Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special’ on Hulu, Where The Foul-Mouthed Space Aliens Explode Another Human Holiday

A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special (Hulu) is the second holiday-themed bonus episode from the Solar Opposites crew after they tackled Christmas, and a fun companion to season three, which just concluded. (A fourth season of the adult animated comedy from Rick and Morty veterans Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan has also been announced.) For Sinister Halloween, the perpetually bickering Solars are joined by the voice acting talents of Tiffany Haddish and – in a fantastic Halloween get – John Kassir, the original voice of the Crypt Keeper character from HBO’s Tales from the Crypt.

A SINISTER HALLOWEEN SCARY OPPOSITES SOLAR SPECIAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “Fah-la-la-la-la, la Hall-o-ween!” Terry (Thomas Middleditch, Silicon Valley) is stringing seasonal decorations onto the Solar Opposites’ adopted suburban home with the help of Jesse (Mary Mack), and these two couldn’t be more excited for All Hallows’ Eve.

The Gist: Terry and Jesse can string up plastic tarantulas, arrange garlands of ghouls, and drape an oversized Grim Reaper skeleton across their spacecraft parked on the roof. But none of that is gonna get Korvo (Justin Roiland) into the Halloween spirit. The beleaguered alien scientist leader of the Solar Opposites crew is freaked out by every little tradition of the spooky season, and responds to jump scares with blasts from a shotgun. Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone), meanwhile, is in full Halloween hater mode, too. But he was formed from Korvo’s flesh, so it makes sense that they’re on the same side of the argument.

Terry and Jesse’s enthusiasm is unflagging. “Halloween’s gonna be special this year, and we’re doing the shit out of it!” They’ve always been more inclined to take an interest in humanity, and that includes secular holidays. They’re also excited about what Randall, the neighborhood “Halloween Guy,” has in store for his elaborate yard decorations and haunted stroll. Terry heard Randall spent big on a “set-quality Witcher costume.”

In an attempt to out-do Randall’s holiday setup, Terry and Jesse exhume a corpse and reanimate it with the help of Aisha (Tiffany Haddish), the Solars’ ship-based artificial intelligence, and her “creepy cauldron protocol.” But while they’re busy chasing the resulting Cryptkeeper (John Kassir) around the neighborhood – he really gets around with those quippy scary puns! – Yumyulack is impaled on a fence while complaining about ghosts, dies, becomes a ghost, and is sucked into Hell, where he’s unfazed by his demonic torturers. “I’m from space, you fucking dork. I’ve seen what lies beyond the universe’s edge. Horns aren’t gonna move the needle for me.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The manic energy of Rick and Morty is here, and the absurdist suburban setting of Solar Opposites recalls the misadventures of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. But the delightful spooky/scary/sci-fi randomness of the Halloween-themed gags here are most at home within the proud tradition of The Simpsons and the “Treehouse of Horror” holiday specials.

Our Take: With all of the fun A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special has with The Crypt Keeper popping out and reciting on-demand pun jumbles – “Anthony was a simple tailor, but he soon found what you reap, you sew!” or “Nathaniel was a sea captain who had a sinking feeling he would drown in debt!” – it’s worth noting the rich humor and visual language of Yumyulack’s journey to Hell in this very entertaining special for the spooky season. Right from the start, when hell’s maw appears in the earth and his only reaction is “Demons? Lame!”, Yumyulack’s quasi-teenage, alien traveler-infused indifference to the whole situation is hilarious. He wants to know if he’s accidentally reached suburban mom hell. He’s expecting Tim Burton to jump out with a swirly umbrella. And he has no patience for the various time-honored torture traditions of the terrifically-rendered spawns of Satan that include a goat’s head on a peacock’s body and a housefly crossed with a human skull. They stretch him on a rack and it just helps his back relax. And when all of the black, gray, and red gloom ultimately gives way to an encounter with the big boss, Yumyulack is flippant to the end. “Suck my sci-fi, Satan!” he shouts as the other Solars suck him back to the surface with a dark space magic tractor beam. There’s plenty to like and laugh about in the second Solar Opposites holiday special. But one of their number being decidedly unimpressed with the mechanisms of humanity’s afterlife folk tradition is a fun bit of subversive genius.

Sex and Skin: Nothing except a few extended meditations on blow jobs as currency.

Parting Shot: To wit, when Terry put up flyers all over town in the wake of the Crypt Keeper’s disappearance, he made an offer of free blow jobs to anybody who brought them a corpse. “Better break out the Chapstick,” Korvo says, looking at the line of vehicles that stretches around the block. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

Sleeper Star: Tiffany Haddish’s appearances as Aisha in the Solar Opposites universe are always welcome. For Sinister Halloween, the sequence where she aids Terry and Jesse’s Victor Frankenstein machinations with a little bit of AI life-conjuring is full of wacky visual details and witty asides.

Most Pilot-y Line: The Pro-Halloween Solars got a bonus when they utilized “dark sci-fi magic” to make a living dead body: the Crypt Keeper from HBO’s Tales from the Crypt! “He tells pun-filled anthological scary stories. That’s what they do!”

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Solar Opposites braintrust already tackled Christmas. With A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar, they’ve added a madcap, foul-mouthed rff on Halloween to their raft of holiday specials. So, with a fourth season imminent, isn’t it more than likely that “Thanksgiving at the Solars’” is right around the corner?

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges