EPs Mike McMahan, Josh Bycel, and Sydney Ryan talk up their hit adult animated comedy’s new season mayhem, including less than marital bliss, The Wall takes a road trip, and a return to ‘fright night’ hilarity; now streaming on Hulu.
Amidst the animation industry’s most recent upheaval that includes more “one and dones” than we can count, Hulu’s adult animated science-fiction sitcom Solar Opposites has stood strong for four years now, with a sixth season pickup prior to the August 12 debut of its fifth season.
Produced by 20th Television Animation, the series centers around a crew of four aliens evenly split on whether Earth is awful or awesome, Korvo (Dan Stevens) and Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone) only see the pollution, crass consumerism, and human frailty while Terry (Thomas Middleditch) and Jesse (Mary Mack) love TV, junk food and fun stuff. Though they began their accidental Earthly existence as a team, these four aliens have become an unconventional family and audiences have waited with bated breath as the Annie Award-nominated series inched closer and closer to Terry and Korvo finally becoming a couple.
Season 5 sees mission partners Terry and Korvo are happily… however that’s defined… married. Executive producers Mike McMahan, Josh Bycel and Sydney Ryan share that the officially established relationship status has opened up a world of possibility for newlywed storytelling, as well as plots focused more on family values. Loosely.
Check out the official trailer now:
This past Friday, we got the chance to dive into the new season with the three EPs, exploring never-ending honeymoon phases and canon Halloween specials, unpacking what will become of The Wall – Yumyulack’s shrunken human terrarium – along with episodes focused on “What if?” devices and homages to Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes.
Dan Sarto: The new season has started. Terry and Korvo are married, and we’re focusing on family values. What could go wrong? And you’ve also got a sixth-season pickup, which is always great to have in hand.
Mike McMahan: Yes.
DS: What can you share about what's coming up?
MM: We were really freed by Korvo and Terry being married. It always felt like they were there, and then by the time we got to them realizing it too in the show, it mirrored us being able to write them the way we wanted. We were able to tell stories about newlyweds. And the fun thing is it's newlywed stories with insane sci-fi twists. Just because you're married doesn't mean you're not stupid and alien. It doesn't instantly grant you the ability to not be yourself. You know?
Josh Bycel: It just doubled the amount of stupidity and alienness.
MM: The honeymoon episode is a great example of that. The writers' room was unleashed to explore all these different stories that come from when you get married. And it pushed us to try to make the show feel brand new while also being the thing we always loved about it.
DS: What's in store for The Wall? I can't tell you how many people, just in passing at events and in random discussions, bring it up. What can you share for the new season?
JB: It's a fun exercise for us. As Mike said early on, it's like cosplaying as drama writers for us. But I think we'd spent years in The Wall, and we thought it would be fun to expand that world a little bit. So, this season there's a new genre, which I think we can say is a “Western Road” genre. It’s our take on a Western-meets-The Last of Us road picture, and it takes place in the backyard. There are some shades of Chinatown in it and shades of conspiracy. It's a really fun way to expand the world. And we have new characters played by Clancy Brown and Charlotte Nicdao from Mythic Quest. I think the fans are going to be excited to get out of the literal wall and see these little people interacting in a different way.
MM: And where we end with this big Western sets up a Season 6 Wall that brings it all back to the first season and it feels like we've gone on this epic journey and that now we're getting to pay some bills we've wanted to do for years. So, Wall people will be well-fed this season and people who are just there to see the Solar Opposites getting into crazy hijinks and being a family are going to be fed too. There's a great balance this year.
DS: Sydney, in the maelstrom that is animation production, I'm sure on this show, based on the subjects you guys write about, it's even crazier than most. What are you most looking forward to people seeing this season?
Sydney Ryan: There are so many good stories this season. The honeymoon episode Mike and Josh mentioned is amazing. The Wall story is incredible. We played a “What If” episode at San Diego Comic-Con that people really enjoyed.
MM: We never talk about the episode with Korvo fighting.
SR: I was just about to bring that up. We do a Looney Tunes bit in this one episode and the whole middle act is just music and it's all Chuck Jones and Looney Tunes style and we had an orchestra for it.
MM: It's like a love letter homage to what we loved about Chuck Jones' visual storytelling, but just crammed into Solar and the artists killed it.
JB: They really did. They killed it all season. Syd's team is amazing. We showed the “What If” episode, as Syd said, at Comic-Con, and it played huge. But watching it on the big screen, the animation is unbelievable. It looks so good. Syd and her team crushed it this year on a smaller budget.
DS: What’s often overlooked is the incredible depth and breadth of animation on your show. If you're watching carefully, you’ll see these artistic touches that expand the richness of the world of the show, that aren’t usually done on TV budgets. I assume we're seeing more of that sort of thing this year?
MM: Yes. And what's special about that is our team isn't only great… because they are. But we're throwing them curve balls every episode. When we change genres on The Wall, when we change location on The Wall, there's no reuse. These guys are building multiple worlds and Josh and I and the writers are really cognizant of the fact that we're asking a lot from them to just constantly be designing and thinking and framing shots in ways that are new cinematic genres all the time.
But at the same time, they're so good. They're so funny. Our directors, and all our artists, our designers, bring so much that they push us as writers to make a show that, on a surface level, looks like it's going to be a standard animated family sitcom, but every episode is going to surprise you and push animation to a place that is honoring what came before or is something you've never seen before. And because they're aliens, that's the name of the game with this show. Every episode has something you've never seen before, and working with artists that love that and are diving into that is what animation's all about–giving you something that you love but is something you didn't imagine until you saw it.
DS: You don't often realize how much good animation adds to your experience, especially on a show that you're happy to laugh with anyway. In the last minute here, what can you share about the Halloween special?
MM: It's a direct sequel to our first Halloween special so people should queue that up and then go right into this one because the first one is great too.
JB: I don't think that has been done much. I have never seen a show, when they do another special, do a sequel to a special they did two years before.
MM: Yeah. Once The Simpsons’ Christmas special ends, they don't start the next Christmas special being like, “All right, well, what did we do last Christmas?” You know? But there's something very cinematic and funny about it. This Halloween special is really funny. I'm looking forward to people seeing it because it involves the characters trying to reject Halloween because they think it's too scary and their bodies literally start becoming Halloween-themed things. I don't want to give away too much, but it's almost like we crossed Halloween and the Santa Claus a little bit. It's very fun.
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
