holiday specials. Getting to be a part of that is really cool for us because Solar Opposites is just such a horny, vile, funny show. Getting to do a wholesome episode that’s like out of cycle for us is just so much fun to do.
And, you know, we say that the best way to watch Solar Opposites is to watch the new season four times in a row. That’s the best way to do it so that you can properly catch everything. It’s important to keep Solar Opposites running in the background.
All fives seasons of ‘Solar Opposites’ are available to stream, only on Hulu
