TV Review: The Final Season of Hulu's "Solar Opposites" Offers Closure for the Shlorpians, the Wall, the SilverCops, and More

Today saw the debut of the sixth and final season of the Hulu original animated sitcom Solar Opposites, and below are my thoughts on this last batch of episodes from co-creator Mike McMahan.

There’s a joke in the final season of Solar Opposites about how if you were 14 years old when the show started, you’d be 21 now. I don’t think the math quite checks out on that one, but it is remarkable that it’s been about five and a half years since this series first premiered on Hulu. A lot has happened in the real world over that time, but on the fictional planet Earth of the show, things are pretty much the same. Aliens Korvo (voiced by Dan Stevens since season 4), Terry (Thomas Middleditch), Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone), and Jesse (Mary Mack) are still doing their best to adapt to their new homeworld while raising the Pupa (Sagan McMahan) to terraform the planet in order to repopulate their Shlorpian species.

Except by this point in the run of the series, pretty much all of our Shlorpian protagonists– even Korvo– have come to admire Earth, its people, and (probably especially) its popular culture, so the mission is in question as season 6 kicks off. But if Earth is no longer in danger of alien takeover– or so it would seem– these wacky would-be invaders need a different problem to tackle this year. So the writers have the Artificial Intelligence named Aisha (Tiffany Haddish) go haywire because Korvo and company have abandoned their mission, destroying much of their sci-fi equipment, including the devices that generate unlimited money for our unlikely heroes. So the arc of this season becomes, in true classic sitcom style, about the aliens literally trying to find a way to survive, keep their house, and enjoy their lives in peace. There are developments that happen later on in the season that jeopardize all of that, but I won’t spoil what those are in this review.

Of course we also check in on the shrunken human residents of the Wall in Yumyulack and Jesse’s shared bedroom, and their epic narrative is concluded over the course of a few episodes spread throughout the season. I’d say the ending of this subplot is mostly satisfying, with Alfred Molina’s “The Duke" character making a triumphant comeback to help the Wall people (including Christina Hendricks returning as Cherie) on a quest to reclaim Yumyulack’s shrink ray and return to their normal lives. I also don’t want to spoil whether or not that adventure pays off successfully, but there are definitely enough twists and turns along the way to keep fans of the Wall storyline satiated in this final season. I will say that I thought the writing for the Wall stuff felt like it became a little too jokey this year, as I always felt in years past that this part of the show worked best when it took itself quite a bit more seriously than the nonstop absurd barrage of unbridled looniness that is the aliens’ world.

Guest stars among the voice cast this season include Kieran Culkin from Succession, Jim Rash from Community, Beck Bennett from Disney’s DuckTales reboot, Ken Marino from Party Down, Will Sasso and Debra Wilson from MAD TV, and Sliders star Jerry O’Connell. The performances among both guests and regulars are great as usual, and the writing is still very funny, despite the fact that the pacing of the dialogue is often so rapid-fire that jokes will often fly past me before my middle-aged brain can catch up, forcing me to rewind a bit just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Ultimately I think that might be my only major issue with Solar Opposites as a whole: the fact that it is just so jam-packed with gags that– even though I have now seen every episode of the show– I’m pretty sure a decent amount of the humor has escaped me. On the other hand, that may be a feature of the series rather than a bug, in that it may inspire a full rewatch that would likely feel just about as fresh as my first time through.

But the big question that most fans are going to have as they head into this final season of Solar Opposites is whether or not it provides suitable and rewarding conclusions for the numerous characters– both central and supporting– that inhabit the world of this cartoon. And I think the short answer is yes, it does. Having just wrapped up watching the series finale, I’m guessing that the writers made an effort to revisit previous seasons and take note of any dangling plotlines that could use wrapping up before the conclusion, and ultimately things get tied up together pretty well (though again I definitely don’t want to spoil anything too big here). Even after only half a dozen seasons, the universe of Solar Opposites feels fairly expansive, but the creative leads of the show have done a commendable job of bringing everything together in the end– even the SilverCops. As for the future of the show, Korvo does make another fourth-wall-shattering remark about the possibility of getting picked up by another network… but even if this is truly the last we see of the Shlorpians, I’ll be happy that we got a good six seasons (and four holiday specials, let’s not forget those) of zany alien hijinks.

The sixth season of Solar Opposites is now streaming, exclusively via Hulu and the Disney+ Hulu bundle.