Eight Seasons & Two New Voices Later, ‘Rick And Morty' Is A ‘Well-Oiled' Multiverse — And It's Not Going Anywhere!

Forbes

23-05-2025

'Rick and Morty'
Courtesy of Adult Swim
A little over a decade after it first debuted on Adult Swim, Rick and Morty has finally settled into a smooth production cycle under the auspices of showrunner/executive producer Scott Marder. Through his tight leadership that began with the fifth season, delays became a thing of the past, unceremoniously banished to the farthest reaches of the Central Finite Curve.
'We're on schedule now, thanks to Scott and a new technique we found called being three seasons ahead,' says executive producer and former showrunner Dan Harmon (he also co-creator of the animated sci-fi hit with Justin Roiland) ahead of the Season 8 premiere. 'That's very much a difference. Our schedule is kind of predictable and … we look a little more like a real, healthy TV show.'
'We've become more of a well-oiled machine, [and] that's certainly something that pays dividends,' Marder affirms. 'The episodes hold across the process in a stronger way, so that artists can make them prettier, directors can direct them better, and writers can write them better … It's a better end result for everyone and [leads to] higher morale.'
That high morale is certainly felt by regular cast members like Spencer Grammer, voice of Summer Smith, who reveals they've already started recording episodes for the ninth season (Adult Swim renewed the show through Season 12 last year).
'In the beginning, there were these long pauses between seasons as they would get the writers' room together. But now that just goes [smoothly] and we come in,' she explains. 'That really makes our lives a lot easier as actors and also just as human beings who can rely on getting paid through the year … Rick and Morty has always been this lovely thing that I can rely on and also one of the things I'm most proud of in my life."
'We're 80 episodes in and it's never boring,' agrees co-star Sarah Chalke (Beth Smith/Space Beth). 'It's always exciting to get the new Rick and Morty script in your inbox and see what you get to do that week … Every episode is still so different because of the nature of the show, the fact that it can go to any dimension anywhere and the characters could really be at any stage. It gives you the opportunity to have a fully new relationship with a character that you've been doing [scenes] with for a decade."
Chris Parnell (Jerry Smith) echoes that sentiment: 'They keep surprising us with different scenarios, and then different versions of our characters that we get to play.'
Having been a part of the show since the very beginning, Grammer, Chalke, and Parnell enjoyed a front-row seat to Rick and Morty's meteoric rise from offbeat cartoon to an essential piece of the pop culture landscape. 'You see the growth of the show through the eyes of Comic-Con,' Chalke says. '[When we went the first year]
Parnell, meanwhile, points to the Szechuan Sauce craze as the moment he knew the series had deeply resonated with viewers. The sauce mania came out of the Season 3 premiere ("The Rickshank Redemption"), which singlehandedly revived an obscure McDonald's movie tie-in condiment from the '90s. 'I knew from what I'd heard that even out of the gate, the show was received really well. But then when the Szechuan Sauce thing happened and I was like, 'Wow, this is quite a cultural connection for so many people,'' he shares. 'It was very cool.'
'Rick and Morty'
Courtesy of Adult Swim
Despite such runaway success, the multiversal misadventures of Rick Sanchez, aka the smartest human in the universe, and his anxiety-prone teenage grandson, Morty Smith, were somewhat derailed in 2023 when Adult Swim severed ties with Justin Roiland — series co-creator, executive producer, and voice of the two titular characters — following charges of domestic violence.
There was absolutely no way the network was going to cancel its biggest television hit; one that spawned a cultural phenomenon and a lucrative multimedia franchise to go along with it. So what did Adult Swim do? They put out a casting call, of course!
Following a six-month audition process, Roiland, who still retains creator and executive producer credits, was ultimately replaced by two soundalike actors — Ian Cardoni (Rick) and Harry Belden (Morty) — both of whom weren't revealed until the Season 7 premiere two years ago.
'It's been crazy,' admits Belden. 'I've felt every emotion possible as we've gone through this whole thing — from the elation of finding out we were going to be playing these roles, to the then almost-immediate panic of, 'Oh my gosh! I have to step into this iconic role and hope everybody's okay with it and the show can continue.' I still wake up most days being like, 'Okay, that is real. This is what I'm doing now. This is my job.''
'It's been really fun to bring more of myself to the role and really try to own it while honoring this iconic character that we've all of grown to love for many years,' adds Cardoni. 'I think we've got some great adventures to come, and it's fun to be along for that ride.'
The biggest obstacle for the two newcomers was staying true to the spirit of the iconic characters without having the voices become hollow impressions of Roiland's performance across the first six seasons.
'The challenge every day is to not see it as a listen and repeat," Cardoni continues. 'It is more getting inside these characters and making sure that you can motivate. The difference comes through vocally if you're really committed to a character's mindset and emotional life. That's what motivates a scream, a 'Wubba Lubba dub-dub!', or a burp. It comes from a real place, and that's a lot of fun to play.'
Belden notes that he was very much encouraged to put his own spin on the voices during a Zoom callback. 'I did one of the lines and replicated the cadence of the original line,' he recalls. 'And they were like, 'That sounded great. Now please do it as your own. Don't feel locked into the way it was done.' And I was like, 'Of course! They're looking for someone who can breathe life into the character and isn't just replicating things.''
'Rick and Morty'
Courtesy of Adult Swim
In terms of plot, Harmon and Marder say that Season 8 is all about the characters 'living in a post-Rick Prime world' after Rick killed his arch-nemesis last season. Where does the eponymous nihilist with a drinking problem go from here now that he has no concrete endgame? 'We're hyper-aware of the choices we've made, and we see people dealing with the ramifications of that," stresses the showrunner. "I'd say Season 8 is putting a little bit of a spotlight on Rick and the Beths. [Rick is]
Harmon chimes in: 'If there's a theme to Season 8 … it might be that people are running out of other people to blame for what's happening to them. And that comes with a whole new challenge. Rick solved this supposed problem with his fists, but then that trickles down to everybody. [For example], Morty doesn't have the the crutch anymore of claiming that his grandpa is dragging him everywhere against his will and Rick doesn't have the crutch of saying, 'You guys don't matter.' Jerry and Beth have long since stopped blaming each other for the lack of fulfillment in their careers and things. The stories in Season 8 continue that theme in a linear way.'
The cast also chimes in on the topic of what we can expect in the latest episodes, with Belden stating that Rick, Morty, and Summer are 'all sort of doing their own thing in a way" this season. 'I think that's probably indicative of healing," he muses.
Cardoni, on the other hand, is excited for fans to see Rick grow as a character. 'I think we see him take some emotional risks as a result. But that growth is not always linear, so you're going to get messy moments, too.'
And then there's Grammer, who 'can't wait for it to all fall apart again,' as things usually do for the dysfunctional Smith family.
'It might happen this season, it might happen next season," she teases. "Because I think that's the cycle. All of our lives are sort of cyclical. We go through periods of great growth and change. We [also]
'Rick and Morty'
Courtesy of Adult Swim
While four more seasons are confirmed, Marder is of the mindset that Rick and Morty can run in perpetuity. For him, there is no 'end in sight at the moment.' After all, Marder is no stranger to long-running TV shows, having worked on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (currently nearing its seventeenth season). But where Sunny's limited location began to seriously challenge the writers to come up with new scenarios for the Paddy's Pub crew, Rick and Morty is a lot more freeing from a narrative perspective.
'It can be so standalone and so anthological, that I find the show is breaking just as easily in eight, nine, ten as it was in four, five, six,' says the showrunner. "So to me, it does not feel like it's slowing down at all.'
'You've got a maximum of two seasons to tell a planned story,' Harmon concludes. 'We're blessed and cursed with a completely different paradigm. We've been at it for so long, that if we were planning something for Season 20, we would be guilty of playing a game that we couldn't win with an audience that is so sophisticated, they would guess whatever payoff was coming … We owe it to the audience to continue to figure out new stories to take place in a limitless world.'
Season 8 of Rick and Morty premieres on Adult Swim this Sunday — May 25 — at 11:00 p.m. ET