With due respect to “Futurama,” one of Hulu’s funniest adult animated shows over the past few years has been “Solar Opposites” and its wacky gang of marooned aliens on our Big Blue Marble adjusting to life amid humans.
With four seasons already in the can after a successful 2020 launch, 20th Television Animation’s irreverent sci-fi series from executive producers Mike McMahan (“Star Trek: Lower Decks“) and Josh Bycel (“Happy Endings”) returns on Aug. 12 with a 12-episode fifth season. To reignite fan enthusiasm and bring everyone back up to speed, Hulu has graciously provided us with a hilarious sneak peek clip to share.
In this joke-packed preview on top titled “Trap King of Admissions,” pulled from Episode 504, “The Educational Sprinkler Device,” Terry and Korvo open a private school called Mr. Korvo’s Academy for the Exceptional and the Grotesque. It’s billed as “the best pre-school academy in all four corners of David Attenborough’s Planet Earth,” and comes complete with politically incorrect equine classes, STEM studies, immersive holographic book nooks, and even a giant Giving Tree.
Here’s the official series synopsis:
“In ‘Solar Opposites,’ a team of four aliens 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 (Dan Stevens) 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 (Sagan McMahan), a living super computer that will one day evolve into its true form, consume them and terraform the Earth. In Season 5, now that alien mission partners Terry and Korvo are married, the whole ‘Solar Opposites’ team are focused on family values.”
As seen in the new Season 5 trailer above, the series’ popular subplot named “The Backyard” that was teased in Season 4 will be explored further. It centers around miniaturized societies created by Yumyulack that exist in a hidden, wall-set terrarium inside his and Jesse’s bedroom.
These imprisoned people called The Wallians begin to organize societies, families, commerce, military forces, agriculture, and even a quasi religion before many of them rebel and escape outside. Some of the Lilliputian clans suddenly existing outside The Wall are now enjoying fulfilling, tiny-sized lives in the verdant bucolic backyard until the sprinklers are mysteriously shut off and total chaos erupts.
Hulu’s “Solar Opposites” drops all 12 episodes of Season 5 on Aug. 12, 2024.
