Hulu’s new sci-fi comedy cartoon series Solar Opposites looks a lot like Rick and Morty, but do the two shows exist in the same universe – or rather, multiverse? Rick and Morty‘s co-creator Justin Roiland and former producer/writer Mike McMahan initially developed the show for Fox before it was later picked up by Hulu. But while Solar Opposites may seem like a Rick and Morty spinoff, the two shows aren’t connected – at least, not officially.
While Solar Opposites and Rick and Morty might share a creative team, as well as Roiland’s trademark animation style and even his voice (he plays Korvo in Solar Opposites and Rick in Rick and Morty, as well as various other characters in both shows), they’re separated by belonging to two different and competing parent companies. Solar Opposites is produced by 20th Century Fox Television, now a subsidiary of Disney, while Rick and Morty airs on Cartoon Network, which is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Fans may be confused by the fact that both shows are available on Hulu, but the streaming service (also owned by Disney) only licenses episodes of Rick and Morty, whereas Solar Opposites is considered a Hulu Original. What all of this means from a story standpoint is that a crossover between the two series would be difficult to pull off. While Solar Opposites doesn’t acknowledge any connection to Rick and Morty, Roiland said on THR‘s TV Top 5 podcast that he considers the two shows to exist in the same multiverse, and that’s what he’s been telling people.
Theoretically speaking, Solar Opposites must be a part of Rick and Morty‘s multiverse somewhere, since that the multiverse consists of infinite possibilities. In one of those infinite possibilities, aliens with the exact same appearance, names, and origin as Terry, Korvo, Jessie and Yumyulak will have crash-landed on a version of planet Earth and done the exact same things that they do in Solar Opposites.
Theory is one thing, but an explicit connection or crossover between Solar Opposites and Rick and Morty would be more difficult to pull off. “Navigating those IP waters, those are two behemoths,” Roiland said. “We got Disney+ or Disney, and you have the HBO/AT&T/Time Warner behemoth. Those are very separate pools of water, I don’t know.”
Though cartoon crossovers are fairly common, they usually only happen when the two shows belong to the same corporate structure (such as The Simpsons‘ crossovers with Family Guy and Futurama). Still, it might be worth keeping an eye out for Solar Opposites Easter eggs in the remaining episodes of Rick and Morty season 4.
