How Justin Roiland’s Firing Affected Solar Opposites Season 4 Explained By Producer

With the recasting announced just two months ahead of its premiere, supervising producer Sydney Ryan explains how Justin Roiland’s firing affected Solar Opposites season 4. The new chapter of the Hulu sci-fi comedy saw a hiccup during production when Roiland was dismissed after charges were revealed to have been filed against him for felony domestic abuse. Dan Stevens was later brought on to take over the role of Korvo, leader of the central alien family, for Solar Opposites season 4.

In honor of the show’s return, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with Sydney Ryan to discuss Solar Opposites season 4. When asked how Justin Roiland’s firing ultimately affected the new season, as it was announced seven months ahead of the premiere, the show’s supervising producer acknowledged that the only major change came from the cold opening explaining the reason for Korvo’s new voice, with the rest of the season being far enough into post-production to not need any more changes. See what Ryan explained below:

The only real writing change to the season was the addition of the Cold Open in the premiere episode to explain the voice change in the world of the show. You can actually tell that the scene right after the opening credits was the original Cold Open, but it still works great, haha. The voice change didn’t really require any changes to the Korvo stories this year, so it didn’t necessitate any rewrites. We’ve enjoyed letting Dan Stevens adlib some British slang into the dialogue, which makes us laugh every time it comes up. We had already delivered the season, and we were pretty far into post-production, so the only real change was making sure we could get our new Korvo recorded and the animation updated so that the new performance fit and played well.

Editor’s Note: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, and the show covered here would not exist without the labor of the writers and actors in both unions.

How Solar Opposites Handles Justin Roiland’s Exit

The Solar Opposites season 4 cold open Ryan mentions above finds Thomas Middleditch’s Terry revealing to Mary Mack’s Jessie and Sean Giambrone’s Yumyulack that he had successfully purchased the dart board from the set of Cheers, though asking the two to keep it a secret from Korvo due to his forbidding Terry from having sharp things in the house. Before he gets the chance to enjoy his purchase, Terry incidentally throws a dart into Korvo’s throat, using the voice fixer ray to repair his wound, resulting in the change to Stevens’ voice.

Related: Why Solar Opposites Season 4 Recast Korvo’s Voice Actor

The majority of the rest of Solar Opposites season 4 forges ahead without any major references to Korvo’s voice no longer sounding akin to that of Roiland, save for one joke in which Stevens’ incarnation states in an opening credits rant that his voice will sound the same in any future flashbacks because of a sci-fi element the aliens possess. Ryan also shared exclusively the reasoning behind the team electing not to cast a Roiland soundalike, wanting to avoid an “uncanny valley” feeling for audiences as they adjust to the co-creator no longer being part of the show.

Ultimately, the change has left audiences divided on Solar Opposites season 4, with its Rotten Tomatoes score setting a new low for the show at 43%, in spite of a perfect 100% rating from critics. Much like Henry Cavill’s The Witcher before it, the majority of the negative reviews look to be Roiland fans bombing the show in the hopes of bringing him back rather than taking into account the entertaining sci-fi shenanigans that they gave a minimum of 90% scores for both season 2 and 3. With Solar Opposites season 5 already confirmed to be in development, though no exact timeline set for its release, it will be interesting to see if this backlash persists.