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‘Solar Opposites’ returns for a transformative Halloween special that gets to the crux of the spooky season by riffing on a Christmas classic.
“Stop celebrating Halloween? Oh no, my pretty. I think you’ll find that you ARE Halloween.”
Halloween specials have become a long and storied tradition in television and they’re a great opportunity for series – comedies and dramas alike – to really flex their genre muscles and remind audiences of Halloween’s inherent splendor. The beauty of Solar Opposites is that it’s a series that’s endlessly devoted to pop culture parodies and extended satire subversions that have touched on everything from Gerald’s Game to Now You See Me. The Solar family have largely fallen in love with Earth and its customs through their obsession with television and cinema’s warm inviting glow. It’s the perfect series for farcical holiday specials that poke fun at the structure and tropes of these seasonal installments, which is exactly why Solar Opposites’ previous Christmas, Halloween, and St. Valentine’s Day specials have been some of the series’ most enjoyable episodes.
The horror genre is particularly conducive to sequels, so it’s perhaps only appropriate that Solar Opposites’ latest holiday installment – “’Solar Opposites’ Halloween Special Part 2: The Hunt for Brown October” – returns to Halloween with a direct follow-up to its previous Halloween special, “A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special,” rather than tackle a new festivity, such as Easter or St. Patrick’s Day. It’s satisfying to have Solar Opposites return to the horror genre, but “The Hunt for Brown October” brilliantly weaponizes the nature of horror sequels into a holiday special that’s exciting and new, rather than derivative. It’s an entertaining addition to anyone’s Halloween binge session.
Sequels can be set up for failure if they’re entered into under the wrong conditions. “The Hunt for Brown October” is careful about actually having something to say here rather than coming off as a hollow retread and round-up of the series’ past holiday hits. Solar Opposites gets playful and self-aware with the idea of a second Halloween special and begins as an outright refusal of the spooky season. The Solars go through a checklist of holidays that they’d rather celebrate before they’re roped into supernatural shenanigans that make their efforts to ignore Halloween increasingly impossible. It’s a successful angle for a “sequel” that doesn’t step on its predecessor’s toes.
“A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” got a lot of mileage out of its subversion of two powerful horror icons – The Crypt Keeper and the Great Pumpkin – the fallout of which becomes the catalyst for “The Hunt For Brown October.” The Great Pumpkin’s grisly end by Korvo’s hand in the last Halloween special triggers a spirit transfer that turns Korvo into this demonic deity. It’s kind of brilliant that Solar Opposites essentially does a Halloween version of The Santa Clause and turns to the plot of a celebrated Christmas movie and spookifying it. It’s an unexpected angle that’s more powerful than reserving it for the series’ next Christmas special or turning to a more conventional Halloween movie for the special’s inspiration. There’s something wonderfully ridiculous about the idea that the Great Pumpkin is a seasonal figure that needs to exist and it’s an angle that more horror films should employ. It’d be genuinely terrifying to see a final girl or survivor kill Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, or Michael Myers, only to then turn into their greatest nightmare because of some twisted cosmic karmic balance that’s bigger than them.
Korvo is the funniest character to experience this Great Pumpkin-ification based on his contentious relationship with Halloween in the previous holiday special. It’s a small detail, but one that gets a little more narrative juice out of this premise. The slow burn nature of Korvo’s transformation is understandably played for laughs, but it could have been fun to see Solar Opposites indulge in a particularly laborious and vicious transformation sequence that’s akin to An American Werewolf in London where it just goes for broke with gratuitous gore. “The Hunt for Brown October” turns the Great Pumpkin into its focal point, but there’s also some fun to be had with the surprisingly complex lore that it introduces regarding more Nightmare Before Christmas-esque holiday totems such as the First Witch and the Grand Brown Gravy. A whole holiday hierarchy that brings Highlander to mind is an effective way for Solar Opposites to go all-in with this convoluted idea and set up future holiday specials to come. It’d be genuinely shocking if none of these ideas or characters ever appeared again.
“The Hunt for Brown October” is mostly interested in Korvo’s plight, but the abundance of Halloween figures also facilitates an enjoyable enough B-story where the Pupa and JK Sevens embrace their morbid juvenile curiosity and try to eviscerate Halloween’s First Witch. This digression isn’t necessary, but it’s a fun aside to return to on several occasions that’s fueled with a gleeful maliciousness that’s appropriate for the Halloween season. If nothing else, it’s appreciated that Solar Opposites continues to develop the Pupa and JK Sevens’ budding friendship.
On a similar note, Korvo’s resistance to his supernatural transmutation also has seasonal side effects that turn the rest of the Solars into creepy alternate versions of themselves. This feels like an easy excuse to get wacky varieties of Terry, Yumyulack, and Jesse that rival Korvo’s own macabre metamorphosis, but it’s not especially annoying or distracting. All this helps contribute towards Halloween spreading and enveloping the Solars’ surroundings like a virus. Forget about Spirit Halloween. Solar Opposites explores Sickness Halloween.
Solar Opposites always has such a good knack for subverting standard sitcom tropes, which are once again at the core of this Halloween special and feature a hilariously hackneyed scenario where nothing can go wrong, which of course means that everything does. Solar Opposites routinely welcomes “sci-fi bullshit” and so it’s no surprise to see “The Hunt for Brown October” develop a fascination with dark magic and wicked elixirs as a solution to restore normalcy. This is a fairly straightforward special, but it still finds an opportunity to detonate some satisfying surprises that leave the Solars feeling like bigger outsiders than ever, even after they’ve neutralized this Halloween magic.
Solar Opposites’ “The Hunt for Brown October” tells a frivolous and silly story – because of course it does – but it culminates in a satisfying final act where the Solars need to use the power of Halloween to defeat Thanksgiving and survive the season. This experience helps Korvo better appreciate Halloween’s true glory and why it’s regarded as such a cherished holiday. This, on its own, is true lunacy. It’s also a conclusion that feels purely Solar Opposites and the perfect way to resolve a Halloween special of this nature. “The Hunt for Brown of October” is on the weaker end of Solar Opposites’ four holiday specials. However, that’s not to say that this is an unsuccessful episode of television and Halloween programming.
“The Hunt for Brown October” is still incredibly strong and it’s certainly on par with a standard Solar Opposites episode. It’s an amusing addition to anyone’s October watchlist and this episode plays even better if it’s watched back-to-back with “A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” and enjoyed as an hour-long Halloween spectacular. It’s unlikely that Solar Opposites is going to stop with these holiday specials and there are still limitless ideas for them to explore. One can’t help but wonder how The Wall or the SilverCops celebrate Halloween, for instance. However, a future return to Halloween is going to require a more layered approach that works a little harder to sensationalize this scary season.
“Solar Opposites: The Hunt for Brown October” is currently streaming on Hulu.
