Dan Harmon Talks RICK & MORTY and Transitioning To a New Era After Behind-The-Scenes Drama
Rick and Morty will continue to entertain fans as long as they keep showing up to watch the show, but there was a rough patch where fans didn’t know what to expect after series co-creator and voice actor Justin Roiland was fired due to inappropriate conduct allegations.
During an interview with Variety, Dan Harmon talked about Rick and Morty and transitioning to a new era after everything that happened with Roiland.
Harmon said: “I think a reset is a good way of looking at it. We had so much behind-the-scenes drama that I think we didn’t need a lot of irony and challenge on the screen narratively.
“I think the experiment became, can we accomplish the show moving forward? Can the fans not lose their favorite show, not be distracted by any of the turbulence? There was also another important reason to reset, which is we’re anticipating doing a lot more of these.
“This was always designed to be a show that could last thousands of episodes. And you can’t last thousands of episodes if you’re simply going to tell a serialized story about how your protagonist stops being the protagonist.
“I’ve always been obsessively focused on maintaining modularity, so that the more popular your show gets, the more accessible it is to a hopefully increasing freeway of traffic.”
Harmon went on to talk about the new voice actors who were brought in to voice the characters Rick and Morty.
He explained: “This is not about me. This is not about cultural wars. And this isn’t about my reputation. It’s not about my friendships. This has nothing to do with me, except for the fact that I’m uniquely qualified to contribute to this process.
“What this has to do with is, a living breathing character — two of them — and millions of people who don’t want this show disrupted. Which is a noble and worthwhile and very healthy goal. I think we accomplished that. And I’m very proud and grateful that’s how it panned out.’
He added: “That’s my perception. That the goal was accomplished or those that wanted it accomplished, that they’re like, ‘I can’t tell the difference. The characters are the characters, let’s move on.’
“As far as I can tell, we’re past it. It worked, we transitioned to a new era and if the show sucks from here forward, it’s for the usual reasons any show can suck. Not because of these dramatic events.”
I remember seeing a few complaints about the voices early on, but I think everyone has accepted them, and the creative team can movie on and continue to pump out great, funny, and bonkers stories!
When talking about the Adult Swim’s mega 70-episode order of the series and how many are left, Harmon said: “We’re in the homestretch. We’re always one to two seasons ahead of what’s happening on screen in the writers’ room.
“Roughly it’s around ten episodes left to write before we will be done with the 70. So, my job right now is to be working on the final 10 of that order. As for the question of what has everybody seen, where are they at? I think that puts them at 20 left.”
As far as the future of the show goes, Harmon said: “Plenty of time to figure it out. With something this satisfying for this many people, conversations like that happen all the time. And I would anticipate an announcement one way or the other about the future at some point in the future.”
He added that there will probably be more news to come on that, which sounds like good news!