Solar Opposites: Co-Creator/Executive Produce Mike McMahan and Executive Producer Josh Bycel On The Wall, Season 5 & Beyond [SDCC 2024]

Solar Opposites remains one of the wildest animated shows on the air, and it’s not slowing down in the upcoming season 5. Nominally about the titular family of aliens living on Earth, Solar Opposites has expanded in several unexpected ways. This ranges from the epic dramas of the shrunken Wall storyline to the surprising emotional openness of the show’s central pairing.

With season 5 on the way, season 6 in production, and no end in sight, Solar Opposites could continue to push the boundaries of where their series can take things — which is exactly how the creatives behind the scenes like it. During a round table interview at San Diego Comic-Con, That Hashtag Show got the chance to speak with Solar Opposites Co-Creator/Executive Produce Mike McMahan and Executive Producer Josh Bycel about the biggest surprises they’ve discovered in the show, the lessons they’ve brought from other projects, and teased the scope of storylines like the Wall going forward.

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Sci-Fi Gags, Space Hijinx And Getting To “Cosplay As Drama Writers”

Beyond his role on Solar Opposites, Mike McMahan is also the creator of Star Trek: Lower Decks. The animated in-universe comedic take on Star Trek is also an impressive animated project that quietly serves as perfect contrast to the more cynical and outlandish comedy of Solar Opposites. “Solar Opposites and Star Trek: Lower Decks are complimentary to each other. On Solar Opposites, there’s no rules. I get to do whatever I want. Lower Decks is all rules. It fits into Star Trek canon. There’s 800 other episodes.

“On both shows, I love the characters. With Lower Decks ending this season, my wife just watched the rough cut of the finale episode and was crying because it was like saying goodbye to friends. I know that’s going to happen to me on Solar Opposites eventually, when we part ways — hopefully not for many years. Animation can go forever, and you just expect it to.

“You’re always like, I hundreds of stories I want to tell. Then you find out when the season’s going to be your last, which we haven’t yet on Solar Opposites. You start trying to cram in all your favorite ideas. “Oh, I better do everything. I better do everything I really want to do.” [Star Trek: Lower Decks season 5] is a really great season. But it’s a melancholy thing too.”

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The Lessons Of Animation Past And How It Impacted Solar Opposites

For both McMahan and Bycel, it was important to bring lessons from their previous projects to Solar Opposites. For McMahan, that meant looking at worked and what didn’t on Rick and Morty and applying those lessons to production. “A lot of my pals still make Rick and Morty, McMahan explained. “I’ll call them and ask them about ideas from ten years ago. I make sure they’re not touching that [so we can do it]. I’ll kind of like change the idea… a lot of it is silly sci-fi stuff. I did a lot of that in Rick and Morty, but Solar Opposites has a different sort of tone. Rick and Morty as characters are so singular. Rick is all nihilism and intelligence.

None of our guys are really like that. We don’t really bump into it thematically as much. From a sci-fi perspective, what we try to do is we try to to not change stuff after we ship it to color. We used to throw out a lot of stuff that would really improv [on Rick and Morty]. That’s where you got those long times between seasons. On Solar Opposites, we try to avoid that. For one, we just don’t have as big of a budget for it. For another, it puts us in a more creative box sometimes. What can we really push about what we have and make it the funniest show possible? It gets us to places I never expected, which is really cool.”

Meanwhile, Bycel reflected on how “I worked on American Dad, which now has finally gotten [the attention it deserves]. I think people just think American Dad is half an hour of of comedy [like Family Guy]. But it’s so different. I think I brought that into Solar Opposites. ‘Let’s make sure this is really different from Rick and Morty. Yes, the characters will look the same. Yes, some of the voices will be the same. Let’s make sure we do really different stuff.’

“I think one of the things that we’ve done from the beginning is there is this heart to it. These people are crazy people, but in the end there are always kind of learning the tiniest little thing. They love each other. They had teammate affinity. Then they learned what love was. Foor me, at least, I’ve always needed to separate ourselves. The wall and silver cops do that for us.”

Solar Opposites is now streaming on Hulu. Season 5 comes to Hulu on August 12th.