Posted in: Adult Swim, Preview, Rick and Morty, TV | Tagged: Adult Swim, dan harmon, preview, rick and morty

Rick and Morty S07 Was Reset Season; Moving on From Drama: Harmon

Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon on Season 7 being a reset season and fans moving beyond the preseason behind-the-scenes drama.

Speaking with Variety earlier this week, Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon offered an update on where things stand with that massive 70-episode deal that was announced back in 2018 as the team gets closer to the end of it and if there was anything he could share regarding the show's future beyond that. Now, Harmon is looking back on the seventh season and how it served in many ways as a "reset" for the Emmy Award-winning animated series after the fallout from co-creator Justin Roiland being fired by Adult Swim after being charged with domestic violence. Ahead of the new season, voice actors Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden were brought aboard to take over Rick and Morty, respectively.

"I think a reset is a good way of looking at it," Harmon shared, explaining the seventh season's heavier focus on standalone episodes and avoiding a cliffhanger.  "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?"

But Harmon notes that was also the show's creative longevity to consider. "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," he added.

With a seventh season wrapped and Season 8 set for 2025, Harmon believes that the drama has been left in the rearview mirror and that the fans are back to focusing on the on-screen action instead. "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," Harmon said.

Rick and Morty: Season 8, More Evil Morty, Mr. Poopybutthole Theory

If you appreciated how Seasons 6 and 7 were able to maintain a proper balance between canon/mythology episodes and those standalone "classic Rick and Morty adventures," then you'll like what's in store for Season 8. "There's obviously been a lot of shakeups and transitions that have happened that are luckily coinciding with some of these canonical storylines being resolved. If I could set a framework for fans of the show, it's the old characters and all these things, but it's like, this is an opportunity for a rebirth," series co-creator Dan Harmon explained during an interview with Variety in late February of this year. "I mean, the kind of canonical things like searching for Rick Prime, these are things that come out of the ether, and then they acquire this gravity, and then they become a canonical serialized story. I think people should expect more random embers shooting off of that fire and turning into organically gigantic serialized things of their own."

But with Harmon being a fan of the standalone adventures, viewers shouldn't be expecting them to be going anywhere anytime soon. "I will always target the episodic personally. Because, like, your job is to fight gravity. And gravity is serialization. That's what happens organically; gravity is a great thing. But you're supposed to want to fly." Showrunner Scott Marder reaffirmed that the eighth season will be looking to strike the episodic balance that the previous two seasons achieved. "Eight will have a lot of similar flow and vibes to six and seven, which is like a cool balance of silly and one-up canonical stuff. That's the stuff I want as a fan. And that's the stuff that Harmon and I work on all jammed together. I'm really proud of these last couple of seasons; they're sort of the perfect blend of what I look for as a fan," he added.

Could that include the return of Evil Morty at some point? Most definitely – in case anyone thought his ominous warning before departing our dimension (with one serious ultimate weapon) in "Unmortricken" would be the last that we would hear from him. "We can expect to see him in the future. We certainly have plans and grand designs with him, for sure," Marder shared – though not confirming that his return would happen during the eighth season.

And then there's Mr. Poopybutthole question. Like us, a lot of folks are getting a feeling that Poopybutthole's overarching storyline is lading him to becoming a major big bad for our heroes. "Shit. Well, now we can't do that, or he can sue us, right? Good job, internet! You blew it again!" Harmon joked during the interview when presented with the theory. "No, in all seriousness, I do love that guy [the person who posted the theory online] so much; I want to encourage those kinds of theories. I love, love that stuff. I love him, particularly the amount of energy he puts into that stuff," the series co-creator added. While Marder found the theory interesting, he also shared that was "not their plan for him" – adding that "I always love what fans take and run with in any show."

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