Summary
This is everything a holiday special should be. It takes the four little aliens we’ve gotten fond of over the last three seasons, throws a corpse filled with punny stories at them, and lets hilarity ensue.
This review of Hulu’s A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special does not contain spoilers.
Ahead of the series’s fourth season 2023 release, the family of aliens from Solar Opposites treated fans to a Halloween special at the start of the (too) Spooky Season. The animated series for adults was created by the same people who brought us Rick and Morty, Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan. Following its premiere on Hulu, Solar Opposites got nothing but praise from critics, and the show’s fanbase seems to keep growing.
The seasonal episode finds Terry (Thomas Middleditch) and his replicant Jesse (Mary Mack) excited about decorating their home for Halloween, to Korvo’s (Justin Roiland) dismay. Saying that Korvo isn’t a fan of the Spooky Season would be an understatement. For him, all the decorative ghosts and ghouls are frightening. His replicant, Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone) isn’t a big fan either, as he thinks the magic of Halloween takes away from the clear superiority of science fiction.
Terry and Jesse are, however, determined to make the most of their first All Hallows Eve on Earth, so they exhume a corpse and use “dark sci-fi magic” to turn it into the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir, the guy who actually plays the Crypt Keeper). In a side plot, Yumyulack accidentally dies before being bored to death by what he considers an underwhelming Hell experience, to the growing frustration of the underworld’s demons.
As far as animated specials go, this one made for a very fun watch. The Crypt Keeper’s constant burst into “pun-filled” stories makes for an endearing homage to the anthological horror classic. Watching Yumyulack remaining cynically unimpressed by the actual Hell was on the right side of hilarious. And of course, Korvo’s over-the-top anxiety over Halloween as a whole serves as a stark reminder of how strange our love for the holiday really is. As a culture, we dedicate a whole month to death, horror and scary things. And Korvo spends an entire episode letting us know how he really feels about the concept.
A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special is everything a holiday special should be. It takes the four little aliens we’ve gotten fond of over the last three seasons and decorates them with some carved pumpkins and skeletons. Literally. I’m looking forward to the next season of the foul-language animation and hopefully, they’ll do another special soon.
What did you think of A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special? Comment below.
