Justin Roiland fans are mad — but what else is new? The latest season of Solar Opposites, co-created by Roiland and Mike McMahan, is getting review-bombed on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb following the Rick and Morty creator’s ousting due to domestic violence charges.
In January, Roiland was charged with one felony count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one felony count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud, and/or deceit. However, the charges were dropped the following March due to a lack of evidence.
But by then, the damage had already been done. Both Hulu Originals and 20th TV Animation, who respectively stream and produce the series, had already parted ways with Roiland and announced their plan to continue his ongoing projects without him. Adult Swim, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Squanch Games also severed their ties with the creator.
As a result, Season 4 saw Roiland’s co-creator credit removed from the title card and placed towards the end of the screen credits, and his role as Korvo recast.
Some fans were impressed with Dan Stevens filling in Roiland’s shoes as the super-smart, earth-hating extraterrestrial. But others decidedly weren’t.
Prior to the release of Season 4, on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest audience score a season received was 81% – and that applied to Season 1 and A Very Solar Holiday Opposites Special. Season 3 received the highest rating at 93% with Season 2 trailing right behind it at 91%. Lastly, there’s A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special at 90% audience approval.
Solar Opposites is a great show and has been historically highly rated by audiences and critics since its release in 2020, so why does Season 4 have a record low of 39% on the website with fewer than 50 reviews? Did the show miraculously get bad? Decider’s Brittany Vincent gave it a passionate “stream it” in her review, so probably not. Rather, Roiland fans are fighting on his behalf and trying to tank the show for parting ways with the controversial creator.
Angry at the crude behavior, one fan posted on the show’s Reddit community, “I understand feeling jarred by a brand new voice, but people are totally ignoring the fact that the situations and jokes are just as hilarious without Roiland on the writing staff (even prior to his firing it’s fairly well known that he wasn’t contributing to the writing process of this or R&M), and the characters are as defined as ever.”
Another agreed in the comments, “I get why people don’t like the voice but review bombing the episodes or going on a bunch of threads about Season 4 just to complain about how the show is ruined is straight up immature.”
Taking a look at IMDb, the season is suffering the same fate on the platform, with Season 4 episodes the lowest ranked of all time. One user review gave the show a 1/10 and titled their review “bring back Justin Roiland,” writing, “I do not understand what was their thought process that made them to basically destroy their own streamline of revenue without investigating further, or to have the patience and wait to find if Justin was really guilty.” Several others state similar reasoning behind their low reviews.
For Roiland, while “innocent until proven guilty” holds up in the court of law, it doesn’t do much to sway the court of public opinion. Following the news of Roiland’s domestic violence charges, several staffers came forward with allegations of sexual harassment in a Hollywood Reporter exposé accusing Roiland of inappropriately discussing his sex life in workplace environments, among other unfavorable behaviors.
Roiland has made himself a liability and, at this point, his fans are further tainting his name with their crude behavior. Solar Opposites has a bright future ahead without Roiland as it has already been announced that the series will be continuing with a fifth season and a 2024 Valentine’s Day special. And if the review bombing is telling us anything, it’s that true fans of the work – not to be mistaken for Roiland devotees – better duck and cover for the imminent release of Rick and Morty Season 7.
Meanwhile, to the review bombers: Just stop it.
Solar Opposites is currently streaming on Hulu.